October 2008
Connor Tomas O'Brien
Global Literature Trend Report
Part 1: Japan
You might forget this, but a decade ago, literally nobody used the short messaging service -- SMS. You only sent your first "txt msg" eight years ago, and it took you ten minutes to work out how to type "cu l8er." You didn’t send many SMS messages until six years ago, because none of your friends were into it until then. Today, our society is so perpetually sore-thumbed from hardcore textual abuse that it is impossible to comprehend the existence of an SMS-less universe.
You probably spend more time reading through SMS messages and Facebook comments than you do reading "serious literature."
You are also probably less likely to stumble upon antiquated words like "great," "too," or "why," than you are to come across their modern equivalents "gr8," "2," and "y." In France, the most popular way to write "fuck you!" is no longer "tais toi!" but the SMS-abbreviated "t toi!," which has deeply saddened those who are committed to preserving the integrity of the French language.
The mobile phone is central to literature in Japan in 2008.
Last year, the most popular novel in Japan was written entirely on the alphanumeric keypad of a mobile phone. Love Sky, by prolific "cell phone novelist" Mika, sold over two million copies. Cell phone novels are created and consumed on mobile phones, read as a series of downloaded TXT messages.
Japanese critics have variously hailed cell phone novels as "modern haiku," or else derided them as "waste sludge" -- the reality of their quality (or lack thereof) is somewhere in the middle. Mika’s Love Sky use of language isn’t beautiful, but her story is compelling, all the more so for being composed while likely battling against the idiosyncrasies of the Nokia T9 text input dictionary.
A chapter of Mika’s Love Sky was translated late last year by Asian-American culture magazine Chopsticks New York (a full English translation in the future is unlikely):
“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/”
In English-speaking countries, cell phone novels haven’t taken off. Yet. The internet startup Quillpill, which launched in June, provides a micro-publishing system allowing English-speaking users to "Tell a little story, 140 characters at a time." In order to register for a Quillpill account, you are asked to provide an answer the question, "Why do you want to be a part of Quillpill?" I asked Elissa Jones, the Chief Creative Director of Quillpill, if she could share some of the more telling responses. One user considers micro-publishing a good way to preserve those "tiny sentences that could come to life later. Unfortunately they tend to crawl into a corner and die. I'd like to save them." Another sees micro-publishing as a less intimidating gateway to becoming a full-fledged novelist: "If I could just start with about 140 characters at a time, word by word, a novel might grow." Others just think micro-publishing looks "fun," "experimental," and "innovative."
The Japanese are daring and experimental when it comes to just about everything cultural. That includes fiction. Before the cell phone novel, it was the cheaply-printed mass-market manga. Before that, it was post-war authors such as Yoshikichi Furui and Kenzaburō Ōe taking the form of the novel to its furthest reaches. It's difficult to imagine what could possibly be next, but you can bet it will be fueled by ever-tinier microprocessors, super-glossy touchscreens... and Sony-branded brain implants, probably.
