I am a literary giant in Japan

When Yumiko and Mejito received the contract notice from the editorial department of Beichuan, they were both stunned.

Being signed by a well-known literary magazine is the goal they decided to fight for their whole life, and they are also ready for a protracted battle.

Not to mention small hooligans like them, I heard that there are countless university professors who have been repeatedly rejected by publishing houses.

They never thought that their first submission would be accepted!

Ashin, who also learned the good news, felt helpless and relieved, knowing that in this way, Yumiko would really never be able to return to Asakusa to be a little gangster.

In late July 1998, the hottest days in Tokyo were about to arrive. Meggie, who had rented a cheap suit, drove Yumi to the Kitagawa Entertainment Headquarters Building.

It was the first time for the two of them to enter such a large and formal company. They followed the rules very carefully, fearing that they would do something wrong and be laughed at by the staff around them.

At first, the receptionist at the door thought they were young college students applying for jobs.

After casually asking and hearing that the two were actually the "quasi-contracted writers" invited by the company, the receptionist's attitude suddenly changed 180 degrees!
Nowadays, for a writer with no experience at all, or a collaborative writer like him, to be signed by Beichuan is simply a stroke of luck!
"Please come this way, be careful on the steps." The receptionist was enthusiastic. While introducing the company to them, he asked them indirectly who signed the writer.

"Kaoru?" The receptionist did not remember that there was such an editor in the Beichuan editorial department.

Logically, an editor in a company who can send an invitation to a writer and finalize the contract should at least be a deputy editor-in-chief.

But she couldn't remember the editor named Kaoru at all.

Aren't they two liars?

The receptionist was skeptical and was about to find an excuse to verify with the editorial department when a pleasant voice suddenly sounded in front of him.

"Excuse me, are you the two authors of "We Living in Asakusa"?"

Xunzi smiled sweetly and waved at them.

Just now when she was at her workstation, she heard someone say that two strange young people had come, and she didn't know whose contracted authors they were.

After calculating the time, he estimated that the authors of the novel that Mr. Kitagawa asked to sign should be here, so he left his workstation and walked out.

The group happened to meet at the glass door outside the editorial office area.

"Are you editor Kaoru?" The relatively steady Yumiko took a step forward and started communicating with Kaoru on behalf of the hot-tempered Meggie.

When the receptionist saw that Kaoru was wearing the "Kitagawa" nameplate, he immediately realized that the two were not lying and felt relieved.

But she felt that this young female editor looked unfamiliar, as if the name "Kaoru" was not on the editorial department's roster.

"Editor Xunzi, I've brought the person here for you. I'll leave this place to you."

The receptionist didn't think too much and bowed to Kaoru directly, treating her just like any other editor.

Xunzi returned the greeting with a smile, then waved to Yumiko and the others, "Come on, you two. Teacher Kitagawa has been waiting for a while."

"Teacher Kitagawa?!"

Yumiko and Kaoru, who had just successfully eased the awkwardness by chatting with Kaoru, suddenly became nervous again!
Now that we have just signed the contract with "Beichuan", does it require Mr. Beichuan to review it personally?

"Yes. After Mr. Kitagawa read your manuscript a few days ago, he said he wanted to interview you in person."

Xunzi smiled and nodded, leading the two of them through the office area and heading towards the editor-in-chief's office diagonally behind.

Since its inception, the editor-in-chief of Beichuan has changed three times in a row.

The editor-in-chief candidate that Kitagawa Hide most wanted was Saito Rena.

Unfortunately, Rena Saito is now the editor-in-chief of "Wenyi".

Asking her to come to Beichuan to be the editor-in-chief would not only be unfair to her, but would also cause Wenyi to bleed heavily. No matter how much Beichuan Xiu thought about it, he would never do such a thing that would harm others and benefit himself.

As for the other industry elites he recruited, none of them were as suitable to his taste as Rena Saito.

After Beichuan entered a stable period, its sales volume began to gradually decline. Several editors-in-chief were unable to stop the downward trend, and were naturally dismissed as soon as the probation period expired.

This editor-in-chief switched careers from a women's literature magazine. Kitagawa Hide originally thought that she would be unreliable, but unexpectedly she turned out to be surprisingly capable.

Gongzi and the other man followed him into the office in fear. Seeing the editor-in-chief standing aside like a minion, they became even more nervous.

"Are you two the authors of "We Living in Asakusa"?"

Kitagawa Hide sat in the boss chair and looked at the two of them with interest.

After accidentally seeing this manuscript, Kitagawa Hide immediately thought of "The Red Sphere in Asakusa" written by Yasunari Kawabata, which is not very famous but has a very good reputation in the pure literature world.

Kawabata Yasunari's novels are mainly based on "stream of consciousness" and "new sensationalism".

Apart from the most famous ones, the others would be very interesting if they could catch the airwaves.

But if you don't see it right, not only will you fail to feel the unique Japanese beauty of the novel, but you will also feel that it is just whining and incomprehensible.

"Asakusa Red Circle" is a novel that has received extremely polarized reviews from readers.

"Red Sphere in Asakusa" is also a representative work of Kawabata Yasunari's "New Sensationalism".

In order to write his graduation thesis during his graduate studies, Kitagawa Hide read almost all literary works in modern Japanese history.

His favorite among them is undoubtedly Haruki Murakami, who, like him, has been repeatedly rejected from the Nobel Prize.

Following Haruki Murakami is Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese literary figure to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the original history.

Yasunari Kawabata's "New Sensationalism" novels not only had a huge impact on Japanese literary writers, but also influenced a group of middle-aged writers next door.

For example, Yu Hua once said: "Kawabata Yasunari's works almost dominated the first three years of my writing. During that time, I excluded almost all other writers."

Hideo Kobayashi, a very famous Japanese literary critic, said: "I have always believed that Mr. Kawabata's heart is so cold, so empty, and so worth cherishing.

He does not live for himself, he lives in the lives of others.

In the empty lives of countless people, rays of light rise behind Mr. Kawabata's novels.

That’s why he’s lyrical.”

As a representative work of Kawabata Yasunari's "New Sensationalism", "Asakusa Red Sphere" depicts the Ukiyo-e of the people of Asakusa from a wanderer's perspective.

The whole book adopts a decadent modern style, which is completely different from the Japanese classical tastes such as "Snow Country" and "Old Capital", showing Kawabata's quite modern side.

The original novel of "Asakusa Red Group" is about the period after the Great Kanto Earthquake, when Japan was in the midst of a transformation between the old and the new and the integration of the East and the West in the early Showa era. Asakusa, as one of the centers of Kabuki culture and downtown, was flooded with a large number of actors and prostitutes. Human traffickers were rampant on the streets, and parks and open spaces were crowded with gang members, orphans, and a large number of homeless men and women.

The protagonist is from another place. While wandering in Asakusa, he encounters members of the boy gang "Red Gang". Led by their leader, the girl Yumiko, he explores the streets of Asakusa, which was at the forefront of the times at the time.

The protagonist observes the daily lives of these people with a detached and calm gaze, depicting the destruction and construction, beauty and ugliness, vanity and poverty of Tokyo in that era, and also subtly conveys Kawabata's uneasiness about the current situation as an anti-war activist.

The reason why Kitagawa Hide has a deep memory of this novel is that "Red Ball in Asakusa" is praised by the Japanese literary community as the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" in the history of Japanese literature.

The whole novel is not long, but there are hundreds of characters appearing, covering almost all kinds of people living in the Asakusa area at that time.

The "Asakusa Festival" included in the novel was deleted several times during the selection process because it was considered to be corrupting morals.

As he grew older, Kawabata Yasunari himself abandoned it as a "poor old work."

He thought that the content of the book was a bit fragmented and that it was written in the early stages of his career when his own writing style was not yet established, so many things were not written well enough.

Literary critic Ai Maeda used the phrase "an overturned toy box" to describe the confusing and clueless first reading experience of this book.

For a long time after the publication of "Red Ball in Asakusa", it seemed like an immature work of Yasunari Kawabata and was rarely mentioned.

Even Kawabata Yasumoto himself often avoided topics related to it.

Many people even think that this is just a casual work written by Yasunari Kawabata after visiting Asakusa, and it is not worthy of the name of a literary work at all.

But as time went by, "Asakusa Red Circle" slowly came into the attention of the literary world again thanks to several university professors of the Faculty of Literature.

I don’t know who mentioned it first, but later more and more readers and writers reread the book and had many new insights.

In the original history, in the late 80s, after the Plaza Accord was signed, Japan officially entered the bubble era. The dissolute life and the mess, the spirited young men and women all over Kabukicho all confirmed the description in "Asakusa Red Group".

At this point, everyone finally realized that as early as the 60s, Kawabata Yasunari was one step ahead of others in having a profound understanding of the lives of the lower classes in Japanese society.

No matter what period it is, the lower class society in Japan is just like what is described in "Asakusa Red Group", which is sad and sigh-worthy.

The tone of Beichuan magazine is different from that of ordinary pure literature magazines.

Because it uses Kitagawa Hide's own name, a Kitagawa Literature Prize was inexplicably created to compete with the Akutagawa Prize and the Tanizaki Prize.

Therefore, the serialized manuscripts required for "Beichuan" are relatively heavier in tone, and the proportion of pure literature is also higher.

Different from "Wenyi" which is gradually becoming entertaining and commercialized, "Beichuan" is clearly determined to go all the way down the path of pure literature.

If it weren't for Rena Saito and Shizuko Kawaide urging him, he would have serialized "Tokyo People" in "Kitagawa" long ago.

Now that "Tokyo People" is gone, Kitagawa Hide naturally can only find new works to fill this position.

Fortunately, God was merciful and a new topic came to him just when he was in distress.

"Ah, yes, it's us."

Yumiko and Meggie stood straight. Facing the idol they had admired for so long, they did not dare to look up at him. Instead, they just lowered their heads and looked at their toes like children who had made a mistake.

"That's amazing. You guys must live in Asakusa, right? Or have you lived there for a long time?"

Kitagawa Hide asked.

Yumiko and Meggie looked at each other. They both knew the reputation of the Asakusa community.

Young people coming out of there, just like black people coming out of the slums, are likely to be discriminated against and suspected everywhere.

"It's okay, just tell the truth. We at Beichuan will not refuse to sign a contract because of the writer's background.

As long as the writer can write a good story, we are willing to sign him and give it a try. "

Kitagawa Hide sensed their shyness and lack of confidence, so he smiled and comforted them.

The two people's awkward posture made him more certain that they were the spirited young man and girl living in the current Asakusa community.

It's really touching.

Such a group should have nothing to do with literature.

But who would have thought that people like them could also write stories and have the honor of being signed.

Life is an unknown.

“Oh, yes. Meggie and I both live over there.”

Yumiko mustered up the courage to look up and said to Kitagawa Hide, and then couldn't help but add,
"Please rest assured, Mr. Kitagawa! Meggie and I no longer work there! It will definitely not affect the company's reputation!"

"Well, that's even better." Kitagawa Hide nodded.

He really wanted to give the two of them a try and get some information about the Asakusa community from them.

Since he was preparing to write "Asakusa Red Group", Kitagawa Hide naturally had to do all the important preparations as he did before!

He always felt that a mature and excellent work was inseparable from the author's knowledge reserves and accumulated materials.

If you don't have anything in your mind, you are just copying. No matter how good a plagiarist is, he cannot copy out the essence of the work.

Copying word for word will certainly give you the highest chance of success.

However, many literary works have the limitations of their time and factors that determine their fame. Simply imitating and copying them may not be suitable for this parallel universe.

The original work of "Asakusa Red Bulbs" is about the chaotic lower class society in the early Showa era. Compared with the Heisei era in this parallel world, that era is too long ago and readers are not very interested in learning about it.

Kitagawa Hide can be sure that today's readers must be more interested in knowing the current state of the Asakusa community.

Adapting "Asakusa Red Ball" to the context of today's era is the most correct way to plagiarize!
But to write this way, Kitagawa Hide had to replace many of the plots and characters, and while maintaining the core of Kawabata Yasunari's original ideas, he also had to incorporate his own thoughts and the situation of the modern Asakusa community into it.

This is not an easy job.

Therefore, whether "New Asakusa Red Group" can be written well depends on these two natives!

Gongzi and the other boy didn't know that Teacher Kitagawa was ready to take advantage of them. When they heard him say that, they were delighted and kept bowing to express their gratitude.

"Regarding the signing issue, the contract-related staff will take you to the signing room on the third floor to sign the contract.

Before that, I have a few questions about Asakusa that I would like to ask you. Can you answer me truthfully? "(End of this chapter)