I am a literary giant in Japan

[From Mr. Beichuan:

Hello!

Ever since the publication of Hear the Wind Sing, we have been hoping to present you with the Naoki Prize.

At the end of 1995, we were fortunate enough to fulfill our wish and awarded the 114th Naoki Prize to your work "The Serial Murder Case".

The jury's comment on you and your work at that time was: It is an honor for the Naoki Prize to award "Kei-kun"!

Then you also said in your speech: "It is because the awards are given to countless immortal works that those awards can be eternal. I think the Naoki Prize is such an award!"

We are truly honored to be able to achieve mutual success with Mr. Kitagawa.

After two years, we would like to solemnly invite you to serve as a lifetime judge of the Naoki Prize!

Since its establishment, the Naoki Prize has been committed to discovering and commending works and writers that profoundly reflect the changes of the times and demonstrate outstanding literary attainments.

Your name has long been shining in the Japanese literary world. Whether as a creator, writer or cultural promoter, your profound knowledge, unique insights and infinite love for literature have deeply influenced the hearts of countless readers and made an indelible contribution to the prosperity and development of literature.

If we are fortunate enough to invite you to serve as a lifetime judge of the Naoki Prize, it will not only greatly enhance the professionalism and authority of the Naoki Prize, but will also be a great encouragement and inspiration to younger generations of literary scholars.

We also hope to award "Norwegian Wood" the "Naoki Lifetime Achievement Award".

This is the result of discussions between us and the current jury members. The Naoki Lifetime Achievement Award will only be awarded once, only to you, and only to "Norwegian Wood".

that's all.

Thanks again to Mr. Beichuan for reading this letter.

——From all members of the Naoki Award Central Council】

After reading the email from the Naoki Award Central Council, Kitagawa Hide was at a loss whether to laugh or cry.

The Naoki Prize is worthy of being an award for popular literature, and its sensitivity to the commercial value of books and writers is far higher than other literary awards.

Kitagawa Hide now has his own Kitagawa Prize, but from a narrow perspective, he is actually in competition with the Naoki Prize.

If it were the Akutagawa Prize and Tanizaki Prize of the past, they would probably try every means to prevent the Kitagawa Prize from becoming famous so as to avoid having their cake and eating it.

The board of directors of the Naoki Prize is particularly clear-headed in this regard. They previously awarded him the award despite a huge wave of opposition, and now they invite him to serve as a lifetime judge as a competitor.

Don't hit the smiling person with your hand.

The Naoki Prize award ceremony will be held on December 12th, and the review process will begin at the end of November. Since they have decided to agree to their request, Kitagawa Hide and Yumeko directly booked tickets and flew back to Tokyo in early December.

Unexpectedly, before the plane landed, one heavy financial bomb after another exploded on Japanese soil.

The 97 Asian financial crisis swept across Asian countries, and Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Korea suffered misfortune one after another. The people in the Japanese government were not fools. Seeing their neighboring countries go down one after another, they must have realized that the death of the rabbit would lead to the grief of the fox.

The Hashimoto Cabinet began secretly gathering funds in October, with an initial preparation of $800 billion. Later, after seeing the plight of the Koreans, it immediately planned to increase the reserve to $2000 billion, equivalent to 20 trillion yen!
The Japanese government certainly cannot afford this amount of money on its own.

Japan's economic power is nominally in the hands of the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Japan, but in reality it is monopolized by the banks of various zaibatsu groups.

In order to obtain these reserves, the Hashimoto Cabinet directly sent people to seek help from major banks, and even issued a decree for help.

No matter which bank it is, they must fulfill their national obligation to subscribe to the government's special period national crisis bonds, that is, lend the money they have to the government first, and then return it to them when the economy improves.

Unexpectedly, all banks have the same attitude: Private Marseille, we have no money, we don’t have money, and we have our lives at risk.

The Prime Minister's residence was stunned on the spot.

These banks are the big guys that have controlled the lifeline of Japan's economy for many years.

For example, the Industrial Central Bank under the Mitsubishi Group, the Tokyo Foreign Bank which specializes in Japan's foreign exchange business, the Mitsui Bank under the Mitsui Group, and so on.

If any of them were to be taken out, wouldn't it be tens of trillions of yen in assets?
Are these guys trying to learn from the Thais, where the national government is fighting overseas hot money in front, while private capital is secretly making moves behind the scenes?
Ryutaro Hashimoto immediately asked the Finance Minister of the Ministry of Finance to thoroughly investigate the details of these banks.

Then the result surprised him.

These banks really have no money left.

Don’t be fooled by the appearance of a giant like the Industrial Central Bank. In fact, its interior is already riddled with holes.

When the bubble economy burst, the bad debt ratio of the Industrial Central Bank alone was as high as 37%, and the amount of lost loans was difficult to calculate.

Although the economic situation has improved in recent years, its core strategy is still to concentrate money on the sluggish housing and stock markets, in an attempt to make a comeback by buying at the bottom.

The results are obvious.

The big banks are left with only shares and real estate, and very little liquidity.

Once they have extra money, they either lend it out to large companies to continue their real estate business, or secretly invest it in the depressed stock market.

It's like when Ryutaro Hashimoto realized that a big war was about to break out, he was ready to put on his armor, fight bravely, and take the lead in killing the enemy, but he didn't expect to look back.

Oh my god, my house was robbed by my own people!

What’s even more outrageous is that during the investigation, the Prime Minister’s cabinet discovered that the Prime Minister’s butt was also not clean!

As the top finance official of the Japanese government, this guy has been having unclear and shady dealings with the leaders of the conglomerates for many years.

The Ministry of Finance has been infiltrated by the conglomerates. Bank employees who are supposed to be regulated are entering and leaving the Ministry of Finance offices as if they were going home. It's outrageous!
Ryutaro Hashimoto almost had a cerebral hemorrhage.

He was disgusted and asked the opposing Special Investigation Department to continue investigating this bullshit.

The more we investigated, the more worried we became. The entire Prime Minister’s cabinet was about to be ruined.

The only one that was not affected much was the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, which was headed by Nobutaka Machimura.

Perhaps it is because the Ministry of Education only has vested interests in the entertainment industry, and after the bubble burst, the money people invested in entertainment was pitifully small.

Compared with the lucrative financial and real estate industries, this is indeed a tough job.

The Minister of Culture, Nobutaka Machimura, suggested that Ryutaro Hashimoto propose to the Diet to reorganize the Ministry of Finance and turn it into a functional agency completely independent of the banking system.

In the original history, Hashimoto Ryutaro's proposal was rejected by Congress, which was one of the reasons why he lost the election later.

He touched too many people's cakes.

However, in the end, Japan, unable to withstand the financial crisis, had to abandon the car to save the driver. It gritted its teeth and reorganized the Ministry of Finance into the later Financial Services Agency.

These are all things for later.

Ryutaro Hashimoto, who was busy and overwhelmed, heard from Nobutaka Machimura that Mr. Kitagawa was about to return to China, and he squeezed out time to have dinner with the couple.

Although Hide Kitagawa's "Norwegian Wood" has a very depressing theme and content, it has received very good response from the society.

Everyone seems to regard it as a panacea to comfort their souls.

Anyone who can help him stabilize the social situation now is a good person.

Therefore, Ryutaro Hashimoto spared no resources and praise, and simply asked Machimura Nobutaka to promote Kitagawa Hide to the position of the number one person in Japanese literary history.

Unfortunately, things are unpredictable.

On December 12st, before Kitagawa Hidekazu Yumeko's plane landed, a major bombshell hit the banking industry!

The first unlucky person to be exposed was Kansai Nagashin Bank, which ranks 19.2th in the world and 8.92th in Japan. According to the Ministry of Finance, its bad debt ratio was $ billion last year and its capital adequacy ratio was %, which looked very healthy.

But this is a false account made by the Ministry of Finance!

The actual amount of bad debts of Kansai Nagashiki Bank is US$82.1 billion, equivalent to 8210 billion yen.

The current assets of the Kitagawa family are only 1200 billion yen, and Kawaide Shizuko's personal assets are 2000 billion yen. Together, they are less than half of the bad debt amount of Kansai Nagashika Bank!

Soon after the truth came to light, the bank's stock price immediately dropped from over 100 yen per share to 50 yen per share, and two-thirds of its market value evaporated directly.

The bank president quickly held a press conference and began the Japanese traditional useless apology method: a 90-degree bow and a kneeling.

There is no solution to the problem, but an apology is necessary.

Then they begged the government to help buy the bank so that it could continue to operate.

Otherwise, people will withdraw their money first and run on the banks, but there is no money in their vaults, which will cause a credit crisis in the banking industry.

The consequences could be disastrous!

"Sorry, Mr. Kitagawa! I'll invite you and your wife again after I've dealt with this matter!"

Ryutaro Hashimoto broke his promise, but still asked his secretary to call and apologize and convey his message.

Kitagawa Hide didn't care much about this because he knew that there was a high probability that he would never have the chance to have dinner with Hashimoto Ryutaro again.

Japan's economy will explode like fireworks, and his final fate will be to resign.

Rather than having dinner with the Prime Minister, Kitagawa Hide would rather convert all his money into US dollars first - the Japanese yen is going to depreciate significantly, and if he continues to keep the money, his assets will shrink by at least 20%.

He also mentioned this matter to Masato Senhara.

Although Senhara Masato had almost become his personal financial assistant, he was still nominally the head of the Financing Section of the Shinjuku Branch of the Industrial Central Bank. Now that the bank was in trouble, he had to come back and work hard.

Of course, he is still responsible for the exchange of Kitagawa Hide's assets.

At first, Masato Senhara didn't pay much attention to what Kitagawa Hide said.

Because it was just too horrifying.

Will Japan's banks fail one after another?
This just sounds fake.

It's like someone telling you that Japan is going bankrupt.

Masato Senhara, who has been working in the financial industry for more than ten years, is even less willing to accept this.

He believes that banks still have great risk resistance
However, just three days later, he found out that he was wrong.

Hokkaido Kaitaku Bank, Japan's tenth largest bank, ceased operations and several of its top executives were summoned;
The Junshan Bank Alliance announced its dissolution, and several city banks including Gaomu and Yuanhai announced the cessation of operations
The collapse and bankruptcy of small and medium-sized banks one after another caught everyone off guard.

12 month 5 day.

With a serious expression, Masato Senhara walked on the cold road.

He didn’t know if it was an illusion caused by the economic crisis, but he felt that there were fewer pedestrians on the road.

After returning, Mr. Beichuan held a book signing event for book fans.

Even though he held the signing event at the most upscale Tokyo Imperial Hotel and set a high threshold for entry, the hotel was still packed with readers on the day of the signing event.

Teacher Beichuan had to escape through the back door, and then could only apologize online and post some photos of his children.

I heard that he is currently locked up in a hotel in Osaka, serving as a judge for the Naoki Prize.

This made it impossible for Masato Senhara to contact him.

It seemed that the many gifts he brought back from Southeast Asia could only be given out after Mr. Kitagawa finished his work and then he would visit him.

“The banking industry is not going to be ruined.”

Masato Senhara has gone from being unbelieving at first to being half-believing and half-doubting now.

He walked up the steps and came to the branch door, but found that the security guard who was usually kind to him deliberately avoided his sight.

strange!
Masato Senhara continued to walk inside.

The teller ladies who were usually friendly also avoided him one by one, which made him even more confused.

In the past, most of them would come over happily and call him "Section Chief Senhara". If he hadn't been married a long time ago, he would have been very lucky with women.

"Chihara, President Asano is waiting for you in the president's office upstairs."

A colleague came over and patted him on the shoulder, his eyes filled with mixed emotions.

Masato Senhara nodded and immediately went upstairs to meet the tough-minded President Masato Asano.

The office door was open.

"President, it's me." Masato Senhara knocked on the door.

"Well, come in." Asano Masano was sitting in his seat, reviewing documents with his head down.

Senhara Masato walked in, closed the door, and then asked respectfully, "What do you want to talk to me about?"

"Sit down first." Asano Masao didn't look up, but continued to review the documents.

Senhara Masato sat upright, waiting for his next words.

After a long time, Asano Masato finally finished reviewing all the documents on hand and then looked up at him.

"Qianyuan, I remember you were from the 90 batch, right?"

"Yes. I graduated from university in 89 and started working in 90." Masato Senhara nodded.

"I didn't expect it would be seven years in a flash."

Asano Masao clenched his hands and looked at him with a smile.

“What do you think of the securities industry?”

"Securities?" Senhara Masato was startled, "It's okay."

Japan's securities companies are basically subsidiaries of banks and are all controlled by banks. For ordinary financial practitioners, that is indeed good, but for bankers, it is very ordinary.

"This is a transfer order from the head office." Asano Masaru handed him a piece of letterhead. "You have made a lot of contributions to the bank over the years. Now there is a vacant executive position at a securities company in Hokkaido. You can go there and relax."

Being a general manager at a securities company is a retirement job with a medium salary.

But at the age of 31, Masato Senhara is still in his prime and has never thought about retirement.

"Going to Hokkaido? Why?" He didn't take the envelope.

Isn’t this the exile that is passed down by word of mouth in the industry?

The industry is in recession, and there are layoffs, exiles, and salary cuts, but his performance and abilities have nothing to do with these things!
"Do you still remember the 5 million yen loan?" Asano Masaru looked at him calmly. (End of this chapter)