Chapter 268: Literary Heart

Minato Ward, Akiwara Yuto's home.

Akiwara Yuto sat on the sofa, listening to Asano Aiko's report on recent work.

"Akiwara, regarding the book reviews for *Snow Country*, after Ms. Akiyama Emiko, another 35 publications have published similar evaluations one after another, most of which are mainly positive."

Hearing this number, Akiwara Yuto hesitated.

One had to know that the publications he had deliberately befriended before were only 20-something, where did the other 10-something come from.

It seemed that she saw Akiwara Yuto's confusion, Asano Aiko continued, "The extra book reviews were promoted by those book reviewers spontaneously."

Akiwara Yuto pondered for a while, but was still a bit puzzled, suspecting whether the book reviewers of these publications wanted to take the opportunity to take advantage, so he pursued, "Did they propose to the foundation for sponsorship?"

Asano Aiko laughed and waved her hand, "No, don't worry."

She turned around, took a stack of publications from the bag behind her and placed them on the desk; Akiwara Yuto took the publications and started to look at them carefully.

After reading, he found that these 10-something publications were all affiliated with universities.

Including old-brand literature strong schools like "Kyoto University", "Tsukuba University", "Kobe University", "Osaka University", etc.

This meant that these journals had the financial support of universities and didn't lack money at all.

However, this situation surprised Akiwara Yuto a bit.

Why did these university journals want to write book reviews for his works?

"Akiwara, regarding this situation, I called Professor Toyama Shuichi this morning."

Asano Aiko continued, "Because you published an academic paper on literary thought before, the academic circle is still a bit interested in you."

"According to Professor Toyama, this *Snow Country* of yours is indeed a bit different from tradition in the direction of aesthetic literature, so they might write a few related papers."

Akiwara Yuto heard this, and then suddenly realized.

Good guy, feeling like they want to pad papers, right...

Now *Snow Country* has a certain heat in the traditional literary circle, and then they can catch this express train.

The higher the heat, the higher the value of the papers analyzing the works.

His special identity background can also become one of the research directions of related papers.

Akiwara Yuto didn't know what thought to use to describe his mood for a moment.

Although he obtained certain benefits in this matter, he still felt that he was a bit "used".

He thought for a moment, regained his spirit, looked at the names of the journals again, and asked a question.

"Are there no related evaluations in the University of Tokyo and related journals and school newspapers?"

In the Japanese literary world, the University of Tokyo is a behemoth that cannot be bypassed.

In his past life, the University of Tokyo had the highest deviation value for admission difficulty in all national and public university literature departments in Japan.

Besides that, it also had many famous writer alumni, such as Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Natsume Soseki, Mori Ogai, Mishima Yukio.

In fact, this world is almost the same.

Asano Aiko shook her head, "None."

Hearing this answer, Akiwara Yuto pondered.

Actually no evaluation, not even a bad review, did that writer named Yoshikawa Yuichiro not deliberately "make things difficult" for him?

One had to know that because of his seniority, he had great influence in the University of Tokyo system.

And *Snow Country*, although it is a work that won the Nobel Prize in Literature, as a work, there are always places that can be criticized.

Like in his past life, there were people who evaluated it as "the story is like a running account", "the characters are not full", etc.

But forget it, him "turning a blind eye" to him now is not necessarily a bad thing.

If the voices of "praising him" in the traditional literary circle become more and more, the other party as a literary giant also has to consider the voices of the book review circle, right?

On the other side, Yoshikawa Yuichiro, who was worried by Akiwara Yuto, was holding a copy of *Snow Country* and making a "tsk tsk" sound of admiration.

He was already 70-something years old this year, and one could even see age spots on his face, having a feeling of being old and senile.

In fact, the hand he used to hold the book had a slight tremor.

Looking at Yoshikawa Yuichiro's focused expression, Tokuda Takashi, as a disciple, knelt on the tatami in the tea room, holding tea without saying a word.

Until his teacher finished reading the whole book, he put down the tea in his hand and asked tentatively, "Teacher, what do you think of this work?"

Yoshikawa Yuichiro looked at him with meaningful eyes, then said, "Since you took this book to show me, shouldn't you have thoughts in your heart?"

Tokuda Takashi opened his mouth without saying a word.

And Yoshikawa Yuichiro sighed, then said, "That child Akiwara Yuto has already walked out his own path."

From the perspective of aesthetic literature, this *Snow Country*, in terms of wording and story construction, can be seen as the ultimate "beauty".

And his kind of beauty walks the path of "beauty of emptiness", or "beauty of loneliness".

Undoubtedly, this is another breakthrough of his own path of "pure beauty".

It seems that his idea of wanting to take him as a disciple was a bit too abrupt...

Before this, he had read Akiwara Yuto's *Luo Shengmen* and believed that he was still a piece of unpolished jade, very worthy of carving, so he wanted to take him as a disciple.

But he didn't expect that this piece of unpolished jade actually had another side he didn't know.

Knock knock knock.

Just at this time, a burst of footsteps came, and a middle-aged man wearing a men's kimono pushed open the shoji door, bowed, and walked into the tea room.

He was called Kanno Takuro, Yoshikawa Yuichiro's eldest disciple, and also a professor and director of the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Letters.

In fact, the book review that criticized Akiwara Yuto's *Luo Shengmen* before was also issued under his instruction.

After showing kindness to the teacher, he handed over an article and said, "Master, regarding Akiwara Yuto's *Snow Country*, I wrote a book review, please take a look."

This time, he intended to continue the previous action and criticize Akiwara Yuto, this "alien".

Yoshikawa Yuichiro took this book review and looked at it carefully. But as he looked, his expression became more and more serious.

With a "rip" sound!

He used his wrinkled hands to tear this manuscript directly into two halves.

"Teacher, what are you doing?" Kanno Takuro revealed a shocked expression.

Yoshikawa Yuichiro glanced at him and said impolitely, "Kanno, where has your literary heart gone?"

Hearing the teacher's reprimand, Kanno Takuro was "at a loss", and could only lower his head deeply, listening to the teacher's reprimand.

Looking at the disciple's actions, Yoshikawa Yuichiro was silent for a while and said.

"I won't care about your actions of using my banner before, but for truly excellent authors, you should be in awe."

Kanno Takuro continued to lower his head, but his heart was stirred with huge waves.

Akiwara Yuto could actually be called an excellent author by his teacher; this was a very high evaluation... ===== CHAPTER 269 =====