Tokyo Literary Masters: Starting from the Late 1980s

Faced with Kadokawa Haruki's rapid-fire ramblings, Kitahara Iwao simply put down his coffee cup.

The porcelain cup touched the saucer, making a crisp clinking sound.

The sound wasn't loud, but it instantly quieted the noisy conference room.

"no."

Kitahara Iwa's answer was very concise.

"ha?"

Upon hearing this, Haruki Kadokawa paused for a moment, then frowned, instantly releasing an aura of dictatorial pressure: "Kitahara-kun, are you questioning my business acumen?"

"No, I'm questioning your understanding of the character."

Kitahara Iwa leaned back in his chair, looking calmly at the movie emperor: "President Kadokawa, Moriguchi Yuko is not an idol, much less a tool for creating buzz."

"She was a mother who had lost her four-year-old daughter. Her heart was dead, her soul withered. She was a corpse walking in despair."

Kitahara Iwa pointed to the photos of smiling idols on the whiteboard and said with a hint of disdain, "The idols' faces are too clean."

"Their eyes shine with a light, a light nurtured by the love of their fans."

"If Kyoko Koizumi or any other popular idol were to play the role, the audience would only see an idol trying hard to play a villain, not the chilling Yuko Moriguchi."

"What I want is that neurotic calm. It's that chilling feeling of someone smiling, yet making you think they're about to stab you to death."

"This kind of quality is something that idols who only try to please the audience in front of the camera can never fake."

Kitahara Iwa's voice wasn't loud, but it was like a bucket of ice water poured over this frenzied meeting.

The air in the conference room froze instantly.

Haruki Kadokawa's hand, holding a cigar, froze in mid-air, and the muscles in his cheek twitched slightly.

Within Kadokawa Pictures, he was an absolute dictator, and no one had ever dared to confront him with such an unquestionable tone.

He stared intently into Kitahara Iwa's eyes, trying to force him to submit by using the pressure of his years in a position of power.

One second, two seconds... they stared at each other for a full ten seconds.

If it were anyone else, Haruki Kadokawa would have smashed the ashtray long ago.

But when faced with Kitahara Iwa, he not only couldn't bring himself to smash it, but a secret excitement rose in his heart instead.

As a madman who treats filmmaking as a high-stakes gamble, he inherently admires Kitahara Iwao's madness in trampling commercial rules for the sake of his work, as well as his identity as a literary figure.

"call--"

Haruki Kadokawa exhaled a long puff of smoke from his cigar, his tense body suddenly leaning back and sinking into the boss's chair.

The tyrannical ruler vanished in an instant, replaced by a shrewd businessman.

"it is good."

Tokyo, Shinchosha headquarters.

Editor-in-Chief Sato frantically flipped through his address book while holding the phone to his shoulder, bowing and scraping to the literary magnate on the other end of the line.

"Yes, yes... Please, please be sure to take a look at the structure of this novel..."

After hanging up the phone, Sato let out a long breath and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

Just yesterday, Shinchosha held a heated final evaluation meeting.

Despite opposition, editor-in-chief Sato directly submitted "Confessions" to the Japan Literature Promotion Association as Shinchosha's top recommended work.

In fact, editor-in-chief Sato knew very well that the chances of "Confessions" winning the Naoki Prize were slim.

After all, not long ago, the president of Shinchosha asserted: "This book is too dark and too evil. Although it can sell well, the old men of the Naoki Prize will absolutely not award the highest honor to a novel about a junior high school student murder case."

The president's words were not an exaggeration.

After all, in the Japanese literary world, which values ​​seniority and tradition, bestseller status is often equated with pandering to popular tastes.

But Editor-in-Chief Sato still wanted to take a gamble.

For no other reason than Kitahara Iwao's words on the phone: "No matter how fiercely the dogs of the old era bark, they cannot stop the train of the new era."

After all, surrendering without even going to the battlefield is a disgrace to editors.

Even if you fight with all your might and ultimately fail, you'll still have done justice to this masterpiece that sold millions of copies.

And so what if we don't win the grand prize?

If they can forcefully break through this defense and push "Confessions" into the "candidate list", they will win!

In the Japanese publishing industry, this is a watershed moment.

If the next edition of "Confessions" can proudly display the words "101st Naoki Prize Candidate" in gold lettering on its cover, it would be equivalent to the official endorsement of Kitahara Iwao's literary merit.

With this nomination as a safety net, those old guys in Kyoto will no longer be able to use the label of "vulgar commercial writer" to attack Kitahara Iwao.

Tokyo, Kioi-cho, Bungei Shunju Building.

Deep within this building that controls the lifeline of Japanese literary awards, a secret meeting room known as the Black Box is filled with smoke.

This is the meeting room of the 101st Naoki Prize preliminary selection committee.

Twenty judges and publishing moguls who decide the fate of bestselling authors across Japan are sitting around an oval table.

For the first two hours of the meeting, the atmosphere was as calm and uneventful as it had been for the past few decades, even exuding a kind of drowsy harmony characteristic of old-fashioned intellectuals.

"Endo-sensei's 'The Snow of Kamakura' is still written with a mature and steady style. It portrays the inner world of samurai in the late Edo period with great delicacy and has a kind of beauty of mono no aware. I think it deserves to be shortlisted."

A judge wearing gold-rimmed glasses took a sip of Shizuoka sencha and commented slowly.

"Agreed. Although the subject matter is a bit old, it is well-balanced and not bad at all, which is the standard Naoki Prize style."

The elderly writers standing nearby nodded in agreement.

"So, what about the next book, 'Showa Craftsmen'? It explores the decline and perseverance of traditional Kyoto crafts, with a very elegant theme..."

The works discussed earlier are mostly safe choices: historical novels, family bonds, or explorations of traditional aesthetics.

The judges, adopting a condescending attitude and considering themselves guardians of literature, placed these conventional works into the safe zone one by one.

until--

The committee member who was chairing the meeting cleared his throat, flipped through the documents in his hand, and looked at the last name on the list with a complicated expression.

The originally mild and harmonious atmosphere suddenly cooled down the moment this name appeared.

"So, the last topic for today."

The secretary paused, his voice particularly clear in the quiet meeting room, "Regarding the submission from Shincho-sha, Kitahara Iwao's 'Confessions'... do you agree to include it in the final shortlist?"

The words had barely left his lips when they were thrown into this elegant tea party like a bomb with the smell of blood.

The facade of civility that had been maintained for the previous two hours vanished instantly, and the atmosphere in the once harmonious meeting room suddenly became tense and hostile.

The judges quickly split into two distinct and irreconcilable factions.

"This is utterly ridiculous!"

At this moment, a veteran traditional writer representing the conservative interests of Kansai and Kyoto slammed his fist on the table and was the first to question, "Look at what this is all about!"

"The entire book is filled with juvenile delinquency, vicious revenge, and bloody allusions! Where is there even a trace of literary merit? Where is there even a hint of humanity?"

The old writer blushed and burst out, "This isn't literature at all! It's just a B-movie script that panders to the lowbrow tastes of the masses and reeks of money!"

"Allowing such commercially despicable material that incites crime to be nominated is the greatest stain on the Naoki Prize's prestigious reputation!"

Then, the old writer pounded the table in anguish, saying, "If we allow this cancerous growth that incites crime to be nominated, it's like throwing dung on the prestigious Naoki Prize! I strongly oppose it!"