Novelist Running Through Time - Chapter 131



Only Krnovel

EP 5 – Love Story

A book is a tool containing thoughts.

The tool affects the mind of the person who reads it.

In particular, if the book touches the reader’s heart in a very persuasive way, this causes the reader to sympathize with the author’s thoughts and change themselves to follow them.

The world calls this ‘education’, but

Eisaku Shidehara thought this was an ‘infection.’

This is a realization he gained because he experienced both the militaristic education of the Japanese Empire, the instructions of the U.S. military government, and the democratic education of modern Japan.

Education is a concept closer to violence than peace.

An external thing intrudes into a person’s thoughts and corrects the native’s thoughts according to its own will.

The reason these ‘infections’ are truly scary is that people are manipulated into thinking that they are acting according to their own will, without even knowing that they are infected with something.

Thus, it is called soft power.

Or it is called soft power.

Therefore, books are weapons.

It is a weapon that can be thrust at someone and make them move according to their will.

However, what Eisaku Shidehara wanted to create throughout his life was not weapons, but literature.

Pure literature. Beautiful literature. Japanese literature.

It is not a book with the intention of teaching anyone, but a book that makes the reader feel the joy of a boy who sat in a comic book store and flirted as a child.

Rather than thinking, “Oh, I was wrong,” this is a book that guides you to truly look inside yourself and find your own.

I wanted to do that kind of literature.

But isn’t this violence? Isn’t this also forcibly indoctrinating others with Eisaku Shidehara’s philosophy that ‘books should not be used as weapons’?

The old novelist still hasn’t found the answer.

However, even if you don’t know what’s right, you can know what’s wrong.

The most disgusting thing are Koreans. Misers who went crazy trying to make money by selling books in exchange for a child.

They are destroying many people. The boy who was used as a shield, the ghostwriter who would be hiding in the shadows, or the Korean people who would go crazy saying that a genius came out of Korea, but would confiscate their faces and point fingers when the truth is revealed…

In the end, everyone will get hurt and lose their love for literature. The publishers will make a lot of money and then leave.

In any case, the Koreans who use children to campaign, the British people who are so crazy about the attention that they don’t even care about such things and put the book up as a candidate, etc. In the end, they are ugly bastards who struggle to gain soft power.

Japanese publishers are not without problems, either. When I said something about how the world is, didn’t I immediately cut off the source of books for literary authors?

Even though the Korean publishing industry is in an inferior position to the Japanese publishing industry, promises between people should not be abandoned like that. It will inevitably come back with bad karma.

And it actually happened. Korean publishers who had been wronged by Japanese publishers made this public, condemning Japan and raising public opinion in their own country.

There is no need to mention this dizzying battle of wits that is taking place now. Why do you want to kill people who are just sitting still…

What on earth was that damn Booker Prize for that got to this point?

What on earth is that guy’s money, power, and prestige…?

It’s absolutely pathetic.

-Thought Eisaku Shidehara.

However, there is no need to hate children who are caught up in the dirty affairs of adults.

Eisaku Shidehara spoke with a slightly broken Korean pronunciation, but as a person who knows that his foreign language pronunciation is not perfect, he did his best to refine it.

“Nice to meet you. “I am Eisaku Shidehara.”

“I am also pleased to meet you. “You speak Korean very well.”

“Thank you.”

The writer I ran into by chance at the back of the Booker International Prize venue looked smaller than I thought.

His appearance is somewhere between a boy and a child. However, the mature aura unique to the boy wearing a blanket made him seem like something between a boy and an adult.

At that time, when Eisaku Shidehara was searching the boy with curious eyes, the boy opened his mouth.

“I really enjoyed reading ‘Harvest and Decay.’”

“ah. is that so. It must have been a difficult book. Thank you.”

It’s a common greeting.

Contrary to his words, Eisaku Shidehara passed off the greeting calmly.

At least until this moment.

“It was interesting to analyze the concept of succession politically. The ending, which states that one being cannot hand over everything it has to another being, also left a deep impression. The importance of one’s own identity and identity, but the lack of understanding that comes from that. Did you set the main character as a politician to shed light on this topic? Well, since all the characters in the story are people who want power but are hurt by it, it didn’t feel strange at all if they acted a bit unrealistic and avant-garde. I think you structured the novel very tightly in that respect. I was also impressed by the way you explained the difference between English and Continental law by comparing it to human personality. In the end, it’s a metaphor that is directly connected to the theme of the differences between people and the back and forth between them, right?”

“uh?”

* * *

A genius of language.

This is the nickname of Eisaku Shidehara, who speaks several languages ​​at a high level.

However, this is just a nickname given by the media to satisfy the Japanese public opinion that admires and is jealous of Tolkien, saying, ‘There is a Tolkien in Japan too!’

Eisaku Shidehara learned the languages ​​of many countries not through genius, but through hasty lectures whenever a need arose in life.

So Eisaku Shidehara could not understand half of what the writer was saying as he began to ramble.

However, Shidehara did not have the courage to say, ‘I know how to speak Korean, but I don’t know all the difficult words, and if I speak that fast, they won’t understand, so please speak more slowly.’ So Shidehara nodded little by little with a serious expression.

“hmm. hmm.”

But even though I don’t know what he’s talking about, I know that this kid understands his novel at an expert level.

But at that time, I couldn’t believe it and was looking at the boy with suspicion.

Words that could not be ignored came from the boy.

“Is it just because it is the last work? It can be said that the fact that the writer’s intention to convey all of his philosophy in one book is too clear is a disadvantage in its own way. Of course, the tempo of the novel was not loose, but it was a bit…

“Matte (wait).”

For a moment, Shidehara was startled, as if he had encountered a ghost.

Anyone would react this way if a secret they had been keeping secret came out of the mouth of someone they had never expected to know.

“Well, how do you do that? Okay, okay, okay? Did you understand?”

“yes?”

“I haven’t told my children yet that this novel is my last work…”

Eisaku Shidehara was so embarrassed that he stuttered and muttered personal details that he did not need to talk about.

‘Harvest and Decay’ is his last novel. He refined this work for many years, thinking that it was his will as a writer.

But how could a young child from a neighboring country know such an intimate secret?

The boy with eyes filled with strange gunfire responded.

It seemed like he was wondering why he didn’t know this obvious fact.

“Yes, I read it in a book.”

The boy who gave Shidehara a shock that felt like hitting the back of his head with a hammer disappeared like the wind.

“Okay then.”

Shidehara stood still and looked in silence at the spot the boy had left. Could it be that I was just dreaming for a moment? no.

Finally, the moment when he slowly looked back on what he had just experienced.

“ah.”

Eisaku Shidehara was convinced that all the incredible rumors related to this boy were true.

then,

‘oh my god…’

What on earth did he do to that boy?