He sensed her nod.
"For now, we escape," he said. "But one day, I want to tear this country down. I won't break my promise to Kawada. I want to tear down this country—for Kawada, and for you, and for me, and for Yoshitoki, and for everyone. When that time comes, will you help me?"
Noriko squeezed his hand and said, "Of course."
They slipped through the crowd. Soon, they reached the ticket vending machine. Noriko looked up at the fare chart, then took her change from her pocket, counted out the correct amount for two tickets, and got in the back of the line at the machine.
Standing alone, Shuya waited for her turn to come. It soon did. Noriko pressed her coins into the slot.
Shuya casually turned his head to the left.
His eyes narrowed. Outside the doors of the station's concourse, and past the busy street where taxis and cars came and went, the feet of Osaka's high-rise buildings stood. In front of this backdrop, a tall man in a black uniform was walking straight at them. Deftly weaving through the flow of the crowd, the man kept his eyes fixed in their direction.
His uniform could only be that of a policeman, the golden peach insignia shining in the center of the front of his cap.
Shuya searched for an escape route as he slowly reached for the Beretta 92F tucked in the back of his jeans, concealed under his jacket. Another street ran alongside the concourse's opposite entrance. If they could get outside, they could find a car, and . . .
Noriko returned with the tickets. Shuya whispered, "We can't take the train."
Noriko understood. She turned her head, and her eyes widened when she saw the man.
"Let's go out that way," Shuya said.
The policeman started running.
"Run, Noriko! Run as fast as you can!"
They took off running, and Shuya thought, Hey, I think I've heard something like that before.
He glanced over his shoulder. The cop was holding a gun. Shuya drew the Beretta, and the officer fired two shots in a sweeping motion. By luck, neither hit Shuya or Noriko—or anyone else in the crowd. Several people screamed, and some in the crowd dropped to the floor, while others, not knowing where the shots had come from, scattered and ran in every direction. The cop lowered his weapon and started running toward them again, but he collided with an overweight woman carrying shopping bags and tumbled to the ground. The woman fell with him, and various vegetables and packages spilled from her bags and slid across the floor.
Having seen enough, Shuya again looked ahead.
And as he ran alongside Noriko, a thought came over him. The screams, the pounding of their feet, the shouts of the policeman ordering them to stop, all of that faded away, then vanished, and this thought filled the entirety of his mind.
It might have been inappropriately tranquil. Even worse, he'd plagiarized it. Oh man.
But he thought it anyway.
Together, Noriko, we'll live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.
Someday girl I don't know when
we're gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun. But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run.
The screams and angry yells returned at once, accompanied by Noriko's heavy breathing and his heart's thumping.
This isn't over. Not even close.
All right, I'll play your game now.
And I won't stop until I win.
Once again, two students remain.
But of course, now they're with you.
AFTERWORD TO THE 2009 EDITION
Greetings. I'm the author, Takami. It's already been ten years since I wrote this book. Well, to be more precise, the novel originated as a contest entry and underwent several revisions before debuting in Japan ten years ago. As I have come to always admit in articles like this, and feel compelled to include here as well, I haven't written a single new novel in the ten years since. I know, it's unusual. I suppose by now a majority of those in the Japanese publishing industry feel like I'll never write another novel. (Apparently, the Japanese Wikipedia has even said as much.) (Wonderful.)
When VIZ asked me to write something to put in this new edition, I was a little hesitant. In the first place, I don't give a damn about authors. When deciding what to read next, I will seek out works by the author of a novel I've previously enjoyed, but the personal background of an author is essentially irrelevant, and any story—or for that matter, a work in any creative form—that needs foreknowledge of its creator to be enjoyed is fundamentally poor.
Also, and this is more my own problem, I haven't written anything else in these ten years, and so the only things I can discuss directly pertain to this book. To be frank, I've become a little bored with it. Revealing myself, feeling the way I do, could disrupt the fantasy built up around the novel. (Some may think that's not a big deal, but to hell with them.) But, well, I started writing, and how should I put it? I decided this would be the last time I would ever write about this novel. I'll write everything I can write about it, and then I will say goodbye to this novel that has accompanied me—or, perhaps, haunted me—for these ten years. Just like an exorcism. Will I also say goodbye to the royalties? No. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to royalties.
Well, where should I begin the exorcism? To save my mind from unnecessary strain, VIZ has prepared several questions for me. Let's start with the first one.
What sort of economic system does the Republic have? It sounds like a mix of fascism and communism. Was that purposeful?
Wow, there's a tough question right from the start. Hmm ... to answer this, I first need to explain how I came to write this novel. I quit my job at a newspaper after five years to become, of course, a novelist. (Not possessing enough talent—or stamina—to do both at once.) I tried writing some short stories as a kind of warm-up, but I didn't have the slightest idea of what I would write after that. Before I had worked at a newspaper, when I was a student, I mostly wrote detective stories, or horror, as best I could, or some variation...Like something that felt like horror, but with a detective as the main character, or maybe more like the investigation of an incident straight out of a horror story. But all those ideas had structural problems and could hardly be called stories. (Couldn't the same be said for the book you now hold in your hands?) A short story I wrote in college made it to the second selection (or so) during a minor competition, but the competition had somewhere around six rounds. Sure, it took sound determination to abandon my career with so little experience, but determined or not, I still didn't have any ideas.
And, well, I remained without any until one night, possibly after a particularly late night, I was lying in my futon, half asleep, half awake, and I got the mental image of a teacher from a school drama I saw on TV long ago. He said, "All right class, listen up." (He speaks like this throughout the book too.) "Now today, I'm going to have you all kill each other!" The image of him grinning as he spoke was so vivid, I laughed, but was also terrified. (As Rumiko Takahashi, the creator of Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha says, the difference between humor and terror is paper-thin.) And with just that, I knew I had something to write about.
When I shared this idea with a number of my friends, they all said it sounded like a manga (a nice way of saying it was unrealistic), but they were interested by it. At that point, however, I was working under a serious misconception. You see, I was something of a pro wrestling fan, and even though I had seen any number of "battle royal"-style matches (or possibly because I had seen so many), I didn't understand the true meaning of the rule, "Anyone can face off against anyone else." Soon I would come to realize this while talking with a friend. I don't have any record of the conversation, but it basically went like this:
"Let's say there's a shack in the forest, and the toughest guy is holed up inside."
"What do you mean, toughest?"
"He's like a killing machine. He's already killed a lot of people."
"Hmmm . . . Well, we'
d better do something about him." "Yeah, and even worse, he's got a machine gun!"
"Oh, that's cool, that's cool."
"So we have to work together to take him out."
"And we have to come up with a plan, right?"
Oh, how terrible. But it's kind of fun, isn't it? Please note how sportsmanlike our speech was, like a huddle in a football game. (Now that I think about it, Force 10 from Navarone was the same kind of sportsmanlike.) And it was at that point in the conversation that it hit me. Suddenly. Yes, suddenly.
"Wait a minute. When we talk about working together to go after that toughest whoever, shouldn't I be worried that you might suddenly start making moves against me?"
"Why? It's important to deal with that guy right now, isn't it? We can worry about each other later."
"Sure, you might say that, but what if you're just trying to trick me?"
"Wait, look, here, I set down my weapon. See, you don't need to worry."
"What does that prove?"
You may already have guessed what I felt as my friend innocently insisted that he'd never turn on me. I was struck by a premonition that what I was about to write would be so completely different from my assumptions that it would become bleak. (Just to be clear, you initially intended this to be lighthearted?) (Yes, sir!) Someone you thought was your friend could suddenly turn against you—as I wrote in the story's introduction, that sort of thing happens in a pro wrestling battle royal. But there is a huge difference between being double-crossed by your friend and being defeated by pinfall for the crowd's enjoyment, and being double-crossed by your friend and being killed. The level of distrust for your fellow man wouldn't even be comparable. I had arrived at the realization that it wasn't sportsmanlike at all. And I think it was at that point that it became possible for me to write this story.
Let me take a moment to protect the honor of my friend. I know he was telling the truth. He isn't the kind of guy who would betray me. If the two of us were put on the rack, I would absolutely betray him first. I'm sure of it, sir!
This backstory has gotten long, but I hope you understand that whether or not it was going to be sportsmanlike, I had just wanted to put Sakamochi's "It's a fight to the death!" into a concrete form. In the end, I chose unsportsmanlike, and so I tried to imagine a world that would encourage such actions—and quickly I thought it would have to be some sort of totalitarian regime. Doubtlessly, I had Stephen King's
The Long Walk in mind. In other words, the nation that would serve as the setting for the novel was added later. That's not to mention details like the economic system, which were almost not considered at all, and, well, since it would still make up a novel without it, you're holding the result. (Those who think the story still doesn't make up a novel may be correct, but to hell with them too.)
Still, I thought that figurative country couldn't be written any differently. I don't know if I can explain it well enough for you to understand, but this fictional country, "The Republic of Greater East Asia," is in part Japan. I wanted to write about the trapped feeling of living in Japan I've felt clearly since childhood—at the very least, from middle school on—and that's what I attempted to do. Here in Japan, being different from other people makes you a potential scapegoat when anything goes wrong. It's still true to a certain extent to this day! Even if a rule is clearly ridiculous, nobody will speak out against it, because people think, "If I say something, others will think I'm different," and the rule continues unchanged. Eventually, that oddity becomes a tradition that everyone seems to think of affectionately. (Regarding this, Motoharu Sano sang, "again and again and at some point you'll love me.") (Probably.) Shogo Kawada puts it best when he says in Chapter 31, "Even if everyone were against it, no one could say it out loud. That's why nothing changes. There are a lot of screwed-up things in this country, but they all boil down to the same thing— fascism." Or, "Blind submission. Dependence on others and group mentality. Conservatism and passive acceptance . . . They can't think for themselves. Anything that's too complicated sends their heads reeling. Makes me want to puke."
When I was born, near the end of the '60s, there existed even in Japan the sort of culture where a college student would throw Molotov cocktails at police. But in the '80s, when I was a teenager, that environment had vanished. Maybe everyone became disillusioned when they discovered that even throwing Molotov cocktails at police didn't change anything. This may be related to my feeling of trapped hopelessness. (And it's why I had such a reaction upon finding messages like "Beat the System" and "Keep Questioning" written on the jackets of Motoharu Sano's records in the late '80s.) Furthermore, the phrase "successful fascism" appears in this novel. It's based on something Beat Takeshi said—he once described Japan as "successful socialism." In this context, "successful" likely means, "Most everyone can eat." It may be successful, and it may be purposeful, but even when you can eat, don't you care if you're a slave or a prisoner?
Oh, and while I'm at it, here's a little-known story. The ruler of the country gives an address at the beginning of the novel. I derived it from propaganda that North Korea would broadcast at Japan at that time (and to this day as well, I suppose). Aside from North Korean spies, the Japanese police agencies, the media, and a few hobbyists, I was probably the only person in Japan intently listening to those broadcasts. Furthermore, Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" appears, translated into Japanese, at the end of the manga edition of Battle Royale. (It was not my idea, but rather that of the manga's author Masayuki Taguchi and our editors. For some reason, it didn't make it into the English edition.) Kiyoshiro Imawano, who translated into Japanese and covered "Blowin' in the Wind" in Japanese, wrote his own song, "Wanna be in North Korea" (Akogare no kitachousen), in which he sings, "They'll take you [to North Korea] for freeeeeeee." Those who are interested should definitely study East Asian geopolitics.
Now, on to the next card.
What English-language authors do you like to read?
Oh, this looks like it might turn into another long answer. But it's an important topic to me.
For a time, I had something of a "seat of honor" on my bookshelf. Well, I say bookshelf, but it was really just a cheaply cobbled together bit of furniture, and one of the shelves had a glass door to keep out the dust. Mixed in among the Japanese novelists I'll mention later were the works of Stephen King and Robert Parker (as well as books by Thoreau, Whitman, and Kerouac due to Motoharu Sano's influence— as well as Lovecraft (!) and Chandler as classics. Finally, I added Orwell to the list, but by that point my personal library grew too large to keep updating the "seat of honor").
I became interested in reading fairly late and didn't start King and Parker until college, but those two masters influenced me greatly. Not only was Parker's dialogue interesting, he showed me that it can be fine to set the story aside for a debate (usually some kind of social commentary) between characters. As for King, and I apologize for so commonplace an observation, I was astonished by the skill of his storytelling—no, rather, I became so engrossed that I kept on reading, unaware of my own astonishment.
This would be a good time to confess that Shogo Kawada's final line in this book, "That's what I want," is nothing more than an overt copy of the last line of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (or to be more precise, Hisashi Asakura's translation of that line into Japanese). When Shuya Nanahara recalls reading an old American paperback in Chapter 0, he is referring to The Body, and the name of the city the children are from, Shiroiwa, is a direct translation of "Castle Rock." If I had never read Needful Things, the introduction by the pro wrestling fan (who is basically just myself) might have been filled with bland explanations of pro wrestling jargon.
Readers of Parker's Spenser series may have noticed that Shogo Kawada's lines in Chapter 45 resemble what Hawk says to Spenser and Susan in the Las Vegas hotel in Chance. I made an effort to keep it from being exactly the same, but the situation was quite similar. Shogo's manner of speaking was modeled after Hawk. Or, to be more precise
, after Hawk's way of speech as translated by Mitsu Kikuchi, as crazy as that is. At any rate, if you considered the mix of dialogue and narrative as a percentage, and thought it felt like Parker, you wouldn't be wrong. Mitsu Kikuchi also translated The Silence of the Lambs-, although possibly because someone didn't think he would fit the work, a Hiroshi Takami (no relation), a well-known translator in Japan, did Hannibal.
Well. Let's keep at it. The next question:
When you were writing Battle Royale, did you have a movie in mind with all the characters and points of view?
I feel like I wrote with camera angles in mind. While this book is written in third-person perspective, each scene is almost like first-person, and we basically view each scene through the eyes of one character. Of course, the "camera" sometimes pulls back, allowing us to see everything, such as the scene with Shuya and Noriko at the end of Chapter 45. We're talking about movies, but people who grew up with television as well (and manga) can't escape that influence. I was aware of how tall each character was, and their build, but I don't think I went as far as forming detailed images of their faces.
On the subject of perspective, only Shogo Kawada's part in Chapter 77 is noticeably awkward. That part is neither from Shogo's point of view, nor is it from that of his opponent, Sakamochi. They each have a secret plot they want to spring on the other, and if it was a true first-person perspective, I would have to reveal one of those plots to the reader. It was very difficult for me to write that scene. Does anyone know a clever way of solving that problem?
If I had to say what movies I was conscious of while writing, and you may have noticed this, one would clearly be Terminator 2. In Chapter 0, two mysterious males—Shogo Kawada and Kazuo Kiriyama—appear. One is the main character's ally, the other his enemy. That's why Shogo Kawada has a shotgun. Also, when the girls are arguing with each other in Chapter 62,1 recalled John Carpenter's version of The Thing. It's just like "I know I'm human. And if you were all these things, then you'd just attack me right now, so some of you are still human. This thing doesn't want to show itself, it wants to hide inside an imitation."
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