Only 3 days left! We really want you to read at least 10 lines of "The Nameless Kingdom" (Sayamido Correspondence Continued)
This is the second installment of our passionate push for Shigeru Kurakazu's "The Nameless Kingdom," brought to you by the Poplar Publishing literary editorial team duo, Obara and Yajima. We are reporting on the response to our first installment and the incredibly intense pre-release reading event held yesterday, July 30th.
Only 3 days left in the full-page free reading period for "The Nameless Kingdom"!
Shigeru Kurakazu's "The Nameless Kingdom" has been available for free in its entirety (480 pages) for a limited 10-day period starting July 25th. Along with the novel itself, we, the two editors in charge, have been posting our overflowing thoughts under the title "Sayamido Correspondence."
↑ The previous posts were in an email exchange format, but this time we used a messenger app for speed, so we are sending this sequel as a simplified version of "Sayamido Correspondence." Saya = Sayaka Obara, Mido = Midori Yajima (Saya, Mido... seriously, give it a rest...).
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Mido: "Sayamido Correspondence" was, in every sense, a leap of faith with our eyes closed, but we were truly happy to see so many people receive it warmly.
Saya: Truly! We received an unexpected response. When the authors we work with told us they read it, I was blushing and stammering, "Oh my, oh my..." But if our behind-the-scenes stories helped people discover "The Nameless Kingdom," then it was worth baring it all.
Mi: We chose the email exchange format because we admired Shion Miura's "Nonohana Correspondence." By a miraculous coincidence, a meeting with Ms. Miura had been scheduled months in advance for both of us, and just a few days ago, we timidly told her about "Sayamido Correspondence." We told her, "We ended up doing something like this." I was in the worst possible position, hiding behind Obara-san, who is smaller than me and was holding her beloved son K-kun...
Sa: That's right. Seeing us standing there with such solemn expressions, Ms. Miura must have wondered what we were about to confess. When we explained, "Well, we love 'Nonohana Correspondence' so much that we just had to..." she burst out laughing... She was glowing...
Mi: She was so kind, too kind. She told us to send her the URL later and even replied, "This makes me want to read 'The Nameless Kingdom'"... What a wonderful person. Since we had put up a big sign saying it was an homage to "Nonohana Correspondence," and it was the first note from editorial staff, we couldn't make it boring. We were so tense, it was quite a struggle to write, wasn't it?
Sa: Truly! There were days when I thought, "I've been waiting forever and still no reply from Midori-san."
Mi: H...! Oh, you mean Yajima's slump... What is even a slump for someone like Yajima, really? And it was quite early on, too. The part about "What were you doing while I was on maternity leave? Huh?"
Sa: You couldn't bear the weight of the past, could you? Your feeling of prostrating yourself came through. As the date for the full release approached, we got anxious, didn't we? We couldn't reach the end at all. There was an afternoon at the office where I shouted, "What do I do, I can't write anything interesting at all!" Our editorial department is full of such decent people for leaving the two of us alone.
Mi: Indeed, they read it as soon as it came out and laughed. The sales team liked it too, and there's even talk of using that "Sayamido Correspondence" as in-store promotional material at bookstores!!! What on earth!!!
Sa: Is that okay?! Won't it demean the work??
Mi: Normally, we should be able to express everything on the book band, but our thoughts just overflow...
Sa: "It became a 480-page novel because it couldn't be captured in a single catchphrase!" from the Midori Yajima Quotation Collection.
Mi: Seriously, please stop, haha. That sounds more like an abandonment of duty... But thanks to "Sayamido Correspondence," I vividly remembered even reading too much into typos, and it warmed my heart. Like, "Since Kurakazu-san intentionally changed the kanji for 'aunt' here, does she actually have a younger sister?" or "Is 'Shu' the 'other self' of 'Shun'?"
Sa: That's right. At yesterday's reading event at Akasaka 'Twin Lion Bookstore', various things like that came up. Reading too much into it is fun, isn't it? And checking our answers together is even more fun!
Seeing Ms. Satona Tanaka, pictured on the left, who was the conversation partner for Mr. Kurakazu, with her notebook filled with detailed relationship charts and timelines, I leaned in and said, "We did that too!"
Mi: Exactly, I couldn't help but take a picture. With her permission, I've made the important parts illegible and am sharing it.
Sa: I hope that just seeing the crisscrossing lines gives you an idea of how complex this story is...
Mi: As an editor and a reader, this was my first time participating in a book club before the book was even released. Wasn't that too reckless?
Sa: Call it challenging.
Mi: But what was that excitement all about?
Sa: It was intense... The atmosphere was so heated that I instinctively ran to buy drinks. Since everyone went out of their way to join a pre-release book club, their level of engagement was extraordinary. There were also many memorable quotes, like "The prose is a métier."
*Presumably meaning the technique is excellent.
Mi: Isn't that too intellectual?
Sa: I want to use it too. "Sensei, your manuscript's prose is a métier!"
Mi: That might work if it's Mr. Obara. It was also impressive to hear someone mention that it reminded them of Mitsuhiko Kuze's "Winter of 1934: Ranpo"! The idea that Kuze wrote as if he were Ranpo to fill in those missing days. As a "nested structure" novel, it's a masterpiece comparable to that!
Sa: The highest compliment! Many people seem to think that the key character, Akira Sawatari, must have a model. Since her father is a fantasy novelist who is a doctor, Hiroko Minagawa's name was the first to come up, but others like Mari Mori and Takako Takahashi were also mentioned... Mr. Kurakazu himself said that the image of the old mansion came to him before the image of the writer. He mentioned that it left an impression on him when he was in junior high school, visiting his grandmother's family home with his father, and passing by a Western-style house that now belonged to someone else, hearing the story that his grandmother's family home used to be a doctor's office there.
Mi: As expected of Mr. Obara, he's really listening.
Sa: There was also an opinion that the interaction between "I" and Shun at the beginning of the first chapter, "Kingdom," could be enjoyed from a BL perspective. From his debut work "Summer of the Black Swallowtail," homosexual and perverse relationships have been one of the motifs in Kurakazu's works, but come to think of it, I had never asked him why he wanted to depict them. "Come to think of it, characters who don't fit into their own bodies often appear in my works. Perhaps I just like people who, like myself, feel a sense of discomfort about why they exist here." "When I was 7 or 8 years old, I used to lie in bed at night and wonder if I was really myself. I always had a feeling, bordering on fear, that if I woke up, I would have strange parents who would tell me that I had just been having a long dream. In that sense, this story might be a direct expression of questions I've had since I was a child." I thought, "I see," at Mr. Kurakazu's answer.
Mi: You know, Mr. Obara is amazing.
Sa: (Ms. Yajima, you're sitting here too, right?) He said that he honestly reflected his own anxieties and conflicts as a writer in the protagonists of the first chapter, "Kingdom," and the sixth chapter, "The Phantom Garden."
Mi: I love the beginning of "The Phantom Garden," where he's completely unemployed for six months after returning from China, and the youth part when he was a cocky literary youth. Submerging his mobile phone, torturing himself with the Zubrowka he bought in bulk, and his breath smelling like a sewer...
Sa: Mr. Kurakazu even told us that he used to push a stroller, feeling like Lone Wolf and Cub, and talk to his child, saying, "I wonder what will happen from here on out." (Laughs) He also mentioned that at the time, when mobile phone novels were at their peak, he had an acquaintance at a production company and once asked them to let him write a mobile phone novel if the opportunity arose. It was all news to me, but while the indescribable frustration he felt at the time drifts exquisitely through the work, there is also a detached humor, making this chapter the best! Ms. Tanaka also insisted, "Why do you understand the feelings of a man in his mid-40s so well!"
Mi: And when the fact was revealed that the "Akira Sawatari Palm-sized Collection," which could be called the heart of "The Nameless Kingdom," had been cut from 8 stories to 4, the looks you all gave us—"Hey Obara and Yajima, what's the meaning of this?"—were painful.
Sa: It was enough to make me feel for my life.
Mi: It seems there is a unanimous desire for the publication of "Shigeru Kurakazu Selects: Akira Sawatari Works." Even though the main volume, "The Nameless Kingdom," hasn't been released yet. The enthusiasm is incredible! Haha.
Sa: Is there any book as fortunate as that? Haha. Dear passionate Kurakazu fans, please rest assured! In this note, I will be publishing short stories by Akira Sawatari that were not included in the book. First up is this one: "House in the Green Shade."
Mi: The 480-page free preview of "The Nameless Kingdom" also has only 3 days left. After August 4th, when the book hits bookstores (the digital version will also be released simultaneously), I will keep the work on Note, but I plan to price it the same as the book.
Sa: Now is your chance! Please, even if it's just a little bit, I would be happy if you could read it and share your thoughts with the hashtag #NamelessKingdom.
Mi: We will surely go and find them! We will chase them to the very ends of the internet.
Sa & Mi: Thank you for reading the continued "Saya-Mido Newsletter" as well.
