Film: "How the Deluxe Edition of 'Marmelo Soshi' Was Born: The Untold 8-Year Struggle"

I went to the Museum of Modern Japanese Literature, Kanagawa, to watch the documentary film "How the Deluxe Edition of 'Marmelo Soshi' Was Born: The Untold 8-Year Struggle."
This marks the end of the events related to the 'Osamu Hashimotot Returns Exhibition.' Having visited the exhibition four times, I went with the intention that this would be my final visit (for now) to Kanabun, serving as a closing chapter.

'Marmelo Soshi' was released in December 2013, limited to 150 copies, with a list price of 35,000 yen. The project took eight years to complete, and the production process was recorded on film.
After 'Chō no Yukue' won the Shibata Renzaburo Award, they used that momentum to get the publisher to greenlight the project. It’s a miracle they managed to finish it at all, given the economic downturn long after the bubble burst. Plus, the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred during that time.
The sheer volume of work, the craftsmanship, and the vast amount of time involved are evident just by looking at the physical book (which is also at the Hashimoto exhibition), but I never imagined it went this far. There is no way it was cost-effective.
They insisted, 'I don't want to use a single sheet of white for the base color,' so they kneaded silk, photographed it to create different colors for each chapter, and layered Yoshio Okada's intricate illustrations on top. Naturally, being full-color, it was an endless, hellish cycle of choosing colors after colors. I almost forgot, but this is a novel, not an art book. They also didn't want the text to be just black, and they wanted to break free from the constraint (or common sense/assumption?) that 'it must be easy to read!' So, choosing the color of the text was added to the mix. Yet, the people involved kept saying, 'It's beautiful!' They would casually change the colors of things they had already decided on and printed, endlessly cutting, pasting, and chatting away. Not one of them complained about it being difficult or costly (though they did have some negotiation-like discussions). In other words, there was not a single compromise. As someone deeply conditioned by the idea that work equals deadlines, watching them talk endlessly about 'how to make it beautiful' without setting a deadline felt like watching a fairy tale. It made me realize that judging things as 'too much effort, too costly, too time-consuming' is a rational judgment, but also a compromise, and it felt like my values regarding work were about to change. I saw in this film that there were people who actually did this—creating something while stripping away all constraints—and I saw how beautiful the finished product was.

As director Uratani said, it’s a film where the viewer feels like they are 'witnessing the process,' so it consists mostly of meeting footage. However, there is one scene in Okada-san's studio where he speaks directly to the camera.
Okada-san said, 'The work I get is biased toward dynastic themes, but I wanted to do Art Deco, so I brought the project to them myself.' My heart was full when I realized that Osamu Hashimoto wrote this novel specifically to let Okada-san draw Art Deco.
Okada-san's words left a deep impression on me: 'Text is inherently a symbol, so it doesn't move. But in the prose Hashimoto-san writes, you can see plum blossoms fluttering down. Illustrations, on the other hand, don't move...'

At the end, when the book was finally finished, it mentioned that all 150 copies were signed, which made me think, 'Wait?' Actually, I bought this book at an online auction a year or two ago (the outer box was missing and not included), and I don't remember seeing a signature or a number (X/150). Since it's a valuable and quite large book, I rarely take it out. It might be a fake.

It was only after the screening that I learned the background music for the TV drama 'Paris Monogatari,' scripted by Osamu Hashimoto—which I had wanted to watch after reading 'Momojiri Musume Propose Daisakusen'—was used as the soundtrack for this film. I wish I had known sooner.

During the after-talk with Hitoshi Matsuie and Toshinori Uratani, the topic of 'Osamu Hashimoto and the Zenkyoto' came up. Uratani-san is the same age as Hashimoto, and he said he shares the same perspective as Hashizume-san. Do people who lived through that era want to share a sense of 'we all did it together'? Perhaps the reason Osamu Hashimoto wrote so much about the Zenkyoto was that if he didn't say anything, he would be casually lumped in as 'we were all comrades.' Just by the fact that they were at 'Todai' in 'that year' (plus the poster).
I hadn't been very interested in the Zenkyoto, so I hadn't paid much attention to it until now, but through the series of events commemorating the Osamu Hashimoto exhibition, I began to think there is an important clue in 'Osamu Hashimoto and the Zenkyoto.' That was an unexpected byproduct, and in summary, for me, the 'Osamu Hashimoto Returns Exhibition' was an experience that felt like receiving more blessings than I could hold in both hands.

On a different note, the other day on X (I quit X, but I check it sometimes because it's the fastest for new book information), I saw an anecdote from someone who had interviewed Osamu Hashimoto once.
To summarize, a few days after the interview, a letter arrived from Osamu Hashimoto. It contained a tiny screw, less than 0.5 millimeters, that had fallen out of the recorder, taped to the paper with the words 'Lost item' written in Hashimoto's own handwriting. I can't explain it well, but I thought it was incredibly like Osamu Hashimoto.