Tokyo's bubble economy: From literary giants to great entertainers

"Is she getting work again?"

In a corner of the open restaurant, Hidekazu Kanbara was chatting with Takako Tokiwa about the contents of a novel, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Honami Suzuki gathering her film crew and hurrying toward the elevator at the end of the corridor.

The news industry is actually quite demanding.

Honami Suzuki is the chief anchor of TV Asahi's prime-time evening news program. If one had to describe her, her position is similar to He Jiong's position at Hunan TV in my previous life; both are representative figures in their respective countries' television industries.

However, the news industry is much more demanding than variety entertainment, and Honami Suzuki's style of doing things is completely different from other news anchors.

The general workflow for regular news broadcasts involves the station's leadership setting the topics, field reporters going to the front lines to conduct interviews, writers revising the news articles based on the reporters' materials, and finally, the host simply sitting in the studio reading the script for broadcast.

However, Honami Suzuki insists on the principle that "an anchor must know whether the script he is reporting is true and credible," which is the three most core and basic professional ethics of a journalist—truthfulness, accuracy, and timeliness.

Therefore, she often personally leads teams to conduct on-site interviews. This is a habit she developed from working her way up from a local TV reporter, and it is also the core quality that distinguishes her from other studio anchors and allows her to gain the trust of a large audience.

However, this work mode was simply too exhausting. Moreover, it was early 1992, the first year that the drawbacks of Japan's bursting bubble economy were fully revealed, with social unrest and a series of heinous incidents.

As a result, Suzuki Honami has been returning home late at night almost every day for the past few days, then eating late-night noodles while continuing to coordinate work with her heavy cell phone tucked under her shoulder.

Once, I even got home at two or three in the morning, and after sleeping for less than two hours, I was woken up by the shrill ringing of the doorbell. In my dazed state, I was putting on my shoes in the dark when I slipped and fell on my backside.

The noise startled him when he got up to use the bathroom at night.

"Looks like she'll be home very late again tonight."

Shuichi Kambara sighed.

He had originally planned to cook a big dinner at home tonight to celebrate taking the first step and to thank the other party for their help, but now it seems that the celebration dinner will have to be postponed.

As he was thinking, a fountain pen suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Kamihara-san, Kambara-san—are you listening to me?"

Takako Tokiwa tilted her head slightly, and Shuichi Kanbara regained his composure. "Ahem, excuse me, let's continue."

"Okay, next is the policy for paying royalties. Here, we pay royalties for the previous month on the 15th of the month following the official publication of the work. In addition, according to the Income Tax Law, royalties are subject to the withholding tax system. 10% of the royalties will be deducted in advance to prepay income tax, and a final declaration will be made at the end of the year, with refunds or additional payments as needed..."

"There is also the issue of copyright. According to the Copyright Law, the complete copyright of this work, 'The White Tower,' belongs to you, Mr. Kambara. However, our magazine, Bungei Asahi, will have the exclusive right to publish this work during its serialization in our magazine. During the serialization period, Mr. Kambara may not authorize other newspapers or media outlets to publish the content of this work."

"As for the publication of standalone volumes after the serialization reaches a certain word count, our publishing house also has the exclusive right of first refusal, and we will be responsible for the entire process of handling related publication matters."

"Finally, regarding the derivative adaptation rights, the complete rights to secondary adaptations such as anime, film, and television still belong to you, Mr. Kanbara. However, our Asahi Group has the right of first refusal under the same conditions. In other words, if an external company wants to buy the adaptation rights to this work, our Asahi Group has the right to sign a contract first, provided the offer is the same."

Takako Tokiwa held the contract in her hand and explained it in detail.

Shuichi Kanbara listened intently, but he wasn't really thinking too much about it.

Japan's protection of creators' rights is arguably the best in the world. From various copyright protections to profit-sharing arrangements and legal procedures, everything is geared towards the creators.

The kind of trick companies use in contracts to play word games and then coerce their employees won't work here.

It won't work in the formal publishing industry here, at least not here.

As for royalties...

Currently, Bungei Asahi pays him 2000 yen per word, or 5 yen per character. Since he can only update 10,000 words per week, his weekly payment remains consistently around 50,000 yen, resulting in a monthly income of around 200,000 yen.

The price isn't high, but he's not too worried about it right now.

It wasn't that he didn't care about money, but he knew that no matter how excellent the manuscript of "The White Tower" was, the publisher wouldn't pay him much at the beginning. In fact, 5 yen per word was already the maximum he could earn as a newcomer.

For example, Chisei Shū, a famous author representing the dark fantasy genre in Japan.

Yes, he's a huge fan of Stephen Chow, so when choosing a pen name, he simply reversed the three characters "周星驰" (Zhou Xingchi) to use as his pen name.

He first worked as an editor at Jinwen Publishing House before transitioning to writing, signing a contract with Asahi Publishing House as a complete novice for a full-length novel. Even with his experience as an editor and his background in the industry, his acclaimed work, "The City That Never Sleeps," was initially signed for a price of only 3 yen per word.

However, after "Never Sleeps" became a huge hit, although the contract's "3 yen per word" clause remained unchanged, the publisher, after confirming the work's phenomenal success in the third week of serialization and driving a 27% surge in weekly sales, began paying him a special bonus of 50 yen per week.

This is equivalent to 53 per character, and it continues to increase as the work becomes more and more popular.

—The initial contract price is low, but if the subsequent work becomes a hit, the contract price remains unchanged, but the publisher will compensate the author with a "special bonus." In this era, almost all new authors' hit works follow this process.

Furthermore, before the publication of Chi Xingzhou's "Never Sleeps" single volume, the publisher prepaid 1000 million yen in royalties.

This leads to another key point—in Japan, the royalties from serialized novels are just pocket change; the real money comes from copyright adaptations and the release of standalone volumes after 150,000 words have been updated.

After a standalone book is published, the author can receive royalties of 6% to 15% from the price of each printed book.

Note that royalties will be charged as soon as the product is printed!

And it's not profit, it's the selling price!

This is one of the core reasons why Japan's cultural field is so strong.

The discussion about the contract didn't last very long.

When the clock on the wall struck 4:37 PM, Shuichi Kambara stamped his personal seal on the contract date section, solemnly signing his real name, Shuichi Kambara. In the supplementary signature clause of the contract, he wrote his publicly known literary pen name—Karasawa.

"Karasawa? That's a very nice pen name."

Takako Tokiwa tilted her head curiously, and Shuichi Kanbara smiled and said, "It's not Karasawa, it's Tangze."

"Tangze, Tangze... Hey, is that Chinese?"

"Yes."

"Sukuni Ichi, I didn't know Kanbara-san could speak Chinese! Did you join the Chinese Literature Club in junior high?"

"No... well, I learned it when I was very young."

"No wonder you can write such profound works; it turns out you've been interested in literature from various countries since you were young."

Takako Tokiwa's eyes sparkled with admiration. She only snapped out of her reverie when several colleagues walked by, blushing and coughing lightly. She paused on the contract documents on the table, put them in her briefcase, and stood up to hand over a business card.

"Well, that concludes the contract signing. Thank you for your trust in our publishing house. From now on, simply fax the manuscript every Tuesday, and we'll mail a hard copy for filing later. Of course, if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact me at the number on my business card."

"Not at all, I'm the one who should be thanking you for helping a newcomer like me get a contract so easily. Well, it's getting late, so I'll take my leave now."

"Please take care."