"Shincho" November '08 issue

A day in September

We have a screening meeting to pick this year’s winner of the "Shincho Award for New Writers" at our office’s conference room. Five Japanese leading literature experts (Asada Akira, Kirino Natsuo, Fukuda Kazuya, Machida Kou and Matsuura Rieko) spent one month reading the works of five finalists that were selected by Shincho editors and cooperators over a period of four months from a total of over 2,000 submissions. On this day we all come together to determine the best of the best - a job that always makes me so nervous that I even tend to have emotional disorders during the days prior to the meeting. That is because there is always the idea spooking in my mind that we could overlook a genius writer as he or she surfaces only once in ten, or maybe even one hundred years. Did that genius writer enter our contest in the first place? And what if the meeting (with me playing the host) ends up in a heated debate? To select a work by a nameless author means to uncover the latent hidden potential from underneath the obvious flaws. If we make a mistake here, I believe we will be severely punished by the god of literature. This time’s selection turns out to be extremely difficult, and at some point we even consider the possibility of not giving the award to any of the finalists this time, but after much confusion we finally decide on a winner. I hope and pray from the depth of my heart that Iizuka Asami, who will make her debut as a professional author as an award winner, is strong enough to survive out there in the hard world of literature.

Another day in September

Literary critic Fukuda Kazuya is coming over from the photography department to join us in Nakameguro as an assistant manager. This "extracurricular activity" takes place almost every month, but the odd one out that I am in this group, I'm participating only for the second time this year. Today we are supposed to bring a range finder camera (such as a Leica for example) - at least that’s how I understood it - so I take my R-D1 Epson digital camera and a Minolta lens from the 1970s. Our mission: walk around in the streets, take some photos, and stop for a drink here and there. The reality: sit down for several drinks, and stand up for a photo once in a while.

The best seafood dish I had in September at the local "Maruichi" fish shop was dried Japanese anchovies. They came on skewers for less than 100 yen a piece, so I guess the shop doesn't make any profit from these. They were as tasty as fish can be, and just as good as the seasonal mackerel!

It appears to me that, in the end, we're just drinking without taking any photos at all. So here we are, drunk and staggering through the summerly hot neighborhood, having neither an aim to head for nor a product to show. Can there be a more luxurious waste of time? When I participated in this meeting for the first time, I still had some "evil thoughts" about taking some nice photographs, but that’s all gone now. About three hours after we met, we end up dining and drinking at a yakitori shop (I do try to take a photo inside but am told not to!), and for some reason the party continues in front of the ticket gate at Yutenji station, where we drink wine out of plastic cups… Later I hear from my colleagues that they even went somewhere else after that, while I manage to summon all my remaining shards of reason and return home to get dressed for a friend’s wedding party. Once I sit down on my sofa, I fall asleep and only wake up hours after the end of the party. I'm talking about RT contributor Sugatsuke Masanobu’s event, please forgive me for not showing up, Sugatsuke-san!!!
Still with a considerable amount of self-disgust, I drop by at Ohtake Shinro’s "Shell & Occupy 3" exhibition at Take Ninagawa gallery, where I meet Ohtake and Ishii Shinji. It is also a reunion with an artwork the creation of which I was lucky enough to witness from scratch last month in Uwajima. From there I catch the last train home to Misaki.

A day in October

Itoyama Akiko "Bakamono" (Shinchosha)

Although just arrived here last night with the last train, I leave Misaki again for Tokyo. I'm the host of a talk event with writer Itoyama Akiko at the Junkudo bookshop in Ikebukuro. We talk about Itoyama’s latest novel "Bakamono", a story about an alcohol addict that she previously contributed to "Shincho" magazine as part of her regular column. After the event we have a little after-party, following which we celebrate some more in Kagurazaka.