[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-literary-master-of-tokyo":3,"chapter-literary-master-of-tokyo-literary-master-of-tokyo-chapter-307":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Literary Master of Tokyo",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2355156,4607,"Chapter 307: A Monster Born for Literature","literary-master-of-tokyo-chapter-307",307,"\u003Cp>Unlike Uesugi Sonoko, who expressed admiration for the brilliance of *All She Was Worth*, Yabuna Kazuo wore a heavy expression as he looked at the book, feeling a weight in his heart.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He was an ordinary office worker, and even more so, a corporate slave who worked from nine to ten.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But beyond his identity as a corporate slave, he had a past he could not bear to look back on.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before the economic bubble burst, Japanese society fell into a trend of luxury and keeping up with the Joneses, and the \"momentism\" of living only for the present began to prevail.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The public's normal concept of consumption transformed into a twisted and deformed \"consumption is a virtue.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At that time, Japanese television was flooded with all kinds of advertisements for consumer goods, and every media outlet was promoting a material-first mindset; the variety of products was dazzling and dizzying, and everyone was frantically \"buying, buying, buying.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Advertisements were everywhere on the streets and in the alleys, and under the instigation of merchants, every holiday was turned into a shopping festival gimmick to encourage the public to spend.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Gradually, ordinary people also became accustomed to high-end consumption.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But not everyone had money, so loan shark companies began to expand aggressively and develop their businesses widely.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yabuna Kazuo's wife naturally became a target customer for these loan shark companies.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After her friends scrambled to purchase luxury goods, she was also led to borrow money from a loan shark company, and from then on, things spiraled out of control.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for Yabuna Kazuo's attempts to dissuade her, she would only claim, \"If you can't earn money, then don't talk nonsense!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yabuna Kazuo was helpless and could only hope that his salary and stock investments would be enough to support her consumption.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But no one expected that the economic crisis would arrive so suddenly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The stock market plummeted, property prices crashed, and the company he worked for was hit hard.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although he was not laid off, his income dropped significantly, and what was most painful was that the money in the stock market was all gone.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Just then, the loan shark company came knocking.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To repay interest that was several times the principal, he had to sell his car and house, and even knelt before his parents to borrow their pension to fill the gap.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But what was most distressing was that his wife still believed she had done nothing wrong, insisting that all her friends did the same.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This eventually became the fuse for their divorce.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And everything the two female characters in *All She Was Worth* experienced reminded him of his wife.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For example, \"Sekine Shoko,\" who was originally an ordinary-looking office worker at a company with only three people.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Logically speaking, she should have lived the most ordinary life for her entire existence.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But she was not satisfied with the status quo, so she engaged in advance consumption and constantly bought luxury goods.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even when she owed over ten million in debt and had to file for personal bankruptcy, she still told her lawyer, \"I just wanted to be happy.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And Shinjo Kyoko, who murdered \"Sekine Shoko\" and assumed her identity, was also a victim of advance consumption.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After her father paid the down payment, he could not pay off the mortgage with his income and began borrowing from loan shark companies, resulting in the debt snowballing.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To escape the loan sharks, the whole family had to flee in 1983; she was only 17 that year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>During their flight, Shinjo Kyoko's mother was forced into prostitution and died of pneumonia, and her father disappeared without a trace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But she met a young master from a wealthy family and thought her fate might take a turn for the better.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unfortunately, the debt collection agency still found her; because her husband's family was in business and was particularly afraid of such entanglement, they divorced three months after the marriage, and she herself was later sold to a brothel.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Her fate could not be called anything but tragic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After escaping, she decided to use another person's identity to say goodbye to the past and find happiness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So she joined the mail-order company \"Rose Line,\" used management loopholes to steal customer data, and finally, one day, found a woman of similar age with very few family members to target.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unfortunately, fate played a joke on her; the new identity she had gone to such lengths to find turned out to be someone also burdened with heavy debt.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yabuna Kazuo closed the book, sighed, and felt a sorrow from the bottom of his heart.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Whether it was his own wife or the two women in the book, their initial thoughts were all about having a better life and finding happiness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Shinjo Kyoko's father had to take out a loan to buy a big house, Sekine Shoko had to take out a loan to travel and stay in high-end hotels, and his own wife had to take out a loan to fit into her circle of friends.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But all these goals required money.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So for the sake of money, they all had to go to loan shark companies or banks to borrow.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But because of the ever-increasing interest, their lives could only end in ruin.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>While Yabuna Kazuo was lamenting his ex-wife, social-school writer Miyagi Kentaro looked at the work and let out a \"tsk-tsk\" of admiration.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For the Uemura Prize selection in the first half of this year, he had recommended Akiwara Yuto's work for the shortlist at Kawai Shinta's request.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And this time, after Akiwara Yuto's new book *All She Was Worth* was published, Kawai Shinta approached him again and requested that he recommend this work for the shortlist.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, unlike the previous situation, he agreed this time without even thinking about it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although Akiwara Yuto did not have enough seniority yet, the sales of his works had undoubtedly surpassed the entire mystery literature world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No matter how you looked at it, the Uemura Prize would sooner or later have to be awarded to him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And since the other party was writing social-school mystery literature, that made it even less of a problem.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>He knew that if Akiwara Yuto were willing, he could also write New Orthodox, courtroom-style, and unorthodox-style works.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Therefore, if Akiwara Yuto could win with a social-school work this time, it would also be of no small benefit to the social school.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But to be honest, the younger generation is truly formidable!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After finishing *All She Was Worth*, he discovered that the theme of this book broke through the limitations of all previous social-school mysteries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>On the basis of human nature, it further connected the story's background with the economic bubble and advance consumption.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This didn't sound difficult, and it seemed like all mystery writers could do it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Akiwara Yuto's brilliance lay in how he completely integrated the entire story into the grand background, using the era's backdrop to highlight the characters' sorrow and their motives for committing crimes.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>And then, he used individual tragedies to manifest the sorrow of the era.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Writers who could achieve this, if you added up all the writers in the history of mystery literature, would not exceed the number of fingers on one hand.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No wonder other old writers, after seeing Akiwara Yuto's works, always felt like they were being eliminated by the era.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Now, he had the same feeling himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Even if it weren't for market reasons, based solely on the excellence of *All She Was Worth* itself, there was no problem with it winning the Uemura Prize!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, this work had already reached a new peak in social-school mystery literature!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Miyagi Kentaro put down the book and wore a complex expression.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although it wasn't the first time he had expressed admiration, he still couldn't help but sigh.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Akiwara Yuto, he was truly a monster born for literature!\u003C\u002Fp>",1316,"2026-06-21T03:58:02.196Z",1,"Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite","d51d7cad1374527b4c1d5019d20ab7672d1cbc263337630e288a05ee54afc852","literary-master-of-tokyo-chapter-308","literary-master-of-tokyo-chapter-306",334,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fliterary-master-of-tokyo-cover.jpg"]