Chapter 117 The Ministry of Finance's Actions Against Kitahara Iwa!

three days later.

When the weekly bestseller lists of Tohan and Nihonhan, the two major publishing distributors, and Kinokuniya Bookstore were updated simultaneously, the entire Japanese publishing industry fell into a collective silence.

It's not because a particular book sold exceptionally well.

Rather, it was because the top three spots on the list presented an absurd scene that sent chills down the spines of all industry peers.

First place: The Ring Trilogy - Kitahara Iwao (Shinchosha).

Second place: "The Scream" - Kitahara Iwa (Shinchosha).

Third place: "Confession" - Bei Yuanyan (New Wave Society).

Among them, "Confessions," a suspenseful work exploring juvenile delinquency and revenge, which was released earlier, experienced a terrifying sales reversal driven by the nationwide craze sparked by the sequel to "The Ring." It managed to climb back to the third position on the bestseller list, even surpassing the new books of other big-name authors.

Same author.

The same publishing house.

After personally placing these three books in the top three positions on the bestseller display shelf, the manager of Kinokuniya Bookstore's Shinjuku main store took two steps back and stared blankly at the whiteboard completely covered by the three words "Kitahara Iwa".

The store manager has worked at this bookstore for 23 years. He has experienced the most glorious golden age of the Japanese publishing industry and witnessed countless best-selling miracles.

Strictly speaking, it is not entirely unprecedented in the history of Japanese books for one person to dominate the top three spots on the list.

For example, Haruki Murakami's national-level author "Norwegian Wood" was released in two volumes at the same time, or Jiro Akagawa, a prolific author, relied on his hit series to dominate the charts.

However, the "list-slaughtering" created by Kitahara Iwa was completely different in nature, and even exuded a terrifying power of domination that made people's scalp tingle.

He didn't take advantage of splitting the book into two volumes, nor did he rely on self-copying of the same theme and characters to live off his past achievements.

Instead, it used three completely independent and stylistically different stories of despair to dominate the charts.

With its mind-blowing science fiction virus panic, its cruel and cold portrayal of the lower classes, and its campus revenge that directly confronts the dark side of human nature, it has taken over the reading nerves of the entire country in an all-round and comprehensive way.

Meanwhile, in the editorial departments of major publishing houses, the editors-in-chief all had the same expression when they looked at the list—a numbness that came after being mercilessly crushed by main battle tanks, leaving them unable to even feel jealousy.

At the day's topic selection meeting, a senior editor of Kodansha's paperback section slammed a copy of the list onto the conference table.

On that list, ranked fourth was none other than Junichi Watanabe, a veteran master of Japanese literature, whose masterpiece "Bubbles" was just released in February.

This traditional bestselling king, known for his exquisite portrayals of male-female relationships and medical themes, has high hopes for this new work that has been polished for a long time.

During an internal seminar before the book's release, Watanabe himself confidently declared that "Foam" perfectly captured the spirit of the times and had the potential to go head-to-head with the then-popular Kitahara Iwao in this year's book market.

As it turned out, he did encounter it.

But the outcome was so tragic that it was unbearable to watch.

At the same time, in the study of Denenchofu's private residence.

Junichi Watanabe sat quietly at his large desk, holding the sales fax his assistant had just sent him.

This literary giant, usually so elegant and accustomed to being surrounded by flowers and praise, stared at the top of the list, completely sealed off by the three words "Kitahara Iwa," and remained silent for a long time.

Gradually, a hint of bitterness, which he had been looking composed on, appeared on his face.

He didn't throw a tantrum like a sore loser, nor did he call to berate the publisher for their poor promotion.

As a top expert who has been immersed in the literary world for decades, he had already foreseen today's ending after buying the three "Midnight Ring" books late last night and reading a few chapters.

This isn't a difference in marketing; it's a crushing defeat in terms of strength.

Faced with this monster that uses science fiction viruses and extreme despair to cultivate the national spirit, the delicate love between urban men and women in his works, and the emotional struggles about the bubble era, suddenly seem as thin as the decadent music of the last century.

Junichi Watanabe shook his head self-deprecatingly, then gently turned the fax paper with the brutal sales figures face down on the table.

Then he took off his reading glasses, looked out at the courtyard, and was completely speechless.

In the Kodansha meeting room, the atmosphere dropped to freezing point.

The editor-in-chief took off his glasses, wearily rubbed his temples, and addressed the room full of silent editors, his voice filled with a deep sense of powerlessness: "You can see for yourselves."

With trembling fingers, he pointed heavily to the fourth spot on the photocopy: "The top three are all Kitahara Iwao! And Watanabe-sensei, who's in fourth place... as our Kodansha's ace this year, the new book we spent an entire quarter planning and heavily invested in promoting throughout the Tokyo subway, and its first-week sales aren't even a fraction of what the third-place book sells!"

"Under the shadow of those three towering figures like Kitahara Iwa, Japanese readers these days don't care what the fourth-place writer wrote at all! Even the media didn't give Watanabe-sensei a single small section!"

At this point, he sighed weakly and pushed the copy to the center of the conference table: "This person... has turned Japan's national bestseller list into his own private garden."

The meeting room was completely silent. Everyone stared at the dishearteningly low numbers on the list, and no one spoke, for they had nothing to say.

However, while the whole society was celebrating Kitahara Iwa's "slaughter of the rankings", in the high-level offices of Kasumigaseki Daizo no Sho, a plan to strangle him with public opinion was quietly taking shape.

In a secluded room of the minister's office, the heavy blinds were drawn tightly shut, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of smoke.

"He is provoking the entire state apparatus."

A grim-faced bureau chief slammed a news clipping of "The Ring" dominating the bestseller list onto the table, gritting his teeth as he said, "At the awards ceremony at the Imperial Hotel, we asked him to give the people some confidence, but he not only refused! Later, on the live broadcast of 'News Station,' he completely exposed the true nature of our Tibet Province."

The section chief sitting opposite him pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses and immediately replied with a gloomy face: "Since he's being shameless and unwilling to obediently play the role of a 'national writer' who whitewashes the truth, then we don't need to be polite to him."

"But sir... we really can't refute him on the macroeconomic data right now; the Nikkei index, which is plummeting every day, is endorsing his statement."

"If you can't win on the main battlefield, can't you find a weakness?"

The bureau chief leaned back in his leather chair, tapping his fingers lightly on the table. A sinister glint flashed in his eyes as he said, "He no longer writes orthodox social realism or pure literature. Instead, he's written these ghost-and-spirit horror novels. He's handing us a knife himself."

"Attacking his economic views would make us seem guilty, but smearing his 'character' is a soft target that can be fatal."

Upon hearing this, the section chief's eyes lit up, and he instantly understood: "You mean... to start with the integrity of scholars?"

"Go and make the arrangements."

The bureau chief stubbed out his cigarette and said, "Let those media outlets that received our subsidies go and stir up trouble."

"Take the example of a genius who won two awards, who, for the sake of money, willingly degenerated into a street writer who mass-produces low-level sensory stimulation."

"Once the people begin to believe that he is a shameless scoundrel who would abandon even the most basic literary principles for money, then his alarmist economic predictions on television will naturally become worthless garbage."

"Understood, sir. I'll take care of it right away."

Accompanied by several internal encrypted phone calls that left no written record, Xia Guan dialed directly into the editorial offices of several conservative government-run newspapers and literary review publications.

The next morning, as the shutters of newsstands across Japan opened, an invisible giant net woven by public power crashed down.

Several conservative media outlets, which usually pride themselves on objectivity and neutrality, simultaneously published lengthy commentaries with a strikingly consistent tone on their core cultural sections:

The Sankei Shimbun's culture section headline reads: "The rapid decline of a double-award genius: Kitahara Iwao's compromise with commerce and vulgarity."

The long-established political commentary monthly, *Guomin Gonglun*, published its opening remarks: "From a Beacon of the Times to Street Literature—Has Kitahara Iwa run out of ideas? On the social responsibility and moral decline of writers."

The authors of these articles used an extremely distressed tone to directly attack Beiyuan Yan's integrity as a scholar.

Their core arguments are identical: a double award-winning master who just delivered a speech at the Imperial Hotel representing the pinnacle of Japanese literature, and a national writer who should have used his pen to dissect the pains of the times, has turned around and started mass-producing horror novels that rely on low-level sensory stimulation to grab attention.

This is not only a desecration of the two sacred awards, the Akutagawa Prize and the Naoki Prize, but also a despicable betrayal of the literary responsibility that the era has bestowed upon him.

The Ministry of Finance's calculations were undeniably shrewd.

This is a typical political strangulation in the Xiaguan style, where you are not debated with objective data because there is no benefit in winning and you lose face in losing.

So they chose a more covert and insidious path: character assassination.

In the logic of politicians, the easiest way to destroy a prophet is not to disprove his predictions, but to prove to the public that he is a profit-driven charlatan.

Once the public begins to believe that Kitahara Iwa is a depraved writer who is "unscrupulous" and "willing to write anything for money," then his previous remarks on television about the economic crisis that stung the Ministry of Finance will naturally be seen as sensationalist rhetoric deliberately fabricated to sell books and attract attention.

This seemingly flawless combination of political moves did indeed trigger a frenzy within the literary world in a very short period of time.

That evening, the long-absent sound of cheerful clinking glasses could be heard in several high-class literary salons in Ginza.

Those traditional, old-school writers who were already struggling to breathe under the weight of Kitahara Iwao and whose manuscripts were repeatedly rejected by publishers seemed to have suddenly grasped a lifeline in the darkness.

Like a pack of hungry wolves parched by drought, they eagerly jumped out, spewing sour grapes and echoing each other's sentiments in various columns and television seminars:

"To wield the supreme honor of two awards to write bloody, sensationalist thrillers is tantamount to trampling the dignity of pure Japanese literature in the mud!"

"A speculator who's willing to sell even the bare minimum of literary integrity is now mortgaging his reputation for short-term, astonishing sales. This kind of fast-food garbage, pandering solely to the lower-end market, will eventually be scorned by genuine readers!"

Jealousy is the oldest and ugliest emotion in humankind.

The harsh reality that Kitahara Iwa dominated the top three spots on the bestseller list had already driven this group of people mad with jealousy.

This moral trial, secretly launched by the Ministry of Finance, finally provided these losers, who were crushed in sales, with a legitimate, even self-righteous, outlet to vent their frustrations at Kitahara Iwa.

However, the elites in Kasumigaseki, who were used to drinking expensive coffee and giving orders in their temperature-controlled offices, had been arrogant for too long.

They fatally underestimated two things: First, the extent of the Japanese people's physiological aversion to the condescending "preaching" of the official mouthpiece, having experienced the bursting of the bubble economy and been repeatedly beaten down by reality.

Second, how violent is the backlash and rebellious psychology of ordinary people when they are driven to the brink of despair?

When those articles, thick with official jargon and condescendingly denouncing Kitahara Iwa's "degeneration," flooded the newspapers, they not only failed to "smear" him as expected, but instead felt like a bucket of cold water being poured into a pot of boiling oil.

The public's first reaction wasn't disappointment in the writer, but rather an instinctive revulsion...

"These well-dressed liars are once again using public power to try and silence the only person who dares to tell us the truth!"

This vigilance is not only instinctive, but also learned from the bloody lessons of reality.

After all, in the past few months, the government's credibility has plummeted along with the Nikkei index.

The experts on TV keep shouting that "the fundamentals are good" and "the stock market is about to bottom out and rebound," but the reality is that a large number of small and medium-sized business owners are lining up to hang themselves in the middle of the night, and there is a wave of layoffs where people are forced to leave office buildings with cardboard boxes in their hands.

Officials in Tibet promised a soft landing for the economy, while ordinary people lined up in the cold to receive unemployment benefits.

Now, the same group of habitually lying newspapers have jumped out again in unison, accusing Kitahara Iwa of "low character" and "only caring about making money."

Ordinary people who have experienced betrayal made a judgment within a fraction of a second of seeing these headlines: Tibet is in a hurry.

Unable to resolve the economic collapse, they decided to deal with Kitahara Iwa, which had foretold the collapse.

Since the authorities want to blacklist him based on morality and sales, the people have decided to use the most straightforward and brutal method—their wallets—to slap the officials of Xiaguan hard across the face.

Within just three days of the smear article being published, the sequel to "The Ring" not only didn't flop, but instead experienced an astonishing surge in retaliatory consumption. Daily sales not only didn't decrease but actually increased, defying the market trend and rising by a full 30%!

A truly magical sight has appeared at the cash registers of bookstores across Japan.

Among those queuing to pay were even white-collar workers and housewives who never read horror novels.

Many readers are clutching the copy of the Sankei Shimbun that published the critical article.

They walked up to the cashier, slammed the newspaper down on the counter with a loud "thud," pointed to the large black characters, and said to the people around them, "Have you seen this press release?"

"Just because those politicians insulted Kitahara-sensei, I made a special detour to buy three extra copies today!"

"I'll keep one for myself, give one to a friend, and send the last one to the Ministry of Finance's mailbox!"

This almost cathartic collective fervor reached its peak during street interviews in front of Shinjuku Station.

In the cold evening wind, a middle-aged man wearing a cheap old jacket, clutching his occupational safety office number tag tightly in his hand, faced the NHK camera lens with red eyes.

Like a wild beast cornered, he roared out the long-suppressed sentiments of the Japanese people at the bottom of society: "Those high-ranking bureaucrats think horror novels are vulgar, right? They think Kitahara-sensei's writing is beneath them?!"

"Then let me ask them, no matter how scary Sadako is, is she more terrifying than a bankruptcy collection notice issued by the Ministry of Finance?!"

"Is it more terrifying to wake up tomorrow morning and find that your whole family doesn't know where to get a bite to eat?!"

His voice was hoarse and trembling with extreme anger and grievance. Spittle flying, he pointed at the camera and said, "What's wrong with Kitahara-sensei writing ghost stories? At least he clearly told us on the cover that they were fake!"

"But what about your Tibet province? You wear suits and ties, and every day you tell us blatant lies on television!"

"You think his writing is scary? Then why don't you just make the stock market rise again!"

"Give me back my savings from the past ten years and my job!!"

This interview with an ordinary person, which lasted no more than twenty seconds, was broadcast verbatim on the television news that evening without any editing.

It was like a heavy-duty depth charge, landing precisely in the powder keg of Japanese society, completely igniting the anger and resonance of the entire nation.

The Ministry of Finance's attempt to use "morality" and "refinement" to manipulate Kitahara Iwa is shattered in the face of the most primitive and brutal struggle for survival of ordinary people at the bottom of society, turning into a lofty joke.

What truly cemented the Ministry of Finance's campaign of public opinion, which aimed to condemn intellectuals against each other, was a special column published on the front page of the arts and culture section of the Asahi Shimbun the following day.

I'm currently reading Chapter 117, "The Ministry of Finance's Actions Against Kitahara Iwa!" (Two-in-One), and I'm completely engrossed in it.