KEITAI SHOSETSU - Nouveau Literature Springs From Your Cell Phone -
Japanese cell phones (aka Keitai) are the most advanced cell phones in the world, not just technically but culturally, too. In Japan, cell phones aren’t just for talking, text-messaging, and taking pictures, but also for watching movies and TV, playing games, reserving tickets, and shopping. Then, around 4 years ago, a new style of literature, Keitai Shosetsu or cell-phone novels, started appearing on cell phones. Since their birth, Keitai Shosetsu have swept the nation and now tens of thousands of cell phone owners are addicted to them.
But what are Keitai-Shosetsu? They’re novels updated almost every day that are formatted perfectly for reading on cell phones. People can read them anytime and any place. The portability of cell phones and their unique delivery system have both contributed to the development of this new style of reading.
Because display space is limited, each sentence is generally short, but the stories contain numerous conversations which make the reader feel that they’re part of the story. Although the language is a little less elaborate, relying more on dialogue than on long descriptions, the stories are free from the conventional novel structure. And how do they sound?
“Jesus! I am sooo hungry/Can’t wait no longer”/ Mika opened the bento-box/on her desk as usual/ “I hate school”/But the only pleasure I’m looking forward to,/is lunch with Aya and Yuka/my new best friends in this new class/ (Excerpt from “Koizora, Love Sky” by Mika).
The style is oddly poetic, reminiscent of Japan’s long tradition of Haiku, but Keitai Shosetsu are far more pop than haiku. Instead of dealing with nature and the changing seasons, they deal with love and romance at school, bloody murder mysteries, and complicated psychological dramas. “I love Keitai-Shosetsu because they’re short and easy,” said a student from Akasaka High School. “The characters and conversations are so real that at the end I get very much into the story and sometimes I cry over the phone screen.” At lunchtime, students make it a routine to check for updates of their favorite cell-phone novels. As they jokingly say, if you don’t know the stories well, you’ll be left out of what your friends are talking about.
These days, books aren’t selling so well, but Keitai Shosetsu, which have low production and promotion costs, have managed to create mass appeal to thousands of readers. Ironically, when they’re bound and printed, Keitai Shosetsu often wind up on the best seller list. Major publishers are starting to acknowledge this new market and there are already 30 professional Keitai Shosetsu writers in Japan. Now, a major newspaper in conjunction with a Keitai Shosetse website will host “The Second Annual Japan Keitai Shosetsu Awards” in November.
“I just wrote what happened to me in real life” says Mika, the author of “Koizora”. The novel started on a small website but gradually became a cult among young readers, with a total of 18 million users accessing the site, and more than 1.4 million copies of the printed version sold. This fall, a movie version has been released in Japan. Mika, the author, was not a professional writer and she can’t help wondering about her overnight success. But she attributes it to the communal character of cell phone users. “Everybody supported the novel through cell phones and the internet. I was so encouraged. This is a story was made by everybody in the Keitai community.”
Keitai Shosetsu is still evolving as the technology shifts and with its pop culture roots and appeal to a young demographic, no one expects the Nobel Prize in Literature to go to a Keitai Shosetsu writer. But you never know.
—— Hideo Nakamura
