I am a literary giant in Japan

"Of course. Mr. Kitagawa, please ask."

Yumiko and Meggie sat upright on their stools, answering Kitagawa Hide's questions like elementary school students.

"Don't be so reserved, just treat it as a chat between friends."

Kitagawa Hide smiled and waved his hand, asking the editor-in-chief standing respectfully beside him to pour them two glasses of water. Then he took out the pen and paper he carried with him and asked like a reporter,

"May I ask whether you two have lived in the Asakusa community since childhood, or did you move there later?"

"As for me, I grew up near Asakusa with a few friends. It seems that Meggie moved to Asakusa after junior high school?"

Yumiko tilted her head and thought for a moment, then looked at Meggie who was becoming even more nervous.

Meggie nodded heavily and stammered, "Yes, I am in junior high school. No, I moved to Asakusa with my dad and stepmother when I was in the second year of junior high school."

"I see. Are you two still living in the Asakusa community?"

Kitagawa Hide was writing quickly on the draft paper. Behind him, Kaoru saw that he quickly created "character files" for Yumiko and Meggie respectively. This novel character setting writing technique opened Kaoru's eyes.

She always felt that writing a book was a fantastic thing, and that writers' heads were like a treasure house filled with treasures. If they wanted something, they just had to take out the treasures.

Many of the writers she signed and knew were "casual" writers who wrote whatever came to their mind and had almost no outline or character planning.

This made Xunzi think that writing is something that requires a lot of talent.

If you don't have the talent, don't even think about getting involved, lest you bring disgrace upon yourself and end up wasting your time and energy and getting nothing!
Her more familiar sister Saito also thinks so.

Rena Saito has always wanted to become a famous writer, but even though her career was booming, her writing skills remained at no change, and her several attempts to submit works anonymously all failed.

Rena Saito's experience made Kaoru more awed by writing.

In order to avoid a quick blow to her self-confidence, Xunzi has not started writing a book yet.

She chose to intern first and get in touch with the industry first, thinking that if it didn't work out, she could still take the roundabout way to save the country like her sister Saito.

But after many in-depth exchanges with Mr. Kitagawa, Kaoru felt more and more that writing was not what most people said it was.

Before writing each book, Mr. Beichuan would put in a lot of effort and buy piles of tool and reference books. If necessary, he would travel all over the world to collect folk songs and learn about the situation without getting tired of it.

If there are such reference subjects for interview, Teacher Beichuan will talk to them many times with great seriousness, and absorb relevant information from them to enrich his knowledge base.

Mr. Kitagawa did this when writing "Hanzawa Naoki", "Tokyo People" and "Snow Country".

Masato Senhara, Peninsula, Keiko and others had previously undertaken tasks similar to those of the two young men now.

In addition, Mr. Beichuan likes to make very detailed plans and settings when writing books.

Kaoru has read the character design draft of "Hanzawa Naoki", which is densely written on at least hundreds of draft papers. From the protagonist Hanzawa Naoki to a bank clerk who may only appear a few times, Mr. Kitagawa will make detailed character settings and even write character biographies.

In her opinion, when Mr. Beichuan wrote a book, he was like a sophisticated machine; every step and every movement seemed to be carefully designed.

People say that literature is emotional and is an outlet and expression of emotions from the heart.

But to Mr. Beichuan, literature seems to be purely rational, just like doing math problems, everything can be planned and fitted with formulas.

Just when Kaoru was full of questions, Kitagawa Hide had already asked Yumiko and Meggie more than a dozen questions.

Some of the questions were so detailed as to ask, "How many permanent members are there in Ashin's Red Girls Group? Do they eat and sleep together?"

As the questions went on, Yumiko and Meggie even had the illusion that they were being questioned by police officers about their household registration.

If they were not sure that Mr. Kitagawa was really devoted to studying the Asakusa community, the two of them would have almost rushed out the door and escaped!

".Asakusa's current permanent population actually still has over a thousand people?"

Kitagawa Hide frowned slightly and looked at them in disbelief.

Due to the geographical location of the Asakusa community, if a large area of ​​it is demolished, the Shinjuku Ward local government will inevitably have to compensate residents with hundreds of millions of yen in demolition fees.

The entire Japanese economy is now in a period of great depression. Not to mention the demolition compensation, even the salaries of civil servants can hardly be paid.

Most of the urban villages like this are deserted, with only large areas of old houses left that have not been demolished. After the millennium, such places have become tourist destinations for many foreign tourists to make pilgrimages.

Unexpectedly, the Asakusa community is not only populated by people, but every household is full, and is not affected by these factors at all.

This shows that the economic situation of the original residents of the Asakusa community is worse than Kitagawa Hide had expected.

Maybe their lives are not much different from when Yasunari Kawabata wrote "Red Sphere in Asakusa".

This doesn't sound like something to be happy about.

“I don’t know if there are thousands of them, because many people may have ‘disappeared’ without any explanation while living there.

But there must be a permanent population of three to four hundred." Gongzi nodded.

“No wonder Asakusa Red Balloon is praised as the ‘Along the River During the Qingming Festival’ in the history of Japanese literature.”

Kitagawa Hide closed the draft paper and couldn't help but sigh.

"Qing, Qingtu?" Meggie and Yumiko looked at each other. Neither of them understood what Teacher Kitagawa said.

Kaoru behind him also looked at Kitagawa Hide curiously, wanting to know what "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" was.

Kitagawa Hide briefly explained to them the famous painting next door.

Due to historical reasons, the Japanese actually have a deep respect for Chinese characters, Chinese language and Chinese culture. Especially the older generation, who are proud of having learned Chinese and Western culture.

Although the younger generation has fewer opportunities to come into contact with this kind of culture, Chinese characters are a compulsory subject when learning Mandarin, so they are not completely ignorant of Chinese culture.

"There are 824 people in one painting!" Meggie opened her eyes wide, unable to imagine how big and long the painting must be.

In a normal junior high school in Japan, there are only about 800 students in a class. Some smaller national public junior high schools may have less than students in total.

All the students in the school were crammed into one painting, and Meggie felt her scalp tingling just thinking about it!
"Otherwise, this painting would not be praised as 'China's No. 1 Divine Work'."

Beichuan Xiu smiled gently. Although he had traveled through time for more than three years, he had settled down under the identity of Beichuan Xiu and had a wife and children.

But deep in his heart, he never forgot his life and experiences in his previous life.

Speaking of Chinese culture alone, I estimate that all the Chinese culture experts in Japan combined would not be as many as the number on one of my fingers.

Hmm, seems like I found a new way to make money?
Kitagawa Hide casually wrote this down on the memo he carried with him. After talking to Meggie and others about "Along the River During the Qingming Festival", Kitagawa Hide asked Kaoru to take them to the contract signing department on the third floor to sign the contract.

After signing the contract, let the two take him to the Asakusa community for a tour to see what the differences are between the current Asakusa community and the place in "Asakusa Red Group".

Hearing that Mr. Kitagawa would have to go to Asakusa in person, Yumiko and Umeki became even more nervous.

Why does it feel like my teacher came to visit my home when I was in school?
The three people disappeared from Kitagawa Hide's sight. Kitagawa Hide asked the editor-in-chief, who was already stunned beside him, to sit down and started to flip through the pile of notes he had just made.

Judging from Yumiko and Umekichi’s descriptions, the current Asakusa community is much more complex than when Kawabata Yasunari wrote “Asakusa Red Circle”.

The permanent population alone may exceed 500, and the relationships between households are so complicated that it may take a long time to sort them out.

In order to achieve a similar sense of reality to the original work, Kitagawa Hide feels that it is necessary to restore the basic situation of the current Asakusa community as much as possible.

The characters in the novel must be real enough. Randomly fabricated characters are like rat shit in a pot of white porridge. It may not affect the taste of the porridge, but it looks disgusting at first glance.

Given Kitagawa Hide's current status and position, he needs to pay more attention to such details in the novel and must not fail in the gutter due to laziness.

In addition, Yumiko's good friend Ashin and the Red Falcon Group she formed can be directly used as the prototype of the "Red Group".

The best entry point is the group of boys and girls who were born and raised in the Asakusa community and know Asakusa better than most people.

Kawabata Yasunari's "Asakusa Red Circle" is a bit too old. The spirited young man and girl in the work are full of the "Showa style", which is completely different from the "Heisei style" that everyone admires now.

If the readers are uncles and aunts, it would be okay, but most of Kitagawa Hide's readers are young people. If he writes stories in the "Showa style", I am afraid that young readers will not be able to adapt to the environment and will find it extremely uncomfortable to read.

“Meggie’s character is irritable and withdrawn, which is not a good guide for the protagonist of the novel.

Yumiko's personality is quite good, but she became a prostitute at such a young age. I don't know how the Ministry of Education will react if this is exposed."

Kitagawa Hide turned his pen and fell into thought.

On July 7, the new Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will take office, and the Hashimoto cabinet will be completely reorganized.

The current Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Nobutaka Machimura, is a supporter of Kitagawa Hide, but it is not known whether the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in the new prime minister's cabinet will still support him.

Even in Japan, a country that highly respects writers, if the official organizations don't like you, it will be difficult for you to have a smooth journey in literary creation.

As the top figure in Japanese literary world, Kitagawa Hide is naturally not afraid of any member of the official organization, including the Minister of Education.

But if the other party is determined to go against him, he has to consider the cost of the fight.

But Kitagawa Hide couldn't remember who the new Minister of Education was.

Just as he was thinking hard, Kaoru brought the two of them back to the office.

"Teacher Kitagawa, the contracts with Yumiko and Meggie have been finalized. According to the practice of our editorial department, they can only sign with other publishers after they have completed writing Kitagawa for three years."

Kaoru handed him the copied contract.

Kitagawa Hide took a quick look at the details of the contract and couldn't help but sigh. It turns out that no matter where they are, as long as they control the power and the market, the capital side will not let the slaves have an easy time.

Before Kawaide Shobo and Kitagawa Entertainment monopolized the literary market, the author contracts drafted by the Ministry of Justice were relatively lenient and did not contain such unfair clauses that forced a three-year binding contract.

Now the two companies are basically firmly sitting in the top two spots, and the third-ranked Xinwenxiang Publishing House has basically no competitiveness.

After the writers ran out of good options, the legal departments of Kawaide Shobo and Kitagawa Entertainment both introduced more stringent new contracts.

Kawaide Shobo went even further. Since the second half of 1998, all contracted writers will sign their own names rather than pen names.

This means that as long as you join Kawade Shobo, you are essentially selling yourself to it until the three-year contract expires.

This behavior of monopolizing writer resources is equivalent to monopolizing the industry, and other publishing houses can only be angry but not speak out.

Who can blame the fact that even with such unfair terms, authors still flock to Beichuan Entertainment and Kawaide Shobo?

Yumiko and Meggie didn't seem unhappy at all.

They even felt that the three-year cooperation period was a bit too short, and it would be better to sign a permanent contract with Beichuan!

After all, although the terms of "Beichuan" are overbearing, the treatment is really good.

All contracted writers, regardless of whether they have new novels being serialized or not, can receive a fixed monthly benefit fee of around 10 yen as long as they sign a contract with Kitagawa.

In addition, as the contract term increases, this fixed benefit remuneration will gradually increase, up to a maximum of 20 yen per month!

For Yumiko and his friend, who are living in fear of losing their jobs every day and don’t even know where their next meal will come from, "Beichuan" is simply heaven!
"Kaoru-chan, they will be in your charge from now on."

Kitagawa Hide gently rubbed Kaoru's head.

He was quite optimistic about this sister he brought back from Kitaizu.

Kaoru has excellent academic performance and outstanding literary talent. If she is trained casually, she will become another Saito Rena in the future.

Beichuan Entertainment is getting bigger and bigger now. It is better to place some of our own people in the company than to poach or parachute in from outside.

"Yes! I will try my best, Mr. Kitagawa!"

Kaoru could also feel Kitagawa Hide's expectations for her, and nodded heavily while holding the contract.

"Okay, let's go to Asakusa together."

Kitagawa Hide stood up and said.

The editor-in-chief, who had been waiting for a long time, breathed a sigh of relief, finally having something to do.

She immediately said to Beichuan Xiu respectfully: "Teacher Beichuan, I will help you arrange a car now!"

"Well, thank you for your help then." Kitagawa Hide smiled and nodded at her.

This female editor-in-chief is the third female editor-in-chief in the publishing industry after Rena Saito and Minamiko, and is well-known in the industry.

She does have many good qualities, as she has been able to make a name for herself in the Japanese workplace where women are severely discriminated against.

After a while, the driver and car arranged by the female editor-in-chief arrived.

Kitagawa Hide took the three of them into the car and asked some simple questions to Yumiko and the other person.

As for the book "Asakusa Red Group", Kitagawa Hide put a lot of thought into it because it was to help "Kitagawa" turn things around. (End of this chapter)