Literary Master 1983

Chapter 227 Today, you shine brightly among the crowd (I)

The novels of Akutagawa Prize-winning writers can experience a dramatic explosion in sales within a short period of time after winning the award, sometimes even increasing from annual sales of tens of thousands to millions.

Booksellers certainly cannot miss this opportunity!
Whether a novel can be published immediately when it becomes popular will obviously affect the final sales of the novel.

In order to sell books, they had already figured out the situation in advance! They invited various consulting companies, and contacted literary giants who held voting rights through intermediaries to inquire about their voting situation and cross-verify it through multiple parties.

Sometimes they even know the outcome long in advance, but choose to remain silent in order to maintain the mystery of the award.

The Akutagawa Prize is not an award that is decided by a vote of seven or eight old men two or three hours before the award ceremony. This is a pure literature award. Every six months, the selection committee selects one or two works (including novels and plays) published in various newspapers and magazines, publishes them in the magazine "Bungei Shunju", and then gives out prizes and bonuses - 300,000 yen and a watch.

Therefore, a few jury members have a great influence on the award, and the number of jury members is very small, which leads to a high degree of subjectivity in the award. When everyone is arguing about who will win the crown in the end, the old men already know the result.

I'm afraid that at this time, the winner's prize money and watch have been prepared, and even his literary award speech has been printed. The news can be found at the printing factory, in a capable publishing editor, or in the award judge himself - Yasushi Inoue.

Inoue Yasushi is one of the judges of the Akutagawa Prize. Earlier this year, he visited Ba Lao and completed a literary dialogue that he had not completed in Japan before.

Who are the judges?

Yu Qie tried hard to recall and came up with characters such as "Junnosuke Yoshiyuki, Shusaku Endo, Mitsuo Nakamura, Kenzaburo Oe, Yasushi Inoue..." He suddenly realized that some of these people's natural literary stance tended towards Yu Qie.

Inoue Yasushi is naturally needless to say. Oe Kenzaburo later became another Japanese Nobel Prize winner in literature. He sympathized with the left and paid more attention to Chinese literature. In his Nobel Prize speech, he listed the Nanjing Massacre as one of the three major humanitarian disasters in the 20th century. Oe Kenzaburo was a colleague of Matsunaga Jihei, and they both worked as columnists for the Asahi Shimbun.

Endo Shusaku, a writer who reflects on Eastern and Western cultures, wrote "Silence": Portuguese missionaries came to Japan to travel, spread Christianity, and eventually killed those Japanese believers... He himself loves Sichuan cuisine.

Mitsuo Nakamura, a die-hard fan of Lu Xun, continued to promote Lu Xun's articles for decades after Lu Xun's death, and he extremely hated Japanese literature's imitation of Western literature.

At the Tokyo PEN Club that Yu Qie attended last year, he and Ba Lao were warmly welcomed by members of the Japan PEN Club, of which Mitsuo Nakamura was once the president.

……

This is the core jury of the Akutagawa Prize, which is composed of a group of members who are extremely favorable to Yu Qie.

So why was Yu Qie, a Chinese, selected for the Akutagawa Prize for the first time?
Is he here just to run with me?
No, maybe they have already decided the ending!

However, the current visiting group does not know all this. Because these people are researchers, cadres and diplomatic officers... Most of them are outsiders to literature. If Yu Qie is sure that he will win the award and finally does it, they will only think that Yu Qie has extraordinary confidence in his literature, and this confidence has reached an incredible level!

He was not crushed despite the expectations of one billion people! Instead, he asked domestic readers to continue the party. Xu Chi was writing a report on Yu Qie. He knew what happened! Xu Chi was so worried that he could hardly write the report. Qian Zhongshu was so scared that he broke out in a cold sweat! He even cursed: "Damn it! How could you make such a mistake?!" The old revolutionary Mu Qing was so anxious that he asked Yu Qie if he wanted to issue an errata statement!
But Yu Qie dared to say: "Comrades, I have won the award." to put everyone at ease.

How could Yu Qie miss such an opportunity?
This is a huge information gap spanning forty years. Except for Yu Qie, no one knows the publishing system in developed countries and the various intricacies of their award selection.

"Give me a moment, I need to make a phone call."

Everyone only saw Yu Qie return to his room, lock it, and then contact the president of Iwanami Publishing, Toru Midorikawa, through the hotel phone.

"I am now considered in the country to be able to win the Akutagawa Prize! President Midorikawa."

The first thing Yu Qi said was something that surprised Midorikawa Heng.

Afterwards, Yu Qie briefly told Midorikawa Toru about the misunderstanding caused by the domestic media. Midorikawa Toru was stunned: The Chinese are so anxious!

Yu Qie did not blame the readers for their enthusiasm, but rather made the story particularly poetic: "The time in Tokyo is one hour ahead of the Chinese capital, but today is different. Now the time in Japan is February 2th, while the time in China has already moved up to February 27th. We are a whole day ahead. Everyone already knows that I will receive the Akutagawa Prize tomorrow, and they are celebrating for me - are they celebrating for the right thing to do?"

"I'm faced with a choice. I can either tell everyone that a billion people's clocks are off by one day, or I can say nothing and join in the celebration. Do you have any solid advice on what I should do?"

Midorikawa Toru's answer was deadly simple: "China's time is not wrong, Yu Qie."

Afterwards, Yu Qie felt that his head was a little dizzy, and even he couldn't help being excited. But Midorikawa Heng's words alone didn't count, so he contacted Inoue Yasushi through Midorikawa Heng.

Inoue Yasushi replied: "Maybe one day, you can become one of the judges of the Akutagawa Prize."

Yu Qie suddenly smiled.

What does Inoue Yasushi mean?
So far, all the judges of the Akutagawa Prize have been members who have won the Akutagawa Prize. This is a famous writer club, and it is the first step to becoming a literary giant. Inoue Yasushi said these words now, implying that Yu Qie won the award, so he has the possibility of "becoming one of the judges."

Is Inoue Yasushi enough?
It was not enough, so Yu Qie began to use his own expertise, his other skill - literary theory research. As a time traveler, Yu Qie never completely copied the works, and all his novels were properly adapted. These works made Yu Qie himself an excellent writer who could grasp the times.

You must know that in countless high-intensity literary debates and seminars, if you do not have sufficient literary skills, even if you know all the stories in the world, you cannot convince people that this is a novelist who wrote those works!
Toru Midorikawa and Yasushi Inoue represent the powerful publishers and top writers respectively in the literary award selection process, but fundamentally, it depends on the quality of Yu Qie's works and whether he has enough strength to crush the other two opponents.

1985 seemed to be a weak year for Japan's Akutagawa Prize. As far as I can remember, there were no Akutagawa Prize winners in the first half of that year, and there were no novels worthy of winning the award. However, the emergence of Yu Qie caused some changes, and several novels were actually nominated.

He returned to the lobby of the New Otani Hotel. All the members of the delegation gathered here, whether they were the iron boss cadres who were going to inspect the Shinkansen or the business department officials who went to Japan to solicit investment. They were all here, and they knew very well that a big mistake had happened in China.

Yu Qie was faced with the decision of whether or not to correct this mistake. Everyone looked at him quietly. Many people had not said a word or drank a sip of water from the beginning to now. Everyone was shocked by the fact that "if Yu Qie could not win the award". If this happened, it would be the biggest mistake they had ever seen in their lives!
Mu Qing, the president of Xinhua Press, pursed his lips, looking extremely serious. Chen Xiru and others quickly found all the literary reviews about this article in Japan after the release of "Happy Hunting" in September.

More than a hundred newspapers or publications were placed in front of Yu Qie. The hotel floor was shiny and clean, and Yu Qie sat there, flipping through these literary reviews one by one. He soon discovered that most of these reviews were from well-known Japanese literary giants.

Among them, members of the Akutagawa Prize jury frequently appear in commentary articles.

Last November, Yasushi Inoue commented that Yu Qie is "the contemporary writer who understands Japan best. He has a thorough understanding of the sick part of our society!"

This is an article praising Yu Qie, but there is nothing special about it.

In October, there was an article from Mitsuo Nakamura titled "Anti-Western Literature": "Is the world described in Yu Che's novels really entirely Japan? I studied in France for many years, and I have also visited many European countries, including the UK. I feel that what he wrote in the book is a common problem prevalent in the capitalist world. It is only because Japan's resources are particularly scarce that the contradictions are more intensified... It is not surprising that Yu Che has never been to Japan and wrote such a novel. What is strange is that he has never been to Europe and the United States."

This article has a good analysis. This is the level of a top literary theorist. "Happy Hunting" itself was written by a Chinese living in the United States. This person is a typical cultural hybrid, so this kind of novel was produced.

Kenzaburo Oe, a future Japanese Nobel Prize winner, also wrote two short articles evaluating Happy Hunting. In the first, he said: "In the 1960s, I had the opportunity to visit Bulgaria, the Soviet Union and other countries, and then wrote some articles on the topics of disabled children and nuclear weapons... I imagined a utopian paradise and wrote about it for many years. Yu Qie was the opposite of me."

The second time, he said: "I read this novel several times, and suddenly I felt that he wrote it more subtly. People say he is criticizing Japanese society, but I think he is writing about human nature. Human nature is despicable, and foxes are beautiful."

Asahi Shimbun columnist Matsunaga Jihei also wrote an appreciation of this article: "Chinese writer Yu Qie predicted that a society would gradually collapse after self-imposed pressure. Many people think he was predicting the decline of Japanese society. Is that true? Really, sell your stocks and real estate quickly. He studied economics."

……

The judges' appreciation for his essay was obvious.

The more I read, the more confident I feel, and the more I feel that things are confirmed. The other two Japanese novels, "Little Lady" and "For the Music of the Sleepwalking Kingdom", are also excellent works, but they lack a lot of attention compared to "Happy Hunting".

The sound of him turning pages was particularly loud in the lobby. If it weren't for the shadows on the ground, it would be hard to imagine that there were dozens of people standing here.

Yu Qie finally raised his head. At this moment, everyone stared at him blankly. Yu Qie smiled and said, "Everyone go to sleep. What could go wrong? It's just a small matter."

This statement is so bizarre that many people feel that time has slowed down. They ponder over this statement over and over again, and then they conclude that it is the literal meaning.

"It's just a small matter."

Does that mean there will be no corrections? The same expression appeared on everyone's face: You are so awesome, how dare you do this!

Yu Qie nodded: "I am still somewhat confident now. Since the misunderstanding has already occurred, there is no need to make another mistake."

Everyone looked at each other in bewilderment. After a few seconds, someone clapped their hands, just like the sudden lightning before a rainstorm, followed by a heavy downpour. Mu Qing grabbed Yu Qie's hand and shook it hard: "What a courage! You really impressed me today!"

Qian Zhongshu was so surprised that he shouted: "I have been shocked twice since I came to Japan. One time was when I went to Kyoto University and found that the Japanese understood Sinology better than the Chinese. I was so ashamed that I was sweating profusely. The other time is now. Ma Shi Tu is really... I am very jealous of him!"

This night was unforgettable for many people. They tossed and turned in bed, unable to sleep, and in their minds they could only imagine Yu Qie sitting on the floor, with newspapers full of reviews of Yu Qie's novels written all over the floor, and him watching them leisurely. Then Yu Qie stood up and said with confidence, "I have some confidence in this matter, let's go to sleep."

What is there to worry about?
It was as if he was completely relieved and not worried about any other outcome.

Now I finally know what it means to remain calm when facing a catastrophe. It turns out there are such people. Xu Chi was so excited that he did not sleep all night, rushing to finish this report.

"At the end of the report, I have to add a voice-over, because it is difficult to describe my shock otherwise. In fact, something went terribly wrong before we received the award. All the comrades couldn't sleep. Nie Weiping played chess with himself all night. His room was filled with smoke. The Japanese didn't allow him to smoke in the room, so Nie Weiping ran to a special room... After a night... Nie Weiping's eyes were red from staying up all night. He passed by Yu Qie's room and met me again. We teased each other about being panicked, and then we knocked on the door for some reason. Yu Qie opened the door soon after."

"Yu Qie, who was as energetic as before, appeared in front of me, and I suddenly felt relieved because I knew he slept very soundly at night."

"After a brief moment of excitement, sleepiness came over me, and I suddenly realized that this might be a trivial matter for him. We were just too panicked."

Yu Qie slept soundly.

In the morning, Yasushi Inoue himself and some diplomatic comrades stationed in Japan at the time came to visit the delegation. They also heard about this huge mistake and were surprised why there was no correction.

Mu Qing said: "We believe in Yu Qie, believe in his level, and believe in the fairness of the Japanese literary selection."

This was of course an excuse. In fact, Mu Qing chose to go all in and chose to trust Yu Qie.

The huge delegation began to split into different teams, some inspecting the railways, some soliciting investment... Despite this, these people have been following the final results of the Akutagawa Prize in various corners of Japan. Many people wrote in their travel notes or memoirs, "I have no idea what happened that day. I spent every minute and every second of that day waiting for the results. Now, after many years, when I recall it, I still only remember this one thing."

"Yu Che won the Akutagawa Prize, that's the only thing I remember."

"I went back to ask my friends and family in China, and they also said that this was the only thing they remembered."

(End of this chapter)