When Humans Gather, They Immediately Create a Literary Circle

Text by Rintaro Takechi (Expert on Platform Evacuation Behavior)

The word "bundan" (literary circle) smells like an old floor cushion.

There are traces of someone having sat there for a long time, and there are those who are qualified to sit in that seat and those who are not. Those who sit suddenly lower their voices, while those who could not sit are left standing near the entrance, listening to words of wisdom.

I imagine the literary circle as such a place.

Admittedly, the literary circle has no building. There is no sign, no membership card, and no gate marked "Literary Circle Entrance." Therefore, it is difficult to tell from the outside whether it truly existed or if it is just a collective fantasy that older people talk about with nostalgia.

What is visible is not the literary circle itself, but the institutions it left behind. The Akutagawa Prize, the Naoki Prize, literary magazines, book review columns, selection committees, publishers, and the relationships between writers. Because that skeleton still remains, some say, "The literary circle still exists."

As an institution, it certainly remains.

However, the fact that an institution remains is different from culture being alive. The existence of the Kabuki-za does not mean the Edo period continues, nor does the existence of the Sumo Association mean that Edo's merchant culture remains intact. The same is true for the literary circle.

There was a time when writers, editors, and critics gathered every night in corners of Jimbocho, Kanda, and Ginza. These were the so-called "literary bars." From the post-war period through the high-growth era and until the end of the bubble economy, such establishments served as the back door to literature. Manuscripts were submitted to publishers. Rumors flowed in bars. Evaluations were warmed between ashtrays and glasses before they ever appeared in print. Thinking about it now, it was truly unhealthy and truly literary.

Entering the 1990s, that atmosphere thinned rapidly. The bubble burst, publishers' resources grew thin, and the era of fermenting literature in night spots headed toward its end. It is not that literary bars disappeared all at once. But the feeling that literature moved by gathering there gradually became a thing of the past.

I believe that the Japanese literary circle itself quietly finished its role between the 2000s and the 2010s. There was no funeral, no dissolution ceremony. No one declared its end. It was just that something that should have been there was no longer functioning when we noticed.

So, what was the literary circle?

It was a closed community created by writers, editors, critics, newspapers, literary magazines, and literary awards. Newcomers submitted to literary magazines, editors read them, senior writers acknowledged them, critics discussed them, and newspapers and literary magazines guaranteed their value. Readers bought books based on those evaluations.

It was an old system. But in an era when bookstores were the gateway to culture, newspaper book review columns had power, and literary magazines nurtured writers, it had a role appropriate for its age.

There was authority, jealousy, and factions there. There was also the mud of human relationships. But a swamp is a swamp because of the mud. In the wetland of literature, works both rotted and fermented.

The internet dried up that wetland.

Writers began to reach readers without going through publishers, and readers began to evaluate works without going through critics. Even without appearing in literary magazines, works spread on social media. The power of evaluation itself became decentralized.

Readers did not leave literature. They simply moved to places where stories exist: manga, anime, games, web novels, videos, and social media.

The literary circle thought they were literature itself. But in reality, it was merely one mechanism for distributing literature. When a mechanism becomes old, it is replaced by another.

Perhaps the 2004 Akutagawa Prize was where that change appeared in a visible form.

Risa Wataya's 'I Want to Kick You in the Back' and Hitomi Kanehara's 'Snakes and Earrings.' These were simultaneous awards for a nineteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old.

This is not to deny their talent. The problem was not with the writers, but with the literary establishment itself. At that time, the literary establishment clung to youth. 'Young female writer,' 'youngest in history,' 'simultaneous award,' 'the mood of the times.' Literary awards were shifting from being a filter for literature to a promotional tool for the publishing industry.

Once upon a time, the literary establishment presented works to readers saying, 'This is literature.' Before we knew it, they began presenting them saying, 'This will be a hot topic.' The difference is significant.

Youth, beauty, unique backgrounds, provocative subject matter, family and sex, poverty, illness, and online controversy. All of these can become literature. However, they are turned into sales pitches before they can become literature. This is where the literary establishment was deeply broken. It ceased to be a place to protect writers and became a place to display writers on store shelves.

Here, if we compare Banana Yoshimoto and Mariko Hayashi, it becomes easier to see where modern Japanese literature fermented and where it rotted.

One is an international writer, and the other is a domestic success. Banana Yoshimoto was one of the writers who carried modern Japanese literature abroad, having readers overseas with 'Kitchen.' Mariko Hayashi was a writer who grew massive within the Japanese-language media sphere, traversing weekly magazines, women's magazines, television, literary awards, cultural administration, and university board positions.

It is not a question of who is greater. Comparing the two reveals how Japan's 'circles' are constructed.

Banana Yoshimoto became an international writer in an era when the literary establishment was still barely protecting literature. However, now that the literary establishment has vanished, she faces her readers as an individual creator on Note. On her own Note, she writes, 'Note is my front line,' and uses the term 'one-person literary magazine.'

This phrase carries weight.

Originally, a literary magazine was not something made by one person. There were editors, proofreaders, critics, publishers, bookstores, and readers. There was a cumbersome apparatus for receiving works as literature.

After that apparatus broke down, a world-class writer calls herself a literary magazine, sells it herself, and burns herself out. This is twenty-first-century literature.

Banana Yoshimoto's paid Note controversy cannot be dismissed as merely exposing family secrets. Rather, it can be read as evidence that the literary establishment no longer exists.

If the uniquely Japanese institution of the literary establishment were still functioning, a writer of Banana Yoshimoto's stature would not have had to struggle in such an exposed place. Editors would have stopped her, literary magazines would have accepted her, critics would have created context, and senior writers would have obscured the issues. I am not saying it was a good system. Even so, there was a buffer there.

That buffer was removed before anyone noticed. I don't know who paid for the removal costs, but only the writers are standing naked in the wind.

Writers write and put it on Note, readers pay, and social media burns it. After the apparatus that surrounded literature disappeared, only the writer, the reader, and the controversy remain directly connected.

I have no hobby of peeking into a writer's bankbook. However, the picture that appears before the reader is cruel. In a situation where a writer who was read internationally might be read while draped in the shadow of poverty, it looks as if she is even commodifying her own family's shame. I do not know if it is actual poverty or poverty as a symbol. It is just bitter to watch a writer who should have held international literary currency being reduced to small-change transactions on a Japanese-language platform.

Meanwhile, Mariko Hayashi took a different path.

She is not a writer who was read in the overseas literary market like Banana Yoshimoto. At least, she is not the type who gained a global readership on the shelves of international translated literature. Mariko Hayashi's battlefield was Japanese weekly magazines, women's magazines, television, the Naoki Prize, Bungeishunju, Nihon University, and cultural administration.

She sold her own vulgarity.

Vanity, desire, ambition, jealousy, women judging each other, the unpleasantness of a consumer society, the scent of wanting to succeed, the humidity of wanting to be praised. She did not hide those things. That was her strength.

Mariko Hayashi did not sell out her family's shame. She sold her own vulgarity. And in Japan, that turned into money. It became serializations, dramas, awards, seats for cultural figures, and even led to the chair of a university board of trustees.

Herein lies the Galapagos-like disease of Japan.

Writers who are read internationally are left exposed in the wilderness after the collapse of the literary circle. Writers who repeatedly sold vulgarity within the domestic media sphere sit in the chairs of the establishment. This contrast is not a matter of the individual writer's morality, but a problem with the evaluation system of Japanese society.

Topics that circulate internally are stronger than literature that reaches the outside world. Frequency of exposure in domestic media is stronger than the internationality of a work. Weekly magazine-style sustainability is stronger than literary achievement. Being a familiar face is stronger than criticism.

Thus, the literary circle rots. Editing rots. Mass media rots.

Editors were originally people who read for themselves. This writer is dangerous, this manuscript can be published, this should be stopped, this should not be published now, this will become literature, this will end as mere exposure. It was a job that required taking responsibility for such judgments with one's own body.

However, when social media becomes a proxy for evaluation, editors stop thinking for themselves. Online media turns stories that caught fire on social media into articles, the fact that they became articles makes social media noisy again, television picks it up, clips are circulated, and it burns even more. In this cycle, no one is making the initial judgment.

They just report that what is burning is burning. What is reported burns even more. With the face of someone covering a fire, they are adding fuel to the flames.

This is the current mass media. It is not mass media. It is mass garbage. If you don't want to be called that, you should see for yourself, think for yourself, and take responsibility for yourself. Because they don't do that, they are entering the trash bin themselves.

The literary circle pretended to protect literature while turning writers into commodities. Editors pretended to judge while following social media. Mass media pretended to report while becoming a circular for online outrage.

This structure is not limited to literature.

In Japan, everything immediately becomes a 'circle' (dan). Whether it is the literary circle, art circle, music circle, poetry circle, haiku circle, criticism circle, or even the academic circle, the structure does not change much even if the field changes.

A 'dan' (platform) is a place one step higher. When you create a place one step higher, people who climb up there and people who look up from below are born. At first, that was probably fine. As a place to select works, hone skills, train research, and exchange criticism, the platform was necessary.

However, the platform immediately becomes an altar.

What should have been a place to place works becomes a place to make people worship humans. In a place where works and research should be questioned, before you know it, whose disciple you are, which association, which university, which academic society, or which peer-review circle you belong to starts to hold sway. People on the platform start protecting themselves before their work.

Since I also write about martial arts and combat sports, I sometimes watch martial arts videos on YouTube. Traditional Karate, Kyokushin Karate, Aikido, Jeet Kune Do, Ninjutsu, Kobujutsu, self-defense. There are various genres, but the smell of a closed community is very similar.

The teacher performs a technique, the disciple flies comfortably, the surroundings are impressed, and another teacher praises them. Words like 'This is the world of a master' and 'This cannot be explained by modern combat sports' line the comment section.

It is truly literary-circle-like.

It is very similar to the structure where a literary magazine says 'This newcomer is amazing,' a critic says 'This is literature,' a selection committee member says 'This is a new talent,' and readers admire it without really understanding it. Only the manuscript paper has become YouTube, but the sweetness of the community remains unchanged.

If it is literature, is it reaching the readers?

In martial arts, does it work against an opponent who resists?

In research, can it withstand counterarguments?

In journalism, can it withstand the facts?

That is what must be questioned.

However, circles dislike verification. Verification is painful. It causes embarrassment, leads to defeat, and leaves no room for excuses. Therefore, humans flee into circles. On a pedestal, it is hard to lose. You can be praised. You can treat outside voices as noise.

Literary circles, martial arts villages, and academic circles all have the same mechanism for decay.

Criticism loses to etiquette. Verification loses to hierarchy. Ability loses to atmosphere. Dissent is called 'rude.' In this way, only the people on the pedestal remain unscathed.

And then, very conveniently, AI is brought in.

AI does not come to correct this corruption. If used incorrectly, it will be used to make the corruption harder to see. This is because it dissolves the judgments that humans should be making into clean prose, summaries, and risk assessments.

AI tidies up the appearance of text. It summarizes. It creates structures. It finds phrasing that is unlikely to cause a backlash and even presents text that wears the mask of criticism.

Future editors will likely have AI do the preliminary reading. Before an editorial meeting, they will read AI summaries, have it check for the risk of backlash, search for similar works, and even generate catchy headlines. The meeting will proceed even if the editor hasn't read the work. Even though no one has read it, everyone can pretend they have. It is very well-suited for editorial meetings.

AI arrived just as the literary world, editing, and mass media were rotting.

The sequence of events is quite profound.

It is like a state-of-the-art kitchen knife arriving in a rotten kitchen. The blade is sharp. But if the contents of the refrigerator are rotten, what is served on the plate is just thinly sliced rot.

What remains for writers in the AI era is not the ability to generate text.

It is accountability.

What did you see? What made you angry? What do you doubt, and how much are you willing to take responsibility for under your own name? Can you stand in front of that one sentence even if the reader hits back?

The moment you abandon this judgment, only the signature remains, and the handwriting disappears.

AI does not feel shame, does not get a stomachache, and does not complicate family relationships. It does not sulk when stopped by an editor, nor does it lose sleep on a night when it is being roasted online.

Writers write by carrying such troublesome things on their backs.

The person responsible for that stomach ache is the writer.

If you step onto a stage, you hear applause. If you stand at the scene of an SNS firestorm, you feel the heat. If you hide behind AI, your writing becomes polished.

However, neither applause, nor heat, nor polished writing can replace the act of standing before your own work.

In an era where literary circles have vanished, the place a writer ultimately returns to is before their own writing.

Here, the story returns to Banana Yoshimoto and Mariko Hayashi.

Banana Yoshimoto shows how exposed a writer is left standing before their work after the literary circle has disappeared. Mariko Hayashi is a writer who ascended the stage using domestic media during an era when the literary circle began to rot.

One was left exposed because there was no literary circle. The other gained power because the literary circle had weakened. Placing these two side by side reveals a sad map of Japanese literature.

Literature that goes outside is not protected.

Vulgarity that circulates within becomes power.

This is the Galapagos of Japan.

And in the wetlands of that Galapagos, literary circles, art circles, music circles, tanka circles, haiku circles, criticism circles, and academic circles continue to breed quietly today.

When humans gather, they immediately form a literary circle.

Writers write in order to escape from those literary circles.