Chapter 114 The Response of Kitahara Iwa

Book lovers are all in the discussion area, chatting about the charm of urban novels.

5 PM, Asahi TV.

During the evening news preview, Hiroshi Kume appeared on the screen.

Instead of sitting formally behind the anchor desk as usual, he casually stood in front of the camera with one hand in his suit trouser pocket.

In his other hand, he held a copy of the day's Yomiuri Shimbun.

"Since this morning, the whole of Japan has been debating one question—what exactly did Professor Kitahara Iwao say last night at the Imperial Hotel?"

Kume Hiroshi spoke in a calm tone, as if he were having a casual chat with the audience. As he spoke, he slowly unfolded the newspaper in his hand, held it horizontally in front of his chest, and let the camera zoom in for a close-up, precisely focusing on the headline.

"The Yomiuri Shimbun tells us that Kitahara said: The economic pain will eventually pass, and literature will serve as a beacon to guide the people."

Kume Hiroshi read the headline, which was meant to whitewash the situation, in a standard announcer's voice, with perfect pronunciation.

After he finished reading, he paused for two seconds, and then the professional composure on his face quietly faded away, replaced by a mockery that belonged to a journalist.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there are countless procedures involved in the process of printing a newspaper from layout to printing."

"This means that countless hands can silently reach in and change black into white."

With these words, Kume Hiroshi gripped the top two sides of the newspaper with both hands.

hiss--!

Kume Hiroshi's actions were swift and decisive, tearing this national newspaper, which represented the official will and the media's compromise, in two right in the middle.

The sound of paper tearing through the air was amplified by the studio's recording equipment, so jarring it sent a chill down one's spine.

Then the two pieces of waste paper slipped from his hand and fell to the ground like two worthless rags.

Kume Hiroshi let the scraps of paper fall to his feet, his gaze piercing straight through the camera as he said, "The printed words on paper can be arbitrarily altered by the scissors of power."

Kume Hiroshi's voice wasn't loud, but it was firm and resolute: "But the live broadcast footage—they can't cut it out!"

Then, Kume Hiroshi's tone suddenly rose half an octave, as if sounding a charge: "Tomorrow night at 8 p.m., News Station prime time."

"The double award winner and the real speaker at the Imperial Hotel speech - Mr. Kitahara Iwao - will be a guest in this live broadcast room."

"What exactly did he say? Where is this era headed?"

"Tomorrow night—we'll hear it from him himself."

As Kume Hiroshi finished speaking, the red indicator light in the studio went out.

Although the several high-ranking officials from TV Asahi standing off-camera were sweating bullets, none of them dared to step forward and reprimand Kume Hiroshi for his "unauthorized actions."

In an era when print media was easily manipulated by bureaucrats in Kasumigaseki, Kume Hiroshi dared to challenge the state apparatus not because of passion, but because of the absolute leverage he held.

First of all, as a freelance anchor with his own independent agency, he is completely beyond the control of the TV station's hierarchical system and personnel transfers.

Secondly, News Station boasts a terrifying viewership rating of over 20% and billions of dollars in GG sponsorships, backed by countless tycoons and financial backers that even the government is unwilling to easily offend.

But what truly made the bureaucrats hesitant to act was Japan's postwar "meat grinder mechanism," which was capable of overthrowing the cabinet.

If Hiroshi Kume dares to expose the government's facade of peace and tranquility on a nationwide live broadcast, other commercial channels vying for ratings, and even NHK, burdened by the loss of public trust, will be forced to follow suit like wolves smelling blood.

Following this, the opposition parties will launch an attack in the Diet, taking advantage of public opinion, and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department, which specializes in killing high-ranking officials and politicians, will inevitably take advantage of the situation and intervene in the investigation.

"Media exposure – opposition pressure – special investigation department arrests people – media follow up with explosive revelations."

Once this deadly loop is formed, even the prime minister will have to step down in disgrace, let alone a few officials from the Ministry of Tibet who are trying to cover their mouths.

The Ministry of Finance can indeed make the editor-in-chief of the Yomiuri Shimbun grovel with just a few phone calls.

But they would never dare to risk triggering a special investigation and a nationwide riot by forcibly unplugging a top-rated program that 20 million citizens are watching.

This is the rule of the world.

Kitahara Iwa possessed the immunity to legal consequences of being a writer, while Kume Hiroshi precisely exploited the weaknesses of the system.

Outside the heavy oak door of the Ministry of Finance, a completely different emotion was brewing wildly like wildfire.

Ministry of Finance, Minister's Office.

5:15 PM.

As footage of Hiroshi Kume tearing up the newspaper was being broadcast wildly on various channels, the atmosphere in the Cabinet Office had already reached freezing point.

The section chief who intercepted Kitahara Iwa in the corridor of the Imperial Hotel last night is now sitting at his desk, staring intently at the small CRT television in front of him that is still playing TV Asahi.

On the screen, the scene of Hiroshi Kume tearing up the newspaper was played in slow motion again and again.

At this moment, the section chief's face was as white as a sheet of paper.

His accompanying clerk swallowed hard and asked in a tense voice, "Sir... is there any way we can pressure the TV station to stop the live broadcast tomorrow night?"

The section chief did not answer. He took off his gold-rimmed glasses and pinched his brow, which was twitching, with his thumb and forefinger.

Because he knew the answer to this question better than anyone else.

Controlling print media only requires a few phone calls because there is a long time lag between the deadline, typesetting, and printing of newspapers.

On this assembly line, there are gaps everywhere where power can easily intervene.

But the live television broadcast was seamless.

The analog television signal from 1990 was simultaneously projected onto the picture tubes of millions of households across Japan the moment it was switched off from the control room.

Without a few minutes of delayed review, no bureaucrat can forcibly unplug the plug and switch to a black screen in those fractions of a second.

News Station is a media behemoth that has consistently maintained a 20% viewership rating.

Tomorrow night at 8 PM, if Kitahara Iwao sits in front of that camera and repeats what he said last night at the Imperial Hotel, or even tears a deeper hole, it means that more than 20 million Japanese citizens will hear the truth that the Ministry of Finance is trying its best to cover up at the same second.

As for using administrative power now to directly suspend and ban tomorrow night's "News Station"?

The section chief didn't even dare to entertain such a thought.

Because doing so would only backfire.

Kume Hiroshi has torn up the newspaper and issued a challenge in front of a national audience.

If the Ministry of Finance were to forcibly shut down this flagship program at this critical juncture, it would be tantamount to admitting guilt without being asked.

This would not only instantly confirm the scandal of government interference in press freedom and incite nationwide riots, but also hand the opportunistic opposition parties and the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office Special Investigation Department the best weapon to kill them.

To silence a writer, the entire cabinet collapsed?

This is pure political suicide.

So now he can only watch helplessly as the countdown begins.

Outside the heavy oak door of the Ministry of Finance, a completely different emotion was brewing wildly like wildfire.

look forward to.

An almost famine-like, long-suppressed expectation.

Less than an hour after Kume Hiroshi's announcement aired, the news that "the live broadcast will be held at Kitahara Iwakami tomorrow night at 8 PM" spread throughout Tokyo and then swept across the entire Japanese archipelago.

The owner of an izakaya (Japanese pub) in Shinjuku wrote a large line of text on a wooden sign outside the shop with chalk: "No orders will be accepted until 8 p.m. tomorrow. We are going to watch TV Asahi live."

At the end of the workday, a section chief at a trading company in Osaka, unusually, erased the department's schedule from the whiteboard with a blackboard eraser: "The department dinner tomorrow night is canceled. Everyone go home early and watch TV."

A housewife in Nagoya whispered to her neighbor behind her at the supermarket checkout: "Don't forget to tune your channel to TV Asahi tomorrow night!"

Countless ordinary people who lost their savings, their jobs, and even their reason to keep going this winter made the same decision after hearing the news.

I canceled all my plans for tomorrow night and stayed in front of the TV.

Waiting for Kitahara Iwao, the author of "The Scream" and "Railroad Man," to sit opposite Kume Hiroshi and personally sever the last layer of hypocrisy that this era wears.

They don't need empty comfort.

They don't need false hope.

All they need is one person to sit here and tell them the truth.

In this country that is silently collapsing, the only person they trust will appear tomorrow night.

The next day, at 8:00 PM.

In countless homes across Japan, the television sets turned on precisely on time in their living rooms.

The old color TV hanging above the izakaya bar was tuned to TV Asahi, and several middle-aged men holding beer glasses stopped talking and craned their necks to stare at the screen.

Outside the shop windows of Akihabara's electronics district, more than a dozen display televisions simultaneously played the same image, causing busy commuters to stop in their tracks.

As the second hand crossed the top mark, tens of millions of CRT screens across Japan lit up precisely at the same second.

Izakayas in Shinjuku, office buildings in Marunouchi, family living rooms in Osaka... countless spaces that were originally noisy fell into an astonishingly tacit silence at this moment.

The iconic opening theme song of "News Station," so familiar to the Japanese people, shattered the silence with its heart-pounding, urgent rhythm.

The scene then cuts to the studio, where Hiroshi Kume appears in the center of the screen.

His condition today is completely different from any previous episode.

The usually relaxed and playful anchor in front of the camera was tense from the very first second tonight, his eyes piercing the lens.

As soon as he finished speaking, the director decisively switched to a panoramic shot of the studio.

On the right side of the screen, Kitahara Iwao is seen sitting quietly on a sofa in the guest area.

Today, Kitahara Iwa was wearing a dark suit without a tie, and the top button of his shirt was casually undone.

"The 103rd Akutagawa Prize and Naoki Prize double winner, Professor Kitahara Iwao."

Kume Hiroshi turned slightly to the side, first revealing his signature professional smile.

"Professor Kitahara, first of all, congratulations on making history by winning both the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes. This is an unprecedented achievement in the Japanese literary world for decades."

"Thanks."

Faced with this congratulatory message that would stir the heart of any writer, Kitahara Iwao simply nodded slightly.

"According to our station's usual schedule, we should have spent this half hour tonight discussing your creative process, talking about the literary achievements of 'The Cry,' or exclusively revealing your upcoming creative projects."

Kume Hiroshi paused for a second at this point.

With this pause, the gentle smile on his face vanished instantly, like the receding tide.

Then Kume Hiroshi leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table, his gaze fixed intently on Kitahara Iwa.

"but."

"For the past twenty-four hours, the entire nation of Japan has not been discussing your novel. Everyone is embroiled in an unprecedented argument over the same issue."

At this point, Hiroshi Kume took out two publications from below the anchor desk. One was today's Yomiuri Shimbun, and the other was Weekly Shincho.

He laid two sheets of paper, still smelling of ink, flat on the table, and the camera immediately gave them a close-up.

"The Yomiuri Shimbun told the public that you reassured them at the awards ceremony that the economic pain would eventually pass."

"However, the Weekly Shincho published a completely opposite version, saying that you believe the times are relentlessly declining."

"Mr. Kitahara, twenty million viewers are watching you right now. Please tell the whole of Japan yourself—which of these two contradictory reports is your true statement from last night?"

In that instant.

Tens of millions of viewers in front of their televisions felt their hearts leap into their throats, as if they had stopped breathing in the same second.

Faced with this sharp question that could completely offend the state apparatus, Kitahara Iwao merely glanced at the Yomiuri Shimbun on the table, his eyes showing no emotion whatsoever.

"Weekly Shincho"

Kitahara Iwa said without hesitation, without the slightest hesitation, and without any intention of making excuses or smoothing things over.

Under the gaze of twenty million eyes, Kitahara Iwao looked at Kume Hiroshi opposite him and repeated, word by word, the words that the Ministry of Finance had desperately tried to hide: "Literature can't save anything. The only thing a person holding a pen can do is record the gravity of the fall."

"That's exactly what I said."

The studio was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Upon receiving this expected answer, which was enough to completely tear away the last veil of pretense from the authorities, the light in Kume Hiroshi's eyes became even sharper.

He gave no time to recover and immediately threw a second heavy blow.

"Since you mentioned 'falling'..."

At this point, Hiroshi Kume slowed down his speech, enunciating each word as clearly as if they were striking metal.

He stared into Kitahara Iwao's eyes, and on behalf of the twenty million people watching on television, who were feeling panicked and torn apart, he asked the ultimate question: "Then, please tell us yourself—in your opinion, to what extent has Japan 'fallen'?"

In that instant.

In front of their televisions, tens of millions of viewers across Japan seemed to freeze in their tracks at the same moment.

Kitahara Iwa didn't answer immediately. Instead, he slightly adjusted his posture, loosened his clasped hands, and placed them naturally on the armrests of the chair.

Then he spoke.

Kitahara Iwa's voice wasn't loud, but with the filtering of the studio's top-notch sound equipment, every word was so clear it sounded as if it were right next to my ear.

"If you compare the Japanese economy to a person's body, then the plummeting stock market is just a rash on the surface of the skin."

"A rash is just a symptom, not a lesion."

"The real lesion is buried deeper."

At this point, Kitahara Iwa paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on the camera in front of him, as if he were looking through the screen at every Japanese citizen watching on television.

"Japanese companies today are mired in a triple crisis—overcapacity of equipment, overcapacity of debt, and overcapacity of personnel."

"The production capacity that was expanded wildly in the last period has now all become black holes that devour profits."

"And in order for companies to survive a debt crisis, the first and only target they will cut without hesitation is always people."

Kume Hiroshi didn't interrupt him, but leaned forward slightly, his brows furrowed tightly.

"I've recently noticed a trend: some large companies have begun to substantially freeze the number of positions they are hiring for recent graduates."

Kitahara Iwa's voice remained steady, but his next words made several cameramen in the studio, who were adjusting their equipment, suddenly look up.

"This means that the door to Japan's postwar 'lifetime employment system,' which it was so proud of, is being welded shut."

"Among the young people graduating this year, a large number will never be able to enter the formal employment system. And this group will certainly not be the last."

"In the next ten years, this number will snowball until it becomes so large that it completely tears apart the structure of society."

Kitahara Iwa paused for two seconds.

"If it's just a normal economic downturn, that's called a winter, but once you get through it, spring will come."

"But this time is different. This group of young people, who are about to be completely shut out by large corporations, will face a structural freeze that will last for years or even longer."

"Once the traditional employment door is welded shut, the vast majority of them may never be able to set foot on that conventional track called 'middle class' again in their entire lives."

"They will be left in the ruins forever."

When this unvarnished and brutal analysis came out of Kitahara Iwao's mouth in a calm tone, a heavy silence fell over the studio.

Upon hearing this, Kume Hiroshi frowned.

He worked as a news anchor for over twenty years, interviewing countless politicians and business tycoons, and was accustomed to all sorts of grand embellishments and false promises.

But he rarely saw anyone dare to use such precise and cold logic to ruthlessly dissect the bleak future of an entire generation in front of 20 million citizens.

"Well then, Kitahara-sensei..."

Kume Hiroshi took a deep breath, suppressing his emotions, and asked, "In your opinion, how long will this recession last?"

Kitahara Iwa shook his head and said, "Don't expect things to get better next year. The real winter has just begun, and you've only just taken the first step into it."

After he finished speaking, only the faint electrical hum of the cameras remained in the studio.

Kume Hiroshi didn't reply. Instead, he took a deep breath and let the few seconds of silence travel through the radio waves into every household.

At this moment, in the main control room, no one was shouting or yelling; there was only extreme focus, like when a machine is running at high capacity.

At this moment, the technical director stared intently at the monitoring screen. From the moment Kitahara Iwatsu threw out the "three excesses", the curve representing real-time viewership share began to climb steadily on a steep slope that defied common sense.

The technical supervisor ignored the bewildered crowd around him, decisively pressed the intercom, and quickly said, "All cameras, keep a close watch on the site. We are making history since the station was established. No one is allowed to make the slightest mistake."

And in the millions of living rooms where the television signal reaches, the reaction has already begun.

After hearing this statement, which was tantamount to a "critical notice of the times," the television station's viewer hotline miraculously remained silent, even though tens of millions of viewers across Japan had heard it.

No one called to protest, and no one cursed him for being a jinx.

This would have been completely unimaginable just a few months ago.

Three months ago, when "The Cry" was first serialized, Kitahara Iwa was regarded by a large number of people as a madman spreading panic.

But everything that has happened in these three months—the avalanche of the Nikkei index, the unexpected collapse of related companies, and the ruthless seizure of neighbors' properties by banks—has become the most realistic slap in the face, waking everyone up.

The government is lying, and the experts are covering it up.

Only this cold-blooded young man on television revealed the trump card that the authorities had been tightly guarding, throwing it directly into the eyes of the entire Japanese nation.

The truth is chilling, but at least he didn't lie.

In Shinjuku, in a cramped apartment without heating.

A middle-aged man who had just been laid off from a pharmaceutical company sat in the dark, staring intently at the television screen, which had already finished broadcasting.

Then he pressed the remote control.

The pale blue halo on the screen suddenly contracted, and the room fell into complete silence, with only the faint sound of police sirens coming from the streets of Jiaozhou outside the window.

He sat quietly on the cold tatami mat for a long time.

During the past two weeks of job hunting, he read expert comments in the newspapers about the "stable and improving economy" and countless times fell into deep self-loathing late at night.

He thought that it was because he was old and incompetent that the company was treating him like trash and kicking him out.

He thought everyone else was living a good life, and that he was the only one who had messed things up.

But just now, the young man named Kitahara Iwa on the TV screen, with a cold yet gentle blow, cruelly yet mercifully resolved his internal conflict.

It's not that you didn't try hard enough.

The entire ship was sinking.

The man slowly exhaled a breath of stale air that had been trapped in his chest for half a month, as if he had unloaded some unseen giant mountain.

Then, he stood up, supporting himself on his knees, walked to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and took out a bottle of the cheapest sparkling wine on sale.

The cold aluminum can pressed against my palm.

But he did not, as he usually did, use his drunkenness to berate the cabinet, nor did he break down in despair and cry bitterly.

He simply pulled the tab with unusual calm, tilted his head back, and took a big gulp.

The bitter, low-malt alcohol flowed down my throat into my stomach, bringing a faint warmth.

He looked at the empty room, as if talking to himself, or perhaps making a final reconciliation with this messed-up era, and murmured, "So it wasn't my fault after all..."

"So, it's going to get even colder."

Then he crushed the empty can in his hand and casually threw it into the trash can.

"Then, wear another layer."

This is what Kitahara Iwa brought to this country.

It's not cheap comfort, nor is it false hope.

Rather, it is a cold sense of solidity that arises from the ruins after the bottom line has been completely breached.

Because the most terrifying thing is never the cold winter itself.

The scariest thing is that you never know how long the winter will last.

And now, Kitahara Iwa has given them the answer.

very long.

But at least, I no longer have to live in a fantasy and wait to die.