by Eto Mori
“Ow,” I groaned, and looked up to see Prapura glaring at me with his familiar lower-world-mode scowl.
“How long do you plan on rambling on here? Just do what I tell you and go home already. I mean, I’ve got to get to the next lottery.”
This was much more Prapura’s style. And for all his rough words, his lapis lazuli eyes were tinged with a little—just a little—sadness. I was plenty satisfied with that.
“First, close your eyes tight.”
I closed my eyes tight. Warm tears spilled over the edges.
“Take a deep breath.”
I took a deep breath. My throat closed up, my heart hurt.
“Focus on going home and take a step forward. That will allow you to return to your world. Adieu, Makoto Kobayashi. Live strong.”
“Bye, Prapura.”
I took my first step to go back to my world.
AFTERWORD
When a dead spirit wins the lottery, they’re given the chance to return to the world and live life over again in someone else’s body. This idea for a novel came to my head more than twenty years ago. Like a bud rapidly opening into a flower, this story bloomed in my brain, and I desperately chased after it to write the book. And from the moment it was released, Colorful has been blessed with so many wonderful encounters and has transformed into one new shape after another, continuing to expand and grow: it is now a film adaptation, a stage play, an anime, a manga, and much more. Now, at last, it has crossed the Pacific Ocean to be published in the United States—and anticipation of new encounters grows and unfurls in my heart.
I want to write a novel that will allow young people who are tired of living to have a break from their own lives. This thought was the starting point for the whole endeavor.
Teenagers in Japan have such difficult lives, both now and twenty years ago, the time I first started thinking about this idea. They stumble in the race to get the “right” education, they’re crushed by friendships based on classroom hierarchies, they suffer from the excessive meddling or outright neglect of their parents—the list of issues they face is endless. Bullying. Dropping out. Suicide. All these many painful challenges that accompany teen years brought up a question for me when I specialized in children’s literature: What could a novel possibly do in the face of this grave reality?
I could write the serious reality seriously. That’s certainly one way. But these young people have their hands full already with their own problems and cannot push themselves to care about the difficult situation endured by some stranger in a book. Besides, for those who aren’t in the habit of reading, just following the letters on the page is a struggle.
I chose to write about a serious subject with a comical touch, I chose to depict it lightly. I wanted kids who liked reading and those who didn’t to have fun with it to start. I wanted them to laugh and roll their eyes at and relate to everything the characters did. I wanted them to enter the world of the book and be free of their everyday lives. And then, when they closed the book at the end, I wanted the weight on their hearts to be just a little lighter.
I don’t know if I succeeded in that, but ever since Colorful was first published, many younger readers and their families have reached out to me with unforgettable messages. There was the girl who confessed to me: “I stopped thinking about suicide after I read Colorful.” And the mother who told me: “My daughter used to lock herself in her room every day and refuse to go to school at all, but after she read Colorful, she started going again.” I’ve heard from a great number of people how Colorful became an opportunity for change.
To really dig into the why of it, I think all the problems start with the inescapable truth that we are who we are. The more sincere the person, the more deeply they look into their own hearts, and they end up exhausted. The idea I present in Colorful—about becoming a different person and living life over again—perhaps allows such readers to feel the relief of getting some distance from themselves.
I think the issue of young people struggling and growing tired of the world before they have the chance to truly know it isn’t limited to Japan. Neither is the draining fight against a closed-off society in which the air grows more stagnant with each passing year.
My sincerest hope is that Colorful goes beyond national boundaries and also provides this same breath of fresh air for American readers.
I am deeply grateful to all the people who have worked so hard to make the English version of Colorful a reality, but especially to my translator Jocelyne Allen.
ETO MORI
© Toshiharu Sakai
ETO MORI has been a literary star in Japan for over thirty years. She has won numerous major awards in Japan, including the Naoki Prize, one of Japan’s most prestigious awards for popular fiction. Colorful has been translated into seven languages and adapted into three films. Colorful is her first novel to be translated into English. She lives in Tokyo, Japan.
© Christopher Butcher
JOCELYNE ALLEN has translated hundreds of short stories, novels, and manga, including the Eisner Award–winning titles Frankenstein by Junji Ito and Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki. She splits her time between Toronto and Tokyo.
COLORFUL
Copyright © 1998 by Eto Mori
All rights reserved.
English translation copyright © 2021 by Jocelyne Allen
First Counterpoint edition: 2021
First published in Japan in 1998 by rironsha
Republished in a paperback version in 2007 by Bungeishunju Ltd.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mori, Eto, 1968– author. | Allen, Jocelyne, 1974– translator.
Title: Colorful : a novel / Eto Mori; translated from the Japanese by Jocelyne Allen.
Other titles: Karafuru. English
Description: First counterpoint edition. | Berkeley, California: Counterpoint, 2021.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020023786 | ISBN 9781640094420 (paperback) | ISBN 9781640094437 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PL873.O75 K3713 2020 | DDC 895.63/6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023786
Cover design by Christopher Lin
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
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Counterpoint gratefully acknowledges the support from the Japan Foundation for this publication.