Chapter 24 Thousand Noodles = Best Sellers

This is the best ruse I can think of, the purest love. year 2006.An izakaya in Tokyo. A middle-aged man with a thin mustache sat at the bar and poured himself a drink.The waiters at the izakaya are used to the image, as the man has frequented the place in recent years.He was very silent, and his eyes always showed infinite melancholy.It can be seen that this should be an underappreciated man. However, this day, this man was quite different from before.There was an uncontrollable smile on his face, he kept waving his hands, and even spoke incoherently.In the past, he always ordered a glass of shochu and savored it slowly; this time, he ordered a large pitch of beer, and drank most of it with a straight neck.Although he didn't know what happy things happened to this man, the waiter was also sincerely happy for him.

At this time, the news on the wall-mounted TV in the izakaya-"The 134th Naoki Award has just been announced. The writer Keigo Higashino, who has missed the award 5 times before, finally won the award undisputedly with one work!" See The photo of Keigo Higashino on TV, the waiter suddenly felt that this face seemed familiar. "Could it be..." The waiter turned to look at this mysterious man, and seemed to understand why he was so excited today... Yes, this man with unique temperament is Keigo Higashino. There is no doubt that Keigo Higashino is the "first brother" of Japanese reasoning today, and he is also the reasoning writer most familiar and favored by Chinese readers (I don't need to add "one" at all).He is synonymous with bestsellers, and he is a money printing machine in the publishing industry; each of his works has sold more than 200,000 copies. First-line stars such as Masaharu Fukuyama and Hiroshi Abe are proud of being "Too".

In the face of these achievements, we will take it for granted that Keigo Higashino is God's favorite.But this is not the case. It is no exaggeration to say that Dongye’s career as a writer was very bumpy, even more difficult than those little writers who have been unknown all their lives—otherwise, the waiter would not have seen Tianwang in such a difficult situation. Sullen for a long time. Keigo Higashino was born on February 4, 1958 in Ikuno District, Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture.When he was a child, Higashino would spare no effort to try and experience the things he was interested in.For example, if he reads an interesting comic, he will think of drawing one himself. "I like to try to imitate things that I think are great."

Keigo Higashino graduated from Osaka Municipal Koji Elementary School, Osaka Municipal Higashino Junior High School, Osaka Prefecture Hannan High School, and the Department of Engineering, Osaka Prefectural University, majoring in electrical engineering.Before entering middle school, Higashino Keigo didn't like reading, let alone reading mystery novels.Once, for some unknown reason, he read a mystery novel with high school students as the main characters.Later, Keigo Higashino recalled: "I think such a novel is really interesting... I seem to be able to write and read it myself." Borrowing a Knife to Kill".After entering university, Keigo Higashino became the captain of the school's archery department.He particularly enjoys club activities and sports, which is evident in his early work.

After graduation, Keigo Higashino became a technician of Denso Corporation.Keigo Higashino was not satisfied with the job. "I have been in the company for about two years, and I feel that the days of office workers are very monotonous, so I really want to create something different for such a stereotyped life... It should be said to be exciting....Because the realization of other goals may take time money, or need to buy some props, but novels are different, as long as you have pencils and paper, you can write anywhere. So I use the time after get off work to write novels every day, and send the finished works to the participating Selection of the Edogawa Rampo Award. I hope to have a different pillar of life outside of work...Although the income is stable, I always feel that my salary is too little. So I think if I can rely on bonuses or It should be good to earn some extra money from royalties.” It can be seen that Keigo Higashino was very frank and did not find any “gorgeous” excuses for his reasoning creation.

In 1983, Keigo Higashino competed for the 29th Edogawa Rampo Award with a "Doll's House", but he was only shortlisted for the second round. In 1984, he created again, this time passed all rounds of preliminary selection, but still did not win the final award.Compared with many writers who won awards when they were fledgling, Keigo Higashino's starting point is really hard to say. Fortunately, Dong Ye did not take the creation of mystery novels very seriously, otherwise, after two blows, it is hard to say that he would not retreat. In 1985, Keigo Higashino created a novel and finally won the 31st Edogawa Ranpo Grand Prize in one fell swoop.It is a campus-themed reasoning novel, which describes two consecutive murders in a sports club.This work is a typical case-by-case reasoning. It can be seen that Keigo Higashino did not have too many "complex" ideas at the beginning of his debut.

This award gave Keigo Higashino great encouragement.He was not very "quiet" at first, so he resolutely quit his job, came to Tokyo, and embarked on the road of a professional reasoning writer. Subsequently, Keigo Higashino created a large number of works with strong original colors, such as "Graduation-The Murder Case of Setsugekka", and so on.Most of these works are based on the campus, which is highly entertaining and does not have much "meaning" at all.Frankly speaking, Keigo Higashino is not very suitable for creating pure reasoning.Throughout his creative career, most of his works during this period are standard works without too many bright spots.The sales volume of the debut work exceeded 100,000 copies, but after that, the sales performance of Keigo Higashino's works was not outstanding, and some of them could even be described as horrible.During this period, Keigo Higashino was almost regarded as a "transparent person" by the reasoning circle.

On the one hand, if you are poor, you want to change, and on the other hand, influenced by the new original reasoning in the late 1980s, Keigo Higashino tried to incorporate more "heterogeneous" elements in reasoning novels-these elements can be non-original, But it must be in-depth, and it should be controversial and able to drive sales. In 1990, Keigo Higashino created the novel.This is recognized as a transformational work of Higashino, marking the beginning of the formation of "Higashino style".The novel does not focus on the mystery, but on the character of the character and the behavior under this character.This is obviously influenced by the reasoning of the socialist school, which belongs to realism.But the difference is that Keigo Higashino did not allow his works to bear the "sense of responsibility" of Matsumoto Seicho. To some extent, his portrayal is for the sake of "sprinkling dog blood" for sales, not for "revealing" and "exposing" in the true sense. criticism".It turned out that Keigo Higashino's choice was completely correct, and his "dog blood" spilled into the hearts of readers.Although it was still in the experimental stage, it did not cause much sensation at the time, but Higashino was firm in his ideas and spared no effort to go on.

In 1996, Keigo Higashino tasted the sweetness of transformation for the first time.The two works published this year made Keigo Higashino officially entered the ranks of best-selling authors.These two works are "The Code of the Detective" and "The Great Detective". "The Code of a Detective" is Keigo Higashino's thorough "clearing" of the reasoning of the original and the new original case. Between laughing and cursing, Higashino pointed out that this type of work has been seriously divorced from reality, and has fallen into a misunderstanding of the model and cannot extricate itself.After that, "The Code of a Detective" was the first work of Keigo Higashino whose sales exceeded the 100,000 mark.

If "The Rules of a Detective" is a "liquidation" of the "old forces", then it is a perfect display of Dongye's new style.In less than a third of the work, it clearly pointed out who the murderer is-the murderer confessed to his crime, but was vague about the motive of the crime.He told the police clearly that he had nothing else to ask but a quick death.In the next two-thirds of the text, "criminal motive" became the only suspense. Dilute the mystery, dilute the identity of the murderer, and focus on the motive of the crime, which is very rare in previous mystery novels.Motivation is the root of crime, which involves problems at the human level.In Keigo Higashino's view, this is the "deep and best-selling" element he has been looking for, and it should be carried forward, and it should be spared no effort to sprinkle "dog blood" on it—even if the vast majority of readers have a deep understanding of human nature. If they are not interested in discussing it, they will also relish in the exposure of its dark side to the sun.

After that, Keigo Higashino was unstoppable. In 1998, he created.The setting of "soul transfer" appears in this novel, which embodies the characteristics of Keigo Higashino in the new era and the diversity of Japanese mystery novels as a whole. In 1999, this work won the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award in one fell swoop, and it was also Keigo Higashino's first work that sold more than 500,000 copies. Seeing this, everyone will think that Keigo Higashino will spend the second half of his life without worrying about food and clothing; however, human beings often find troubles for themselves, and Keigo Higashino is no exception-he has set himself a life that almost makes him regret his life. Target. Accompanied by the best-selling, this work was shortlisted for the 120th Naoki Award.Later, Keigo Higashino recalled that in fact, he did not regard the Naoki Award as very important at first, nor did he create it specifically for this award.However, since the response in all aspects is so good, I naturally feel that it is a matter of course for this book to win the Naoki Grand Prize. Unexpectedly, God just likes to joke, so he lost the election in the end.Keigo Higashino's self-esteem was challenged, and he vowed to regain the Naoki Award.From then on, Japan's most popular reasoning writer began a long "Journey to Naoki". In 2000, Keigo Higashino created it.This novel is regarded by many readers as the highest masterpiece of Keigo Higashino, and the sales volume soon exceeded 1 million.This novel portrays the image of Yukiho Nishimoto, a well-known "evil girl" in Japan, and uses her experience to describe the performance of human nature under extreme conditions. It is known as the "Book of Despair". Everyone thinks that this novel will win the Naoki Prize, even Keigo Higashino's opponents have no doubts about it.However, still missed the grand prize.This loss caused controversy in the Japanese literary world. People questioned the gold content of the Naoki Award, and some people asserted that Keigo Higashino would never be eligible for the Naoki Award because he could not write better works.Higashino Keigo was also hit hard, so there is the "melancholy man" that the waiters in izakaya often see on the streets of Tokyo. The next "cups" came one after another. , and He lost the Naoki Award respectively. In addition to the previous and He, Keigo Higashino missed the Naoki Award five times, creating the most unusual record in the Japanese literary world.On the one hand, his works are the best-selling novels in Japan; on the other hand, these novels fail to achieve the ultimate goal of their creators. 2006 was an unforgettable year for Keigo Higashino. In this year, Keigo Higashino, with the determination of "if you don't succeed, you will become benevolent", wrote the book that everyone on earth knows.Dong Ye claimed that "this is the best trick I can think of, the purest love".As soon as this work was released, it sold more than 1 million copies.Many readers read the entire book in one sitting and then burst into tears. In Japan, there are three most authoritative lists of mystery novels, namely "This mystery novel is amazing", "Benge reasoning best10" and "Weekly Bunshun best10".It made history and became the only work so far that won the first place in the three lists in the same year.At the same time, this work also won the 6th Benge Mystery Fiction Award. Faced with such a work, no one can make a second choice.The 134th Naoki Prize was awarded undisputedly.From then on, Keigo Higashino took off the hat of "the man most hated by the Naoki Award" and established his status as "the first reasoning person in Japan".At the press conference after winning the award, Higashino gave the following acceptance speech with a sense of ridicule: "After losing the election, I drank soju, talked bad things about the selection committee members, and played interesting games that ordinary people can't play... Today It feels good to win, and this memory will never come back." That's why the waiter saw Keigo Higashino who didn't drink shochu and poured draft beer. After that things become very simple.Keigo Higashino writes the myth of "Best Selling King" at the rate of 2 works per year.The style of his works can be called "thousand faces", and the fields and themes involved can be described as diverse: brain medicine, biotechnology, education system, gender cognition, child abuse... But what remains unchanged is the high sales volume and "Orders" from the film and television industry.From to, from to, from to, "Dongye banknote printing machine" has never stopped working. In 2011, Keigo Higashino's new work was introduced to the mainland at a price of 300,000 yuan, creating the highest price for mystery novel transactions in mainland China. According to incomplete statistics, at present, nearly 30 works of Keigo Higashino have been adapted into film and television dramas.Among them, the more representative ones include "Detective Galileo" starring Fukuyama Masaharu, "Detective Galileo" starring Horikita Maki, Hirosue Ryoko, "Detective Code" starring Matsuda Shota, and Abe Hiroshi.Looking at this lineup, it is simply a parade of Japanese first-line movie stars.The charm of Keigo Higashino can be seen. With the popularity of Keigo Higashino, his every move has become the focus of attention of reasoning fans all over the world.Everyone is keen to discover bits and pieces of Higashino, and has regarded him as a real big star.Just ask any Dongye fan, and he will tell you everything—— Higashino has an older sister who is a flight attendant and an older sister who is a teacher. He uses their careers as the prototypes of "Murder Scene in the Cloud" and "Flower Boys Detective Series". Dongye raised a cat and named it "Mengji", and broke the news that he originally wanted to discard the cat.He once used the photo of this cat as the background of his official website, and in the short essay "Dream Back to Turin" published in 2006, he wrote the story of a human being transformed into a cat. At first it was published as a short story in the magazine "Modern Fiction", and it was planned to be included in the short story collection "Another Lie" published in 2000, but it turned out that the title and plot were not suitable for the short story, so it was recreated and published six years later. .Some people also think that Higashino said that he conceived this work for 6 years. In fact, he only thought about it for a few months, and he just stopped writing deliberately at other times. Higashino is a movie fan and has always wanted to become a movie director.As the original author, he appeared in the movie as a guest actor.It is said that Higashino made a movie when he was a student. At the premiere of the film, Higashino met the film's leading actor Erika Sawajiri during his speech, and was shocked by the latter's beauty and seemed extremely excited. Higashino is related to the famous Japanese beauty swimmer Hagiwara Tomoko and was invited to her wedding. In recent years, Higashino often went to the literary tavern in Ginza to get drunk with drinking buddies such as Osawa Zaisha and Okuda Hidero. ... Keigo Higashino has become synonymous with reasoning in Japan.His experience, especially the creative process after 2000, is the best portrayal of Japan's reasoning for the diversification of the new millennium.Under his guidance and inspiration, more and more creators have stepped into the ranks of "thousand-faced writers", and because of this, more and more creators have become best-selling novel printing machines.