THE BALLAD OF JILTED JOHN by Moon71
Chapter 2: The Grievance of Jilted John: How can a flame cure writer's block? Eiri is about to get an intensive case of shock treatment…
Quick Apology: I am really sorry to have taken an eternity to post this – Christmas crept up on me suddenly and since then I've been running around like a BAF trying to catch up. But here I am! And I want to say a very, very warm and sincere thank you to all of you who have reviewed. I really wasn't sure what you would make of this!!
Spoiler Alert: To anyone happily reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles (or unhappily reading it as part of the school curriculum. I wish you luck!) John, as well as not having much time for Yuki Eiri, has no respect for the unwary and will reveal the entire plot to you if you don't look out.
Note: As I'm sure I've said before, I have no idea what Eiri's novels would be like and have very limited knowledge of Japanese literature. I sensed a fatalism in the way his books were described, with heavy drama, tear-jerking tragedy and horrible things happening to nice people, and the Japanese production I know best that has such themes was The Water Margin (yes I know it's a Chinese story but the version I grew up with and still adore was made in Japan!) So in the end I decided to mix something together out of that series, the depressing fatalism of Thomas Hardy and my own weird imaginings. If the result is crap, I will happily take the blame.
It was no use. Fighting with K and that pervert of a costume designer had been a welcome distraction, but that was it was – a distraction. Even as he stood over Shuichi while the designer grudgingly closed some of the gaps in his outfit, he knew he was finding reasons to waste time and not go back to work.
Of course he could just put the novel aside and start on something new – he was never short of ideas, and the slow progress across Japan had only served to stimulate his imagination. And he was itching to sink his teeth into something new.
He had to write. Something, anything, he did not yet know what, but he had to write. But Maiko and her world just would not leave him in peace. It was more than just unfinished business – it was the knowledge that somehow this was the best writing he had ever done.
Able for the first time to look back on his previous writing with a penetrating honesty, he was able to acknowledge what he had known somewhere in the back of his mind since his first completed novel. It was all… a lie. Every word of every one of his novels. He didn't believe in any of it. There was no sincerity in anything he wrote. He had treated his characters like a miserly employer treated his staff, short-changing them whenever he could. Certainly he had fed them all the bitterness, the cruelty, the weakness and the hopeless futility with which he had perceived world around him, but he had refused to let them draw upon his own inner voices, to give them any real part of himself. Beneath the melodrama, the misfortune, the animal passions and violent jealousies dominating their lives, they were superficial. Hollow. And strangely predictable.
Until Maiko's story. Just like her namesake, Maiko had been born after Shuichi. Maiko was… honest. Heartfelt. Sincere.
And Maiko just might be Yuki Eiri's masterpiece.
Forcing himself not to go in search of coffee or beer or chocolate or shortcake or any one of the many comforts Room Service would be only too happy to supply – denying himself even the routine pleasure of a cigarette - Eiri sat down front of the computer.
Inspiration. That was what he needed.
Resolutely he closed the folder containing the chapters of his novel and clicked on the internet icon, scrolling down his favourites until he found the site he was looking for. was just one of many sites which allowed readers to review and rate the latest in Japanese romance, be it novels, manga, anime, television or films. It seemed as though it had originally been created with the Japanese-American community in mind, with text in both Japanese and English, but with more and more Japanese literature being translated into English and other languages it had begun to display reviews from all over the world.
Eiri found it rather a useful site, far more so than any of the Yuki Eiri fan sites, even his own official one routinely policed by Mizuki which he generally avoided like the plague. On love2reviewjapan there was at least a chance not all the reviews would be from gushing groupies ready to sing his praises even if he published a recipe for jellyfish sushi. There had been times when reading what the readers had to say could actually be very stimulating. Sometimes they even provided the catalyst for new characters or plots.
Most of the new reviews were for Cool. Glancing down the ratings, he was mildly satisfied to see it was generally well received. But he was not quite in the mood to be told he was wonderful. Instead, he found himself thinking of what Shuichi had said about Sakuma. About how while everyone else was trying to encourage him, Sakuma had not bothered to hide his dissatisfaction with Shuichi's singing. That was not strange in itself – the idea that Shuichi might be a bit off key because he was nursing a broken heart, having been ditched by his lover without a word of explanation (Eiri pushed his own role in that to the back of his mind) would hardly cut much ice with a man who seemed to have evolved and remained living on a different planet from everyone else. But the point was that Shuichi seemed to think it had done him good.
Most of the inflammatory reviews were disappointingly predictable: the story made no sense or was too violent or the ending too tragic or the reader simply found the subject matter or the characters boring. But then he hit one that actually caught his attention. For a start, it appeared to be from a man.
BOOK TITLE: HONOUR by Yuki Eiri
RATING: 0/5
REVIEWER: JILTED JOHN
All right. I realise that once this review is posted I'm going to start receiving death threats from rabid fangirls all over Japan and not even posting this review in English will save me. But all I can say is, bring it on, ladies! My inbox is sadly empty these days, so even hate mail is treated as a plus!
Before we get started let me explain a few things so you can't say I didn't tell you at the beginning. First, I'm not Japanese. Second, I can't read Japanese. Third, I can't speak Japanese beyond knowing how to avoid ordering some sort of toxic puffer fish at a sushi bar in Tokyo. Fourth, I'm a bloke. You might think that any one of these factors immediately disqualifies me from posting a serious review, but hear me out.
Two years ago, at University, I met a foreign exchange student called – well, let's call her Hiroko, after the heroine in Yuki Eiri's truly wrist-slashingly depressing novel. It was love at first sight. Hiroko was beautiful, with the curves of a goddess and a smile that could light up a room. And her intelligence was beyond question, even if she did agree to become my girlfriend. I would have done anything to please her, and that included absorbing Japanese culture, something I freely admit I knew nothing about besides buying a Sony video player or watching Yu-Gi-Oh on the CBBC channel when I was supposed to be revising for my A-levels.
One day I found Hiroko reading a book in Japanese which turned out to be "Honour" by Yuki Eiri (yes, I do know which way round Japanese names go, I'm not a complete ignoramus.) Before you dismiss me as an illiterate boor, I should add here that I love to read, and will give almost any book a go; a love of books was one of the things that brought me and Hiroko together. So when I showed an interest she began reading it aloud to me, translating it into English as she did so. I'm not into romance novels but I thought it would be a good way of learning Japanese.
How I wish I'd opted for linguaphone instead! "Honour" has to be the most unrelentingly dismal, misanthropic and utterly dispiriting novel I have ever had the misfortune to read. If I had been of a more sensitive disposition I would have been on suicide watch by the end of it. Even as Hiroko finished reading me the last chapter I was looking for a rope to hang myself with. Don't get me wrong – the background story was actually quite interesting, all about the family in the service of a Japanese Warlord about 700 years ago.
But the central so-called love story was a total downer. To summarise, a girl marries a dissolute, womanising drunk because he happens to be a favourite of the Warlord her father serves. The dissolute, womanising drunk fails to mend his ways, instead adding wife-beating and psychological abuse to his repertoire. Enter the hero, a young soldier with a troubled past, dark, sullen and brooding but strangely alluring (like all of Yuki's heroes, so Hiroko said) who in spite of himself falls in love with the heroine. Cue passionate, illicit affair, set against the political machinations of the warlord and his court. Now no part of this novel is a bundle of laughs. None of the characters, barring the main lovers, seem to have much compassion for one another. Friends betray friends, sons betray fathers, and on it goes. Still, I thought, at least the lovers deserve a happy ending. And for a while it did seem as though they would get one.
Little did I know Yuki Eiri doesn't do happy endings. Instead, just before they make good their plans to elope, the hero ritually tops himself to satisfy some inexplicably esoteric point of honour and the heroine goes back to have seven bells beaten out of her by her dissolute, womanising, violent drunk of a husband. The End.
Now I wouldn't call myself a sentimental man. My race would not call themselves a sentimental race. There are plenty of times I have sat through rom-coms or all out tearjerkers with a girlfriend silently wishing an unexpected disaster to befall the lovers, denying them happiness forever. But this book just depressed the crap out of me! I was left with the impression that the author was deliberately tormenting his characters like a cat with a mouse. It was like listening to someone both drunk and clinically depressed inflicting their life story on you while all you've had to fortify yourself is orange juice. I swear to God Yuki draws inspiration from Thomas Hardy – though Tess of the D'Urbervilles murdering her former lover and getting hanged for her pains has nothing on this!
I saw the picture of Yuki Eiri on the back of Hiroko's book. He looks more like a model than a writer, and a real bimbo too with that blonde hair of his which Hiroko naïvely insisted was real (come on, a blonde Japanese? I ask you!) According to the blurb, he's only about 22 years old and is known for his penchant for the ladies. I just don't buy it. My own personal theory is that Yuki Eiri is really a 20 stone middle-aged virgin spinster with no friends and no life whose only release from social and sexual frustration is to inflict this dreary, disheartening crap on the world at large.
Do you detect a note of bitterness in me? You bet your life you do. Fool that I was, I told Hiroko what I thought of her favourite author. When, two months later, she dumped me for a maths student whose last book read for pleasure was probably Thomas the Tank Engine, she cited this as one of the reasons. Apparently my rejection of Yuki was taken as a sign that I couldn't appreciate her, or Japanese culture, totally lacked any emotional depth and all in all was about as romantic as a tonsillectomy.
Well, I stand by what I said. Yuki Eiri is reading matter suitable only for lemmings and the kind of strange people who like to put a plastic bag over their head during sex. And so I will conclude by saying to you, Mr – or should that be Miss? - Yuki, what I finally had to say to Hiroko… get over yourself and get a bloody life!
TBC: So there's the review, but what effect will it have on Eiri?
