Chapter 36 Two-pronged approach, shocking

Chapter 36 Two-pronged approach, shocking

Chapter 36 Two-pronged approach, shocking

After returning home with the unfinished fried squid, Kitagawa Xiucai changed into his indoor shoes. Then Pete jumped into his arms and kept rubbing his clothes with his fat butt and head.

"Hey, hey, hey, you are a tom cat!" Kitagawa Hide quickly raised the fried squid in his hand high, so as to prevent Pete from ruining his midnight snack.

After calming down Pete who seemed to be in heat, he sat down at the desk, turned on the computer and started dialing up to the Internet.

After a noise similar to tearing cloth, the computer was finally connected to the Internet through the "cat" (modem is the English name for modem, which is homophonic to "cat").

In 95, the Internet in Japan was slightly more developed than in neighboring countries. There were three speed packages to choose from: "28.8kb", "33.6kb", and "56kb". Kitagawa Hide chose the second one. The telephone fee plus the Internet fee cost about 7800 yen per hour, which was extremely expensive.

But Kitagawa Hide thinks the money is well worth it.

When the Internet was first emerging, at least 80 percent of Internet users came from the social elite, and had formed small circles through e-mail and interest forums, where they would often share their personal experiences and social perceptions.

Because of the anonymity of the Internet, many bigwigs can speak freely by putting on a pseudonym. In this era, there is no Internet police. Even if you criticize the current Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in a forum, no one will care. The free atmosphere allows some bigwigs to let themselves go in an instant.

Therefore, you can see many high-quality and interesting posts on the forum.

Kitagawa Xiu opened the portal website "Qiwu.com" on his desktop and skillfully entered the Qiwu Forum with the largest traffic.

A huge amount of information came into his sight. He clicked on his personal homepage and found that the post he posted under the nickname "I just want to make money" still had no response.

The post was asking for help in finding bars and cafes in the Tokyo area that were for sale or transfer.

After posting a few "top posts" comments, Kitagawa Hide closed his post in disappointment and continued to wander around the forum.

Like the previous few days, the posts mainly focus on two areas. One is personal sharing of what I have seen and heard. In the beginning, most of them were about travel, daily life, etc., but now there is a subtle trend towards finance, politics, culture and other aspects.

One is to criticize the incompetence of the current Japanese government, as well as to lament and worry about the current social situation.

Perhaps it is because the Internet has only recently emerged and these first-generation netizens have not yet learned how to gossip. In many posts, one can clearly see the poster's occupation and general identity.

Through these posts, Kitagawa Hide saw a Japan that was very different from what he saw in real life.

For example, Tokyo has been proud of its "garbage classification" and "simple city appearance" for many years, but there was a post that complained that many citizens were too lazy to sort their garbage and always secretly dumped bags of garbage in the park late at night or at dawn. Their quality was extremely poor!

There are posts that specifically record the current living conditions of the middle class and the lower class in Japan. It can be seen that the actual situation is much worse than what is reported on TV.

The poster of one post claimed to be a suicide hotline operator and complained that the suicide rate was still rising, but the government said it had been brought under control.

Tonight, when Kitagawa Hide saw that the barbecue master Tetsuo Yamada was living a hard life while reading "Gunzo" every issue to comfort his soul, he was quite touched and knew how to write the preface to his new novel supplement.

Originally, prefaces were written by famous people to help promote novels, but because the formula was so consistent, readers often simply skipped the preface and didn't bother to read a single word.

Anyway, after reading books for so many years, Kitagawa Hide basically skips the preface.

In his opinion, the first few pages of a magazine are simply "golden advertising space". Instead of seizing its commercial value, they are used to write some inexplicable prefaces for old men and women who can only talk big.

What a waste!

Since the matter fell on his head and was closely related to his novel, Kitagawa Hide immediately put his full attention into dealing with it.

He turned off the Internet to save money, opened the document, and after a brief thought, he began typing.

“Why did I write this novel?”

“Since the bubble era, Japan has completed the transformation from an industrial society to a consumer society and ushered in an economic boom. But no one realizes that this is an era with greater control and infringement on the individual self.

Then the bubble burst, and we ordinary people became the biggest victims, like wandering ghosts, looking for our way home in the world."

Kitagawa Xiu was typing away on the keyboard, and it felt like this old-fashioned keyboard was about to smoke from his rapid typing.

He knew very well that the main audience of "Youth Trilogy" were the lower-class people, confused office workers, students, and the middle class whose families had fallen on hard times.

Therefore, in order to win their favor and resonance, one must be down-to-earth and not stand in a distant and unreachable position like other writers, such as Oshima Hikaru, and use tedious and boring words to criticize this society in order to express sorrow in new words.

If bashing and criticizing were useful, those people in the Prime Minister's Office and the conglomerates that control the economy would have been finished long ago!

So he wants to continue Haruki Murakami's style, using lonely youth love stories to reflect the lives of these readers, and help them find the meaning of self-salvation in the theme of "searching".

In his previous life, Kitagawa Hide specialized in the study of Japanese literature and had read quite a bit himself. He might not be able to reach a high level by writing it himself, but by putting himself in the shoes of a reader, he could easily perceive the thoughts and needs of his audience.

After writing nearly 3000 words, he finally stopped writing with satisfaction, and then stared at the screen with a low resolution and made some revisions, trying to hand it over to Saito Rena tomorrow so that the supplement could be released as soon as possible. After revising the preface of the supplement, he clicked Save with satisfaction.

Kitagawa Hide glanced at the newly bought clock. It was only 10 o'clock in the evening, and he opened "A Wild Sheep Chase" again, continuing to write and work hard for his own royalties.

A plagiarist is different from those writers. He won't really get stuck in writing. He is not interested in copying books while lamenting the past or suffering from any literary disease. If he doesn't make the money as soon as possible, isn't that a disease?
On the afternoon of June 5th.

After a morning and an afternoon of silence, Maruzen Marunouchi Bookstore was completely packed with readers pouring in from all directions.

Not long ago, there was a rumor that Kodansha was going to publish a hardcover paperback edition of "Hear the Wind Sing". All of a sudden, all kinds of public opinions arose, including expectations, doubts, and sarcasm.

After the veteran "literary giant" Shintaro Ishihara personally came out to diss Kitagawa, the public opinion has gradually turned in a direction unfavorable to Kitagawa Hide.

It was also at this time that Kodansha's pillar writer Hikaru Oshima made a strong comeback with his mixed-review work "Tokyo Memories in 1973", which attracted all the attention in the literary world.

At this time, everyone thought that the society had taken protective measures against Kitagawa Hide, allowing him to hide quietly in this vortex and reappear after the storm passed.

Unexpectedly, Kodansha made another big move.

A few days ago, the editorial department of Gunzo suddenly announced that they would publish a supplement to the May 20 issue of Gunzo on the 1995th, the day when the hardcover paperback edition of Listen to the Wind Sing was released.

The content of the supplement is Hide Kitagawa's new work "Pinball in 1973", which has been confirmed to be the official sequel to "Hear the Wind Sing". The entire series is named "Youth Trilogy".

The name of this series sounds like a third-rate romance novel in the popular literature market, and it is really hard for people to associate it with quite serious pure literature.

After the news broke, it was obvious that people inside and outside the literary world were shocked by Kodansha and Kitagawa Hide.

Not to mention their behavior of going against the trend, "Hear the Wind Sing" was only awarded and published in April, and less than a month later, the sequel was planned?

Is this Kitagawa Hide a human being or a typing machine?

Doesn't he need to conceive, collect materials and look for inspiration?
Therefore, after the announcement, many people increasingly felt that Kodansha was engaged in hype and commercial operations, and that the inclusion of "1973" in the title of Kitagawa Hideaki's novel was just to take advantage of the popularity of Oshima Hikaru's new work.

In 1995, information spread slowly. When these things first rolled around in the literary world and slowly landed on the real readers, it was already the evening of the 19th and the morning of the 20th.

On the morning of the 20th, the May 1995 supplement of "Qun Xiang" and the hardcover paperback edition of "Hear the Wind Sing" were placed on the bookshelf together.

Because only 1000 copies were printed in the first edition, the physical copy of "Hear the Wind Sing" can only be found in a few large bookstores in downtown Tokyo and some book fairs and book cities that have close cooperation with Kodansha.

And at the front counter of Maruzen Marunouchi Bookstore, Tokyo's largest, most luxurious and most visited bookstore, a rare and wonderful sight appeared.

The May 1995 issue of "Qun Xiang", the concurrent "Qun Xiang" supplement and "Listen to the Wind Sing" were placed together and sold at the same time.

In the morning and at noon, the flow of customers to the bookstore was quite normal, and most readers focused their attention on the two pure literature magazines "New Tide" and "Literary World".

Originally they were all among the top five pure literature magazines, but with several changes this year, "Xinchao" has become the undisputed sales champion, followed closely by "Wenxuejie". Except for last month's sales, both have basically achieved the goal of far exceeding the other three magazines.

However, the sales of "Group Portrait", which sold 99.6 copies last month, showed its true colors this month, and its sales volume is almost on par with "Wenyi", which has been at the bottom for ten thousand years.

The store manager even started asking that the store purchase as little copies of "Gunzo" as possible in the future.

Probably after lunch and lunch break, more and more readers came to Maruzen Marunouchi Bookstore.

Less than an hour later, the situation had become what it is now.

"Hey, hey, hey, stop squeezing me! Clerk-san, give me a copy of the supplement to Group Portraits, and two copies of Hear the Wind Sing!"

"Asshole! Are you a bookseller or a dealer in a black market bookstore? Why would one person buy 10 copies of "Hear the Wind Sing"? "

"Ah, the hardcover paperback edition is priced at 5500 yen. It's so expensive. I really can't afford it. I'm sorry, Mr. Kitagawa. I'll just buy a few more supplements to support you!"

Readers flocked in droves, and there was no doubt that their target was Kitagawa Hide's new work and "Hear the Wind Sing" which had just been put on the shelves.

The busy clerks and store manager had not yet read the supplement and really couldn't understand why these people suddenly became crazy and wanted to buy out all the supplements of "Qun Xiang"!

In any case, it is good for bookstores to have such best-selling magazines.

Seeing this, the shrewd store manager immediately walked up to the clerk in the crowd and whispered, "Ishida-san, please remove the May issue of Gunzo from the front shelf and put an extra Gunzo supplement on it. Do you understand?"

(End of this chapter)