I am a literary giant in Japan

Chapter 301: Norwegian Wood and Shizuko Kawaide’s Fall

1997 7 Month 10 Day.

Thailand in this parallel world announced that it would abandon its fixed exchange rate system and implement a floating exchange rate system, which means that the exchange rate of the Thai baht will fluctuate with the rise and fall of the US dollar and gold from now on.

On that day, the exchange rate of the Thai baht against the US dollar fell by 17%, and the foreign exchange and other financial markets were in chaos.

Under the influence of the fluctuations of the Thai baht, the Philippine peso, Indonesian rupiah and Malaysian ringgit have also become targets of international speculators.

The Thai baht became completely worthless overnight. Thai people and investors did not even have time to sell it, and the currency in their hands began to depreciate sharply.

Those international hot money investors who followed Soros and other financial tycoons into the market and joined the party made a fortune, with the average profit per person exceeding 100%.

Speculators like Masato Senhara, who entered the market earlier, have a return rate of up to 300%!

Kitagawa Hide's previous estimate of a net worth of 400 billion yen was still too conservative. After this wave of financial crisis, Kitagawa's total investment assets alone exceeded 300 billion yen!

Masato Senhara, who was obsessed with making money, still followed the advice of Kitagawa Hide, an "outsider investor", and withdrew his investment before the Thai baht reached its lowest point.

His next target is the Indonesian rupiah, and he may also go to Malaysia and the Philippines in July and August.

Thanks to the Japanese who traveled all over the world during the bubble era, it is easy for Japanese investors to enter overseas countries, and they are a relatively popular type of overseas capital.

This saved Masato Senhara a lot of time and money.

He helped Kitagawa Hideo work hard to make money overseas, while Kitagawa Hideo patted his butt and officially bid farewell to the small town of Aracataca where he had lived for more than half a month.

The first ten chapters of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" have been completed, and these manuscripts alone are enough to hand in to Okeron and Hernando.

Despite the efforts of Okeron and many Colombian politicians and businessmen to keep them, Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko still boarded a plane to Germany.

The second stop of the round-the-world honeymoon trip was set in Germany because when they were in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko unexpectedly received an invitation to watch a performance from the New Beatles band.

The Beatles are a rock band formed in Liverpool, England in 1960.

The original Beatles, the band best known to music fans, consisted of four members: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

The famous songs they composed and sang, such as "Hey Jude" and "Yesterday", have an indelible place in the world music scene.

In 1970, with Paul McCartney announcing his departure from the band, the original Beatles disbanded completely.

Throughout the 70s, there were rumors that the Beatles would reunite. However, in 1980, John Lennon was shot dead in his home by his own fans, and there was no possibility for the Beatles to return as the original band.

In 1994, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr reunited for the band's greatest hits album, with John Lennon's voice re-recorded by his widow Yoko Ono.

Yoko Ono, 64, is a well-known Japanese artist and musician, and John Lennon's second wife.

She has been living abroad, and last year when she was creating a music album in the western United States, she heard about Hide Kitagawa from Gene Autry, and since then she has become one of Kitagawa's big fans overseas.

After learning that Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko went to Colombia for their honeymoon, she immediately called and invited them to come to Germany to watch the new Beatles' public charity performance at Hamburg Airport.

During his time traveling abroad, Kitagawa Hide truly experienced the influence of world-renowned writers abroad and the communication between celebrities.

No matter where he goes, he always runs into one or two celebrity readers who like to read his novels. These big names will enthusiastically provide him with a lot of conveniences in life, making his and Mengzi's honeymoon more comfortable.

After several contacts, Kitagawa Hideya discovered that in the art world, literature is always at the top of the contempt chain.

Maybe it’s because all art requires text as its underlying logic.

Yoko Ono cordially invited him and Yumeko to visit Germany, and also hoped that Hideki Kitagawa could help promote her art and music in his book in the future.

Gene Autry, who had retired for many years, became popular again with the book "South of the Border, West of the Sun" and returned to the ranks of first-line singers, making many American singers envious.

Being able to see the performance of the new Beatles band up close also gave Kitagawa Hide more inspiration for writing "Norwegian Wood".

In Japan, the influence of Ichiro Tanizaki is still intensifying, the literary market is in chaos, and the Ministry of Education is under attack from all sides.

In this situation, Kawaide Shobo, which was trying hard to expand overseas, had no choice but to help clean up the mess.

Considering the situation of Kawaide Shizuko and Saito Rena, Kitagawa Hide agreed to write another pure "Kitagawa Hidefu" love novel.

After much thought, the only top literary work that can turn the tide and save the collapsing empire is Haruki Murakami's personal masterpiece "Norwegian Wood".

After making the promise, Kitagawa Hide had to put it into practice and quickly prepare the beginning of the new book.

At this time, Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko were sitting in the cabin of a Boeing 747.

This huge plane had just dived through the thick dark clouds, preparing to land at Hamburg Airport.

The rare cold and heavy rain in July made the ground foggy.

After the plane taxied and landed, Kitagawa Hide could see through the window the repairmen in raincoats, the flags erected on the neat and uniform airport buildings, and the large BMW billboards. Everything looked like the gloomy background of a Flemish painting.

The plane landed smoothly, the warning lights went out, and pleasant rock music began to flow softly from the speakers on the ceiling.

It is the classic song of The Beatles - "Norwegian Wood".

Yumeko, who was standing beside him, rested her head on his shoulder, nodding her head and agreeing softly - she actually didn't listen to foreign pop music very much, but for some reason, for a period of time, Jabami Rei played this song on repeat on her record player at home every day.

Over time, she learned to sing a few lines as well.

"It's a completely new country~ When we get to the airport, I want to buy some postcards and send them to Rei-chan, Reina-chan, and Shizuko-chan~" Mengzi stopped humming and looked out the window, seeming to be very curious about the unfamiliar German Hamburg.

"Okay, I'll go with you." Kitagawa Hide patted her head gently, but his thoughts flew into the book "Norwegian Wood" by the great Murakami.

This is the only novel by Haruki Murakami that he has read six times in a row.

For Haruki Murakami's fans, no matter which period of his creation is discussed, "Norwegian Wood" is a book that cannot be avoided - it is the best of all his books in terms of sales and reputation!
It is said that the inspiration for him to write this book was the Beatles song of the same name and a love triangle that ended in failure during his student days.

In the original novel, the most widely circulated and talked-about part is the love story between the male protagonist Toru Watanabe and the two female protagonists Naoko and Midori.

This extremely classic love triangle has deeply influenced generations of famous artists.

For example, the singer Wu Bai from next door wrote a song of the same name after watching Norwegian Wood (this was admitted by Wu Bai himself);

Shunji Iwai, who filmed "Love Letter" because of the influence of the love story in the novel; GALGAME text writer Fumiaki Maruto (whose representative works include "White Album 2", "How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend", "Contract Kiss", etc.), who was so impressed by this story that he used this classic plot and setting many times later.

In his previous life, Kitagawa Hide himself was deeply influenced by this book and thus embarked on the path of literary creation.

Unlike these big guys,

Kitagawa Hide had previously read a version of "Norwegian Wood (Remake)" that had not been translated or officially published, and was revised and later deleted by Haruki Murakami himself.

Compared to the most widely circulated version on the market, Hide Kitagawa prefers this remake made by Haruki Murakami himself.

Compared with the original version, the remake adds some interactive scenes between Toru Watanabe, Naoko and Midori, and also adds more detailed love plots, making it look more like a pure literary romance novel.

After carefully studying these two versions, Hide Kitagawa can understand why Haruki Murakami finally chose to seal the remake.

The core theme of the original version was to move towards a more literary sense of loneliness, thus downplaying the feeling of young love, which was also the core appeal of Haruki Murakami himself when he wrote the book.

To make the loneliness more prominent, there should be fewer of these teenage love scenes.

But Kitagawa Hide believes that the remake can better reflect Haruki Murakami's consistent personal style——

He rose to fame and success through this, and he insisted on becoming a world-class literary giant, just like an Asian who already has his own foundation but still wants to imitate Western civilization in the fields of literature, music, painting, etc. This is actually quite stupid.

But this is also a common problem among Japanese people.

Post-war Japan fell into a state of self-denial. Both the chaebols and ordinary people believed that the West was the best.

They also attributed Japan's rise before the war to the Meiji Restoration.

Therefore, to put it bluntly, the art world in postwar Japan is a poor imitator of Western art civilization.

He had thought a long time ago that if he was going to plagiarize "Norwegian Wood" one day, he would definitely learn to remake it, and then add some of his own life and insights into it, instead of trying to move closer to the world literary scene like Haruki Murakami.

As he was thinking this, the plane came to a complete stop. Mengzi patted him gently, and Kitagawa Hide came to his senses and pulled her off the plane.

Yoko Ono, who had been waiting to be picked up at the airport early, stood in the crowd, holding high a sign that read "Welcome Mr. Kitagawa", and was noticed by the two men at a glance.

"Welcome to Hamburg, Germany, Mr. Kitagawa! Ms. Yumeko!" Yoko Ono, who is in her sixties, is dressed very fashionably. Her short stature does not fit in with the Germans around her, but her noble lady's temperament perfectly makes up for her height disadvantage.

"Hello! Teacher Ono!" Kitagawa Hidekazu hugged her gently, and Yumeko was a little flattered. It was the first time that someone called her "Teacher Yumeko".

The three of them walked and talked. Yoko Ono said that originally the members of the new Beatles wanted to come to the airport to pick them up, but considering their popularity in Germany, it would be bad if they caused a commotion, so in the end she came alone.

Kitagawa Hide didn't care about it at all. He didn't want to end up in Germany like he did in Colombia, where there was a lot of trouble and he couldn't even have fun.

"The public charity performance will be the day after tomorrow. Here's the set list. They want to ask Mr. Kitagawa if there's any song he or she particularly wants to hear, so they can add it in as an extra." Yoko Ono handed over the set list.

Kitagawa Hide took it and scanned the list. Sure enough, there was no Norwegian Wood, which was released in 1965. He smiled and nodded, saying, "I want to listen to Norwegian Wood."

"Norwegian Wood? It's a really old song." Yoko Ono wrote it down, quite surprised.

Just as Kitagawa Hide and the other two were heading for Hamburg Airport, a bloody storm was gradually brewing in Tokyo, Japan.

7 month 15 day.

President's office, Kawaide Shobo headquarters building, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo.

"Are you sure that the Thai baht is completely hopeless?" Shizuko Kawaide held the phone. Her pretty face looked a little haggard, and her big eyes were bloodshot. It was obvious that she had not slept well for several days.

"Sure." The voice on the other end of the phone was equally dull.

"Okay, I understand. How much liquid funds does the family have now? How much money did they embezzle for investment?"

Shizuko Kawaide suppressed her anger and asked again.

"The available liquid funds in the family account are less than 10 billion yen. As for them, they said that a total of about 300 billion yen was embezzled, of which 100 billion yen was spent from the headquarters of Kawade Shobo."

"I understand." Shizuko Kawaide felt even worse.

A long time ago, Kitagawa Hide specifically told her that he felt the future world economic situation would not be very good, especially in Asia, which was developing too rapidly and might suffer a catastrophe.

Kitagawa Hide certainly doesn't understand finance, but his intuition is always surprisingly sharp.

The Tokyo subway gas incident actually saved Jabami Rei's life!
Therefore, Shizuko Kawaide was also cautious and reserved sufficient working capital when preparing for Kawaide Shobo's overseas expansion plan.

Even if the overseas expansion plan fails, it will not cause any serious damage to Kawachu Shobo.

Moreover, this time, after defeating Xinchaoshe and annexing many domestic publishing houses, the overall profit is obviously much better than last year.

She thought that no matter how bad the economy was, it would not affect the main headquarters of Kawade Shobo.

did not expect!
This economic crisis came suddenly and swiftly, and the degree of harm it caused is no less than that of the bubble economy back then!
That's fine.

Although the Kawaide family has many industries and funds in Thailand and other places, the losses are not so great that they are unacceptable.

Unfortunately, many people in her family were involved in the Thai Baht foreign exchange war without telling her.

It is said that in the first round of confrontation, the Thai government won a great victory, so those tribesmen followed the Thai government to buy stocks.

Now all 300 billion yen has gone down the drain!

Originally, the 300 billion yen of funds were their own. Although the family assets had shrunk, Shizuko Kawaide could accept it.

But out of the 300 billion yen, 100 billion yen came from the company, and she couldn't accept that!
She tried her best for this overseas expansion plan, but her last reserved underwear was stolen by her own people in this wave!

The severity of the Asian financial crisis was far beyond her imagination.
The company is now expanding at a high speed, and its income is not enough to cover its expenses every day. If this continues, if the funds cannot be fully turned around,
Shizuko Kawaide hung up the phone and rubbed her temples. For the first time, the usually cold and beautiful woman showed an expression of frustration and despair.

"It seems that we can only ask the Industrial Central Bank."

As long as she can get a loan of 100 billion yen, she will consider accepting it no matter how high the interest rate is.

(End of this chapter)