I think it was the beginning of 2006 when I first began refining the concept behind Another in earnest.
I received a gracious request from the editorial department at Kadokawa Shoten for a full-length horror novel to follow up The Last Memory, which was published in 2002. As a result, the decision was made to begin a serial publication in Kadokawa's Yasei Jidai digest that year, when the time was right. I'd casually decided to try my hand at a school-based horror story that turned on a certain motif I'd been cooking up for a while at that point—but that was all I'd done. I didn't know where I would go from there. This was the situation when, on a certain day in the latter part of March, my editors—I had two at the time—both came all the way to Kyoto to crack the whip. On this same day, a certain core idea had struck me out of the blue while I was in the shower before setting out to meet them. It felt meaty enough that I thought, I can work with this. The place where I discussed my idea with the two editors—I remember, it was an atmospheric restaurant called "Shishigatani Sanso"—has since closed. Memories.
At the time, my interest in what are called ball-jointed dolls had risen again. When I went to Tokyo, I had visited a doll gallery in Shibuya called "Maria Cuore" and come face-to-face, alone, with the dolls of Katan Amano and Koitsukihime. It was roughly the same time that I happened to discover the anime and comic series Rozen Maiden and started listening to ALI PROJECT.
And onto the evolving "site" of my brain, getting all these things into some sort of order, came the movies Joshua, The Others, and Final Destination; the novel The Sixth Sayoko by Riku Onda; and many other works gathering together all kinds of images that I just loved. The story that would bring to life the motif and the idea I'd started out with came together all on its own—so it seemed to me.
It wound up being serialized in Yasei Jidai from the July 2006 issue through the May 2009 issue, with several skipped installments in between. It was around three years from the time I began writing until it was complete. Despite many hardships, looking back, I more or less treasure the time I spent with my young friends in the imaginary town of Yomiyama.
To be honest, the magnitude of the reaction following publication of the book in October 2009 surprised me a little.
There were strangely enthusiastic cheers from readers of the classical mysteries I had mainly done before, but also jubilation from new young readers, as well…And alongside my surprise, I also felt quite encouraged by that.
The developments that followed were thoroughly unexpected, as well. A manga, an anime TV series, a live-action movie…Such a variety of plans being put into motion in such a short time was the result of all of you, engaged in all kinds of media, being excitedly drawn into the story of Another.
Given that context, this story that I wrote twenty-two years after my debut holds a very special place in my heart. I still indulge in the conceit that it's my "new magnum opus." And now, on the occasion of this slightly-earlier-than-normal publication in a paperback edition, I think it would be so much fun if it allows even more people to get drawn into the story, too.
Over the course of bringing Another from the planning stages through to today, I owe thanks first of all to Ms. Akiko Kaneko, at my great publisher, Kadokawa Shoten. Thanks also to Ms. Shiho Enda, who provided the cover design, as well as on the first book, and to the bookbinder Ms. Kumi Suzuki. Thanks to Mr. Sei Hatsuno for providing his analysis at the end of this volume, despite his busy schedule. And—yes—a huge thanks also to "Maria Cuore," which closed its doors much to my regret this fall, and to the many people I met within its walls.
To be honest, I have several concepts scurrying around in my brain for another story set in Yomiyama, or a side-story sort of thing featuring Koichi and Mei, or for a sequel following the next phase of the "Yomiyama phenomenon." I'm not sure at all yet whether those ideas will ever be realized; but, well, I suppose that, too, is up to what you, the audience, wants to see.
In any case…
I hope you enjoy Another, to start off with.
Analysis
Sei Hatsuno
It is difficult for novelists to critique novels objectively—and a towering novelist who continues to lead the pack in the mystery genre even more so. Or, should I say, it's beyond me. So when I took on the job of writing the analysis for this book, I honestly felt intimidated. But I resolved to pick up my pen with the idea that perhaps I might be able to convey something in my role as a part-time novelist who wears the mask of a businessman by day. Half of me works a desk job and is a reader of these books, and so I write of Mr. Ayatsuji not as a colleague, but as a mentor.
In searching for a visual metaphor of Mr. Ayatsuji's novels, I think first of all of optical illusions.
Famous examples of what I mean include the "Young Girl/Old Woman" and the "Rabbit/Duck." But there are some pictures, the mysterious ones, in which people above a certain age see one thing, and the young see another. Take the picture "Message d'Amour des Dauphins" by the Swiss artist Sandro Del Prete. When I visited the R&D center for a certain home electronics manufacturer as part of my work, someone engaged in research into illumination and the brain told me about it.
The subject of the painting is a corked bottle. If you show the picture to a young child not yet in adolescence, all the child will see in the bottle is nine dolphins. But people past adolescence won't see the dolphins no matter how hard they look. What they see instead is an image of a naked man and woman in a sensual embrace, which doesn't occur to the young child. For those interested, I offer the URL of the artist's home page: http://www.sandrodelprete.com/index.php/home/
I believe that Mr. Ayatsuji's novel has a similar form. In the metaphor of the optical illusion, readers turn the picture on its head and try looking at it from different angles hoping to discover a different way of interpreting the image. But because they lack the information necessary to see it as a different image, or because they haven't picked up on it, they are unable to recognize the hidden picture. Artful foreshadowing allows readers to get as far as an uneasy feeling, but they crane their necks again and again doubtfully. Then in the closing scenes where the conclusive information is provided, everything ties together and a different picture emerges that they never could have imagined from the picture they saw at first.
I need to go back over ten years to say when I first experienced such a "he got me" moment. It was when I read Mr. Ayatsuji's debut story, Murder in the Decagon Hall, whose influence still lingers in Japanese mystery fiction. It's no exaggeration to say that I still vividly remember the shock it gave me, greater even than Ellery Queen's book Drury Lane's Last Case. I fell into a panic at that part. It's true. I was shown a completely different picture and, for one second, I couldn't comprehend what had happened. Those who have read it will sympathize, I'm sure. In my experience of reading many books, I believe that the sensation of losing your cool and sighing in ecstasy after finishing a story, and the hunger that comes after, are privileges that only a well-made classical mystery can give.
Another is a school-based horror and classical mystery novel with a right to be called Mr. Ayatsuji's new masterpiece. I'll discuss the story itself soon, but an editor at Kadokawa Shoten told me that a wide-scale media expansion is planned for 2012, including an anime TV series and a live-action film. This is welcome news for longtime Ayatsuji fans. At last, his time has come. Go ahead and do a little dance. The ranks of people intrigued by this author, and the number of people in the younger generation who will consider reading this story, will increase. What's so great about that, you ask? I read this in a magazine article long ago: There was once a person who had the following words for someone who had never listened to the Beatles. "I'm jealous of you. You get to have the amazing experience of hearing the Beatles and being moved for the first time." Those are words I could say to a person who might become interested in Mr. Ayatsuji's works through the anime or movie. "I'm jealous of you. You get to have the experience of reading Yukito Ayatsuji's novels for the first time and having your jaw drop." In being taken up by the next generation of readers, from one fan to another, the role this book has to play is a great one.
I really am jealous of the people who will read Mr. Ayatsuji's many novels for the first time because of this book. What unifies his work is a commitment to the unpredictable conclusion. There's the newest entry in the nine-volume "Hall" series, Murder in the Hall of Unearthly Faces, slated for release in January 2012; the great Mystery at Kirigoshi Estate, which uses the will of the hall itself as a metaphor; The Murder Equation series, that unthinkable thing, a mystery with mathematics; the Slaughtering Spirit series, done up in the splatter horror genre; A Whisper of Scarlet, which runs in the same vein as Another; and many, many more. Aside from these, two stories included in the short story collection Dondon Bridge Came Falling Down—the title story and Fall of the House of Isono—are shocking in every meaning of the word. The collection is a must-read. The grit and conviction of Mr. Ayatsuji to give his life for the mystery story, ready to do anything to catch the reader off guard—yes, even that comes across clearly. I recommend it to anyone who dreams of writing a novel themselves. Also worthy of consultation because Mr. Ayatsuji is so gifted at differentiating his characters. They are easy to place as "pieces" constructing not reality, but a mystery. It makes clear what is most important in fiction.
Let's move on to an introduction of the books.
The story turns on the "curse" (though it's nowhere as simplistic as that. We could swap the word out for "irrational phenomenon" or "superstition." But in this analysis, the word "curse" will become necessary at the end, and so I use it here) plaguing third-year Class 3 at Yomiyama North Middle, the protagonist, "Koichi Sakakibara," who transfers into the class, and the mysterious girl in the eye patch, "Mei Misaki." One after another, people with a connection to the class are pulled into misfortune and the characters struggle to resist it.
What leaves the greatest impression in the early stages of the story is, perhaps, Mei Misaki's line when the protagonist first encounters her: "Half my body is waiting there, the poor thing." I read this part in the mind-set of a novelist and thought to myself, "Ah, so this character is the type that won't act selfishly." Thinking about it more, the same could be said for all of Mr. Ayatsuji's novels. I don't think he ever creates a novel where the characters act selfishly. I believe this is a critical element in creating the optical illusions I discussed earlier. It saves the worlds so meticulously created from destruction. It causes the reader to not empathize overmuch. He draws a clear line. Telling the reader, Please enjoy the show from your seat in the audience. A fitting conclusion is being prepared.
When a murderer has appeared in Mr. Ayatsuji's past work, answers to the questions of why (the "whydunit") and how a murder was committed (the "howdunit") and who the murderer was (the "whodunit") come out in a logical progression (even to the point of using mathematical equations) to reveal the truth, but the trick to this book is different. No murder with a clear motive ever occurs. There are accidents and suicides, but these occur not because of the will of a third party but due to a curse.
Another shares this aspect, in which "people living in a specific range may become targets of an indiscriminate death," with Slaughtering Spirit. In that sense, it is possible to identify the book as a work of horror; however, the story also includes an element that resembles the search for the suspect. The origins of the curse become clear in the middle section of the story, but the foreshadowing up until the truth is revealed is intricate, allowing the reader to experience an unabashed sensation of "he got me!" Thus I believe these books must be characterized as "a melding of horror and mystery." Plus, one can even glimpse an aspect of the tale of adolescence in the perverse and inexplicable nature of the curse. Thus does it become a masterpiece in Mr. Ayatsuji's catalog, serving a wide range of readers. Those who have yet to read it absolutely must, and join us in our Ayatsuji addiction. I apologize, but of course there is no cure.
I've come this far in my analysis before glancing at the clock, and I see it's almost time for me to go to work. I recall now that I have an appointment with an initiative client all morning…These are the troubled thoughts of a part-time novelist. I'll try to ride my momentum to close this out.
At the ceremony for the Seishi Yokomizo Grand Prize for Mystery, sponsored by Kadokawa Shoten, there are times when Mr. Ayatsuji, who has long served on the selection committee, will put a genuine curse on the winner. Speaking very frankly and kindly, the man will throw out both hands and present a message implying, "I hope someday you write at least one story that lets you say, 'This is my definitive mystery.'" Since this occurs in public, in the middle of the reception surrounded by journalists, recipients who are unprepared have hastily thrown their chests out and replied, "I do, too." For the record, I was one of the recipients he laid this curse on.
Even in a novel, I believe that the creation of a classical mystery in particular is an endeavor without end. I write and I write, but it's not quite there. Next time, for sure. The difficulty of giving life to a work that could serve as my introduction is something I became starkly aware of after becoming a professional. His curse is one to keep us from losing our taste for the challenge, even after ten or twenty years. It's a curse I pray is never broken.