>>5
you're joking right? I'll post it, anyway
basically, he only ever wrote one other book, and he's never writing again
Afterword
"In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the hikikomori
phenomenon suddenly broke out wildly across Japan.
As a sharp-eyed man, I thought I'd jump on the tide of the times and
earn a ton of money. I'll write a story about hikikomori and become
famous! I'll become a best-selling author with my hikikomori story! I'll
go to Hawaii using the royalties! I'll go to Waikiki!
My dreams stretched out endlessly. However, once I actually started
trying to write the story, I soon regretted it. It was painful.
What happens when a real hikikomori writes a hikikomori story?
Inevitably, you start having to use your own experiences in your
creation. You start having to write about yourself.
Of course, stories are fiction, and no matter how much one of the
characters I used looks like me, he is himself, and I am myself. Even if we
speak the same way and live in the same apartment, we are still
unconnected. We inhabit separate worlds.
Regardless, it was still painful. It was embarrassing. I felt as though I
were taking my own shame and revealing it to the whole world.
In the end, I got caught up in paranoid fantasies.
What if everyone is secretly laughing at me while I write this kind of
story? I really thought this.
In truth, I still can't read this story objectively.
Each time I reread it, I start to have light hallucinations. I break into
a cold sweat.
Each time I approach one of a few specific places in the plot, I start
wanting to throw the computer out the window.
At other particular points, I start wanting to run away from home to
live deep in secrecy in the mountains of India.
That was probably because the themes addressed in this story are
not things of the past for me but currently active problems.
I can't look at it from afar, thinking, "How young I was then."
This is all a real problem.
For the time being, I went ahead and wrote the whole thing. I
decided to write everything I could. And what came out of it was this
story.
Reading back over it, my face turning red. . . well, how is it, really?
When I read it on days when I'm in a good mood, I think. Amazing!
I'm a genius!
And on days when I'm depressed, I think, I suck to have written
something like this! Die right now!
Even so, I think that what is probably true about it is simply: I wrote
everything I could possibly write.
Well then, hello, everyone. My name is Tatsuhiko Takimoto. This
is my Afterword, for my second book."
>second book
"I owe a lot to many people this time around, too. Everyone who had
something to do with this book and everyone who is reading it, thank
you so very much.
I still will do my best after this. I will get pumped up and try hard.
Tatsuhiko Takimoto
December, 2001"
Second Afterword
"Several years have passed since I wrote, "I still will do my best after this."
I have not done my best. Proof of that is in the fact that I haven't written
a single new story. I've been reduced to a NEET,41 living as a parasite on
the royalties from this book.
This may be the result of trauma or something like that. Because of
it, I developed a strange disease in my brain. Because of this disease,
which causes everything to remind me of the trauma, it makes my brain
cry out. It makes my brain cry out each time I try to write a story. My
brain always is crying out—and because of that, I have become unable to
write stories at all. Because of the terrible fear that I faced when I wrote
this book, I no longer want to write stories and have become completely
unable to write any. Oh, what a terrible tragedy! For a young and
talented (at least, he thinks so) writer to have become incapacitated
because he wrote this book!
You must read this now. A rare, dark mystique is hidden in this
book, which holds the cursed origins I have explained above. It seems
that a comedy manga writer long ago went crazy and often would
disappear, but there was likely a ghastly force contained within the work
that destroyed him, mentally. Because there must be some similar force
within this book, it is a book that I confidently can recommend to
anyone. It can even help with home and office communication. This
book is optimal as a graft onto discussions like, "Hey, do you know the
N.H.K.?" and then, someone will say, "The Nihon Hikikomori Kyokai,
right? It's really funny. But it made me cry a little, too."
It's embarrassing to mention something that's selling so well, but no
one knows minor works. One could say that a book around this level is
indeed the masterpiece that truly could help everyone's communication.
There are jokes about all sorts of current events included, and it's
extremely useful for helping young people think about the present times.
It could even be said that if you read this book, you'll be able to
understand the feelings of young people who live in our society today.
Older people will be surprised, thinking, "Oh, really? Young people
nowadays are like this?!" And those of the same age as the characters in
the book will sympathize, thinking, "I understand! I understand! This
sort of thing happens all the time!" and can enjoy reading it. At least, I
think this book has as much value as its price. I promise that it would
take first place in a ranking of "books that you won't lose anything by
reading."
I feel not even the slightest pang of guilt over giving you the above
sales pitch. That's the honest-to-God truth, although these are days
when I can't hold onto any sort of conviction that God actually exists.
Let's get back on track. It's already spring. It's already warmed up.
Birds come to the tree outside my window. In light of that natural cycle,
a deep belief that one day, all my daily troubles will be solved boils up
inside my chest.
Identity. . . Love. . . Existence. . . Space. . . God. . . The time must
come, someday, when we will be granted a final answer regarding these
great mysteries. With that warm feeling buried in my heart, I keep
living. Hoping that this feeling of gratitude will reach all of you who are
reading this work, I now close my laptop.
Tatsuhiko Takimoto
April, 2005" |
