Chapter 23 Chapter VII New Century

Japanese reasoning is infinite. 1993.A bookstore in Japan. A young man in weird attire with rather artistic temperament was wandering aimlessly.He originally planned to buy a few books related to his career, but by accident, he came to the special shelf of mystery novels.A mystery novel attracted this young man because he saw the slogan on the waist of the book was "impossible crime". "Impossible crime?" The young man frowned. "How can there be impossible crime in this world? Since the crime has already happened, there must be a reason for it. How can there be 'impossible'!"

The young man picked up the book and looked at the cover - "Greetings from Mitarai by Shoji Shimada".At that time, neither "Mitarai" nor "Shimada Shoji" were completely unfamiliar to this young man.He bought the book with strong doubts, ready to "debunk" the so-called "impossible crime". Soon, youth was conquered.He was obsessed with Shimada Shoji's unconstrained imagination and couldn't extricate himself for a long time.After closing the book, the young man strengthened his belief: "I want to create mystery novels." The young man's dream finally came true, and his appearance changed the face of the Japanese reasoning literary world.His name is Kyogoku Natsuhiko.

The period from 1987 to 1993 was the first stage of new Benge reasoning, and a large number of writers represented by Ayatsuji Hirohito emerged.Since 1994, the new book has entered the second stage, presenting itself to readers in a more unbelievable appearance.And its landmark event was Kyogoku Natsuhiko's debut in 1994. Kyogoku Natsuhiko was born on March 26, 1963 in Otaru, Hokkaido.He has been fond of reading since he was a child, and has read a lot of uncommon books, and the strange knowledge accumulated in his head can be called a car load.He made up his mind since he was a child that he must let the knowledge that others seem useless shine in his own hands.

Among the many knowledges, Kyogoku Natsuhiko is especially obsessed with Japanese monster culture.He is a loyal fan of Shigeru Mizuki, the most famous monster painter in modern Japan, and even claimed to be Shigeru Mizuki's disciple at one point.In Kyogoku Natsuhiko's heart, those creepy monsters are Japan's "national treasures". It would be a great pity if they could not be promoted to the whole world. Kyogoku Natsuhiko studied at a design school and majored in graphic design.After graduation, he co-founded a studio with several friends.I don't know whether it was because the Japanese economy was sluggish at the time, or because Kyogoku Natsuhiko was not good at studies, and the business of the studio was very slow.As a result, Kyogoku Natsuhiko has a lot of leisure time.Kyogoku, who was bored, thought of what he had just read—if he could combine mystery novels with Japanese monster culture, there should be dazzling sparks.

Many years ago, Kyogoku Natsuhiko tried to create a Yokai manga, but he never took it into action.Now, he skipped the drawing stage and went straight to a mystery novel called .The novel takes Akihiko Chuzenji, the owner of the second-hand bookstore "Kyogokudo", as the protagonist, and tells a story related to the legendary monster "Guhuo Bird"-the daughter of the Kuonji family failed to give birth after 20 months of pregnancy, and A year and a half ago, her husband mysteriously evaporated in a closed room... Gushou bird is a kind of monster in Japanese culture, which is said to be transformed from a woman who died of dystocia.This feathered monster is half human, half bird, and always holds a blood-stained baby in its arms.

In the Japanese concept, abnormal human behavior, even criminal behavior, is caused by the possession of evil spirits.Kyogoku Natsuhiko skillfully concretized the "evil spirit" as a "gushou bird", thus creating this magical story.Akihiko Chuzenji uses reasoning to decipher the truth, and drives away the "evil" attached to the human body and mind, so that everything can return to normal. It also ensures the "scientific nature" of reasoning. After the completion, Kyogoku Natsuhiko found that after turning all the elements he wanted to show into words, the length of the book was unacceptably long.He had to start cutting, but after several cuts, the manuscript was still very thick.Kyogoku originally wanted to submit the manuscript to the jury of the "Edogawa Ranpo Award", but in the end he did not do so because of space constraints.

Kyogoku Natsuhiko, who is very confident in the work, decided not to take the usual path and directly handed over the manuscript to the publisher.This is a very outrageous behavior in Japan, which pays attention to rules and traditions-you must know that even masters such as Edogawa Ranpo, Yokomizo Masashi, Matsumoto Seicho or Shimada Shoji all made their debut through essay contests ! Kyogoku Natsuhiko picked up a mystery novel and called the publishing house according to the contact information on the copyright page-this lucky publishing house is the Kodansha we mentioned many times.It was a public holiday at that time, and there should have been no one answering the phone at the publishing house.But as fate would have it, a temporary editor picked up the phone.After he learned of Kyogoku Natsuhiko's intentions as a newcomer, he expressed the hope that Kyogoku would mail the manuscript to the publishing house.As a result, a manuscript of more than 1,000 pages soon appeared in front of the editor.

Kyogoku Xiayan originally thought that even if the editor valued him very much, it would take half a year at the earliest to hear the news.As a result, three days later, the editor called and asked Kyogoku Natsuhiko to publish this manuscript in Kodansha no matter what.In this way, Kyogoku Natsuhiko's extraordinary book was published in such an extraordinary way. The publication of the novel caused a sensation. Readers were overwhelmed by Kyogoku Natsuhiko's genius and erudition, and exclaimed that mystery novels can use monsters as carriers.Subsequently, Kyogoku Natsuhiko continued the brilliance of the "Kyogokudo Series". As of 2010, he has successively created 7 volumes of this series: of long works.At the same time, Kyogoku Natsuhiko also created the "Alley Talk Hundred Story Series" and many non-series works, all of which are based on Japanese monster culture.The "exorcism" mode in "Exorcism" has also been continued.

Kyogoku Natsuhiko's works have been adapted into comics, film and television dramas, stage plays, etc., which set off an unprecedented "monster craze" in Japan.Some commentators even believe that Kyogoku Natsuhiko will become the first reasoning writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. The appearance of Kyogoku Natsuhiko broke the last layer of taboo on the reasoning of Xinbenge.Demons and ghosts with a strong "superstition" color can enter mystery novels, and what else can be excluded from the sight of mystery writers? At the same time, the appearance of Kyogoku Natsuhiko also affected the debut mechanism of the entire Japanese reasoning literary world.The publishing house began to reflect: "Should we strictly abide by the stereotypes and continue to follow the principle of 'award-winning debut'? Should we give those talented newcomers a broader stage and let them sway freely?" The answer is of course yes, Otherwise, you will miss the next Kyogoku Natsuhiko!

As a result, Kodansha created the Mephisto Awards.This award is different from the traditional reasoning award. There is no bonus, no word limit, and no deadline for soliciting papers. The only criterion is "good-looking".Once approved by the editor, it can be directly published by Kodansha. Compared with traditional awards, Mephisto can be described as a slanted sword. Because of this, it has attracted a large number of excellent works with the same interests.After the "0th Mephistopheles Award" made its debut, Hiroshi Mori's "All Become F", Wu Sheqiao's "Double Body Palace", and "Scissor Man" with unique styles and other excellent works They have been unearthed one after another. Among them, "Double Body Palace" and "Scissor Man" were the award-winning works in the same year (1999); before that, in 1998, six awards were awarded in one year.It is conceivable that the Mephisto Award is indispensable for the continuous emergence of new works by newcomers in the Japanese literary world.

More important than digging out the number of authors and works is the spirit of "eclectic talents" represented by the Mephisto Award.Japanese writers have been encouraged to experiment with multiple possibilities of reasoning novels, and Japanese reasoning has shown a colorful style.Whether it is the trend of the new book led by Shimada Shoji, or Kyogoku Natsuhiko’s self-contained monster reasoning, or the amazing appearance of Otoichi, Isaka Kotaro, and Michio Hidesuke, all of them show that Japanese mystery novels are reaching what all imaginations can reach. Challenge the boundaries of the world and create countless unique works, so as to continuously bring fresh reading experience to readers. Applying the evaluation of Taiwan's unique culture, after 1994, Japanese reasoning developed in the direction of "big infinity" and has not stopped until today. During this period of time, Yasuhiko Nishizawa, who debuted in 1995, and Hiroshi Mori, who debuted in 1996, led the development of reasoning in Japan together with Kyogoku Natsuhiko. Nishizawa Yasuhiko was born in Kochi Prefecture in 1960 and studied in the United States. In 1990, he created a work called "Liansha", which participated in the competition for the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Shoji Shimada saw this work by accident and thought Yasuhiko Nishizawa was a very promising writer.Nishizawa Yasuhiko was encouraged and made a major revision to "Liansha" and renamed it.Shoji Shimada recommended this work to Kodansha, and it was officially published in 1995. It is a collection of short stories about nine unimaginable dismemberment cases.We have always believed that "dismemberment" is a horrible perverted act, a product of the murderer's mind distortion.However, Yasuhiko Nishizawa gave readers a different experience-in the book, "dividing the corpse" is humorous, and "dividing the corpse" is unavoidable.Reinterpreting the mystery from a perspective beyond the current limit of human cognition is the biggest feature of Yasuhiko Nishizawa's works. After that, Nishizawa Yasuhiko created a large number of science fiction mystery novels.He is unconstrained in the sci-fi world he built, but the final truth and answer fully meet the "Benge" standard, which makes him the undisputed first person in SF reasoning.Among them, and "Personality Transfer Killing" are his most representative works. We've all played video games.In the game, every critical moment, we always like to save the progress, so that if the ending is not satisfactory, we can read the file and start again.I believe that everyone will have such a wish: "If you can archive and read files in reality, how wonderful life will be!" Well, Yasuhiko Nishizawa is here, and he gave the protagonist such an experience—— "I" has a special function, which can repeat my own experience, and there are 9 chances in total.No matter what happens in the first 8 times, the event will return to the original point in the end; but in the 9th time, as long as "I" "intervenes" at key points, the ending will be very different from before.During a family gathering, "my" grandfather was murdered, and the murderer was undoubtedly among "my" relatives.Therefore, "I" entered the "archive-reading" mode, eliminating the suspects one by one, trying to find the real culprit and prevent the murder from happening. "Personality Transfer Killing" also chose a science fiction background.During an earthquake, six strangers escaped into a hut.This hut has a special device that can transfer the host of the soul, that is, your body remains unchanged, but the soul in your body will float into other people's bodies, while the one that resides in yourself is another soul.What's even more bizarre is that this transfer is timed, that is to say, after a certain time, the souls will transfer again in a certain order!As a result, the six people in the hut are caught in an improbable "roulette" deadlock. If you want to get your body back, you have to kill 5 other people.But the problem is that you can only complete the murder during the time period when the soul returns to yourself, and outside of this time, you have to ensure that your body is not killed by others-it's really tangled! It is not difficult to see that Nishizawa Yasuhiko's sci-fi reasoning is similar to Kyogoku Natsuhiko's monster reasoning. They are all trying to set an unconventional element as a "universal truth" that all readers abide by. logical reasoning.As it turns out, his SF reasoning was approved by readers.In addition to the several works mentioned above, Nishizawa Yasuhiko's representative works include "God's Logic, Human Magic", "The Night of Killing Intent", etc.Among them, the series of works featuring Jiang Qianxiao are particularly popular. Hiroshi Mori was born in Aichi Prefecture on December 7, 1957, and studied at Nagoya University, studying environmental studies.After graduation, Mori Hiroshi stayed at the university as a teaching assistant and began to write mystery novels. In 1995, Hiroshi Mori created his debut novel "The Cold Chamber and the Doctors".This work takes Saikawa, a taciturn teaching assistant in the Department of Architecture of a university, and Moe, a beautiful girl student who is extremely cute, as the protagonists, and deduces a series of mysteries with a scientific nature.Hiroshi Mori submitted his work to Kodansha, which was unanimously approved by the editors.During the same period, Hiroshi Mori also created another work in this series "All Become F".Everyone agreed that, as a series of works, "All Become F" is more suitable to be launched first.So, in 1996, "All Becoming F" was published under the title of "The First Mephistopheles Work". Different from Kyogoku Natsuhiko's "Yokai Studies" and Nishizawa Yasuhiko's "Science Fiction", the cornerstone of Mori Hiroshi's architectural works is "science department knowledge", that is, "science student patents" such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry.In Hiroshi Mori's works, not only the protagonists Detective Saikawa and Moe are teaching assistants and students of the Department of Architecture, but other characters are mostly scientists, researchers, and undergraduates.Mori Hiroshi's novels are based on the science of the real world, and all mysteries can be solved with precise "calculations".Therefore, Hiroshi Mori's work is a perfect fusion of science and literature.Afterwards, Hiroshi Mori created a number of "Saikawa & Moe Series" works, and also wrote "Scarlet Letter Series", "Knight Series", "Four Seasons Series" and other works, becoming one of the most famous reasoning writers in Japan. After three years of transformation in 1994, 1995 and 1996, marked by the debut of Natsuhiko Kyogoku, Yasuhiko Nishizawa and Hiroshi Mori, Japanese reasoning literature ushered in a new situation.The presentation of this diversity of works can be seen as the development of new basic reasoning to a new stage, but as far as I am concerned, I prefer to define this phenomenon as the arrival of a brand new "diversified era". The essence of so-called literary creation is that the author constructs his own universe through his works, and injects his own worldview into this universe.This universe may not be exactly the same as the real universe, and the difference between the two can often reflect the level and depth of thought of the creator, and also determine the quality and influence of the work.After 1994, Japanese reasoning has broken all the "taboos" in the field of creation, and has completely established its own worldview.This shows that reasoning literature has an unshakable position in Japan, and it also marks that Japan has become the core of world reasoning literature without dispute.Some commentators even believe that after 1994, "Japanese mystery novels" have broken away from the constraints of "mystery novels" and become an independent genre. After entering the new millennium, the diversification of reasoning in Japan has become more and more obvious, and it has also given birth to a number of king-level writers who go beyond the scope of reasoning literature.And the representative among them is undoubtedly the man named "Keigo Higashino".