Chapter 269: The Revival of Traditional Literature

In Kanno Takuro's impression, his teacher Yoshikawa Yuichiro rarely made the evaluation of "excellent" for related writers.

In fact, even words like "not bad" were only heard three years ago.

And that writer who was evaluated as "not bad" had won many domestic and foreign awards and had a not low status in the traditional literary world.

What virtue and ability did Akiwara Yuto have to be viewed like this by his teacher.

Yoshikawa Yuichiro looked at this eldest disciple of his and said in a serious voice.

"After going back, properly experience the advantages of this book *Snow Country*, and then write a book review."

After a pause, he added, "As for my evaluation, you can also put it up."

Kanno Takuro's hand stiffened, then nodded and said "Yes".

Although in his view, Akiwara Yuto was still an alien.

Through suppressing him, one could improve the status of traditional literature.

But his teacher had already spoken like this, so his little thoughts before could be completely put down.

After some conversation, he left the tea room and made a few phone calls in a hurry.

Two days later, Akiwara Yuto held a literary journal under the University of Tokyo and fell into confusion.

On this journal, it was written *Snow Country, a New Representative Work of Aesthetic Literature*, author Kanno Takuro.

But unlike before, in this article, the praise for *Snow Country* could be described as overflowing.

Not only was it praised in wording, but even the inner core of the article was pulled out and praised from beginning to end.

At the end of this article, it even emphatically mentioned a sentence: "Yoshikawa Yuichiro believes that Akiwara Yuto is an excellent writer."

It was this sentence that made Akiwara Yuto deeply "puzzled".

Didn't Yoshikawa Yuichiro want to suppress him?

Why is he praising him now, did he think wrong?

Or, did something change?

Just when he was puzzled, the phone rang.

Akiwara Yuto picked up the phone and hadn't opened his mouth yet when he heard a familiar name.

"Akiwara-sensei, hello, I am Yoshikawa Yuichiro..."

"Not at all."

Akiwara Yuto spoke the truth; the damage to his interests from becoming a disciple was too great, and it was impossible for him to do so.

"Do you know? Professor Yoshikawa's evaluation of you has caused quite a stir in the traditional literary circle."

Toyama Shuichi's voice rose.

"This morning, many colleagues from the University of Tokyo came to ask me about this matter. If nothing unexpected happens, more related book reviews may appear later."

He paused, then said with a tone of certainty: "Akiwara, you have already gained a firm footing in the traditional literary circle."

Hearing this, Akiwara Yuto was even more astonished.

A single evaluation being enough to let him gain a firm footing—that was too exaggerated!

However, he thought about it carefully and found that it was indeed possible.

The previous boycott of him by the traditional literary circle was largely due to his "improper" act of rejecting Yoshikawa Yuichiro's appreciation.

And the other party's current acknowledgment was undoubtedly telling the traditional literary circle that he did not mind this matter and recognized his status as a writer.

In that case, some of Yoshikawa Yuichiro's original followers would inevitably follow him in granting recognition to his work.

Thinking of this, Akiwara Yuto's mood became invigorated.

In his original plan, he was going to use "Snow Country" to open up the situation and then release a few more works to make the traditional literary circle acknowledge him.

But he did not expect that after releasing just one, he would already achieve a similar effect.

No matter how you look at it, this is a good thing.

It seems he will soon be waiting for a wave of related positive reviews!

Just as Akiwara Yuto expected, after the related book reviews from the Tokyo University faction and Yoshikawa Yuichiro's evaluation of him leaked out, many people in the traditional literary circle felt "shocked."

Before this, Yoshikawa Yuichiro's "chief disciple" had publicly expressed dissatisfaction with Akiwara Yuto within the industry.

But no one expected that Yoshikawa Yuichiro himself would give Akiwara Yuto a high evaluation.

All of a sudden, more book reviewers from various publications began to pay extensive attention to the work "Snow Country" and wrote related evaluations one after another, most of which were primarily positive.

After all, even Professor Yoshikawa himself had praised this work; writing a negative review now would undoubtedly be going against the mainstream opinion.

In the weeks that followed, the number of related book reviews saw a surge.

Basically, for every three periodicals related to traditional literature, two had written an evaluation of "Snow Country."

And this public opinion situation also began to affect a larger social group and was reported on by some medium-sized newspapers.

The foundation under Akiwara Yuto, with the help of this wave of public opinion, collaborated with Anju Bookstore to carry out multi-faceted planning and began doing more promotion.

And in bookstores near various universities, they started related promotions and giveaway activities.

Not only that, they even changed the promotional text on the "bellyband": "This is a representative work of the new aestheticism literature recognized by the traditional literary circle."

Although this statement was a bit exaggerated, there wouldn't be too many people standing up to oppose it now.

Under a series of measures, more and more people began to purchase "Snow Country."

The book-buying crowd included students from literature departments everywhere, middle-aged and elderly readers, as well as some public and private cultural institutions.

This caused the sales of "Snow Country" to see explosive growth!

By the end of the first month of release, the first printing of 50,000 copies was sold out.

All partner bookstores not only returned all payments but also paid the advance for the next batch in advance, requesting shipment as soon as possible.

Even the two distributors, Tohan and Nippan, who were not interested at first, called to request an additional order of 20,000 copies each.

This brought the number of reprints to as many as 100,000 copies!

Although the sales data was decreasing day by day, even with the most conservative estimate, this reprinted batch of books could be sold out within half a year!

By the standards of traditional literary works.

This figure could completely be counted as a "bestseller"!

After the sales data came out, Akiwara Yuto himself was indifferent, but the traditional literary circle felt "surprised" instead!

In these times when traditional literature is increasingly declining, how many years has it been since there was a single-volume work with such high sales!

This means the revival of traditional literature!

After reading the whole piece, Akiwara Yuto nodded with satisfaction. Then he read a few similar book reviews and found that without exception, they were basically praising him.

Upon hearing these voices, Akiwara Yuto himself was very satisfied.

After all, his biggest purpose in writing traditional literature was to improve his own status and to win awards on an international scale.

Before this, the works he wrote were all detective fiction.

But detective fiction does not actually have high popularity in the scope of world literature; it is more of a self-entertainment within Japan.

Just like the Nobel Prize in Literature, which does not put detective fiction in the scope of awards at all.

In fact, the works from Japan that can win awards are basically traditional literature.

In Akiwara Yuto's plan, as long as he could gain a foothold in traditional literature, winning an award would just be a matter of time.

As long as he could endure the time, he would sooner or later be able to get one step closer to that award.

But just when he was full of joy, the production team of "Memories of Murder" made a phone call, telling him an unexpected piece of news...