Reporter | Chen Jiajing
Edit | Yellow Moon
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If Haruki Murakami is one of the most famous long-distance running enthusiasts among Japanese writers, Keigo Higashino is a loyal spokesperson for skiing. Snowboarding, alpine skiing, ski jumping, curling and ice hockey, most of the ice and snow sports that ordinary people do not know the rules of the game and only pay attention to when the Winter Olympics arrive, are all cherished. Ever since witnessing the bravery of Japanese athletes at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Keigo Higashino has developed a great interest in skiing. After many years, he finally had the opportunity to learn snowboarding, from a layman spectator to a skilled skater. Since then, his love for skiing and even other ice and snow sports has grown day by day, not only writing a large number of essays, but also creating a number of novels based on skiing, including "Silver Jack", "Wind AndRoad", "Dear Gondola", "Wind and Snow Pursuit" and so on.
Keigo Higashino on snowboarding (Source: Challenge)
What kind of fun does skiing bring to Keigo Higashino? How did his love of ice and snow affect his speculative fiction writing? In this article, we will uncover keigo Higashino's many works about his indissoluble relationship with ice and snow sports. It is worth mentioning that as one of Japan's most prolific and best-selling authors, almost every one of his ski novels is considered a failure, and even left fans with the impression of "every ski must be pit". Still, he never gave up on incorporating his hobby into writing, and is there any other reason behind this than endless love?
01 "A handful of old people still toss": how is the uncle's slippery hand cultivated?
In the winter of 1972, the Sapporo Winter Olympics kicked off. This was the first time the Winter Olympics had been held in Japan, and Keigo Higashino, who was still in his second year of junior high school at the time, first learned of the existence of the Winter Olympics and experienced the beauty of ice and snow sports through the TV screen. As the organizer, Japan's outstanding achievements, especially the feat of the "Sunnomaru Flying Team" winning the gold, silver and bronze medals in the ski jumping event, shocked Keigo Higashino. According to Keigo Higashino's Last Greetings, he bought all the sports newspapers, read the relevant reports over and over again, and repeatedly practiced imitating the handsome posture of the gold medalist Kasai Yukio jumping from a height. Since then, Keigo Higashino has become obsessed with snow sports, especially competitive skiing. Whenever a world-class event is broadcast on TV, he will watch it without landing, and gradually become familiar with the players of various countries.
On February 3, 1972, in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan, the opening ceremony of the 11th Winter Olympics was held at the Manjuchi Stadium. Image source: Visual China
Throughout his youth, Keigo Higashino often fantasized about himself in a ski suit drawing beautiful curves on the snow. After the middle school entrance examination, he finally made up his mind to go skiing with a few friends, and this experience was written into his autobiography "My Swinging Youth". Since everyone was a poor student with no experience, the ski equipment rented at that time was quite shabby, and several people slid randomly, hitting several people in succession, and the scene was chaotic. But it was with the fearlessness of the teenager that Keigo Higashino learned to turn and stop that day, but it was far from the "handsome" he imagined. However, until the end of his student days, he could not complete his dream of skiing. The biggest reason is naturally "no money" - in addition to the rental fee of utensils, there are always three or four days of accommodation, transportation and meals to go to the ski resorts in remote mountainous areas, which add up to a considerable amount.
When "skiing freedom" was truly realized, Keigo Higashino was already forty-four years old. At that time, snowboarding was becoming increasingly popular among young people, and higashino, who regarded himself as an uncle, was a little daunted by this, but he couldn't help but want to challenge it. From 2002 to 2003, he began the most intensive snowboard training of his life, and every rest day he frantically traveled to and from the snow-capped mountains. Because the snowfall situation varies from place to place, he will browse the snow live of the major ski resorts on the Internet almost every day, refusing to miss a skiing opportunity. From SSAWS, once the largest indoor ski resort in Japan, to the watery highland ski resort favored by family skiers, from the Kagura Ski Resort with its high altitude and rich slopes to the Tsukiyama Ski Resort, which is also open in summer, Keigo Higashino has personally visited it. Frequent practice coupled with the training of professional instructors has rapidly improved his skiing skills, and by the end of 2003, the "uncle skater" can play snowboarding like a young man.
Keigo Higashino learns "Itao Balance" (Source: Challenge)
Keigo Higashino not only obsessed with skiing himself, but also preached skiing every time, and soon the ears of the people around him were cocooned. Many people scoffed: "When you are old, you still toss." "What is the force that makes Keigo Higashino forget to eat and sleep, and ski every day until his legs stiffen?" In The Challenge, a collection of essays documenting his experience with snowboarding, he explains that what fascinates him most about skiing is "progress." When people reach middle age, there are very few opportunities to learn new things, and the skills they mastered in the early years are constantly deteriorating, in this case, "no matter how small things are, the feeling of 'yesterday won't, today will be' always makes me happy." Snowboarding is a sport that allows me to feel this small 'progress' first-hand. ”
There are also benefits to promoting hobbies everywhere. In 2006, the Turin Winter Olympics were held in Italy, and Keigo Higashino was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to watch the game live. The cost and arrangements for the long trip were provided by his long-time publishing partner, The Kobunsha, who wrote "Dream back to Turin" afterwards. The book tells a ridiculous story in the form of a fantasy novel: Keigo Higashino's cat becomes a young man overnight, and he forces the cat to learn to ski, and plans to let it go to Turin for the Winter Olympics and repay him with a gold medal. In fact, the writer just wants to use this to talk about his love of skiing and to popularize the winter Olympics knowledge to readers. Although most readers do not buy into this topic, the book does show Keigo Higashino's comprehensive understanding of ice and snow sports, not only counting Japan's successes and failures in the Various Winter Olympics, but also analyzing the many changes in different sports from technology to tactics, which can be said to be a summary of many years of observation and practical experience.
The Challenge
[Japanese] Keigo Higashino by Cao Yi translation
99 readers | People's Literature Publishing House 2019-0802 When talking about skiing, I forgot to reason: is it a hobby or a deliberate one?
Keigo Higashino once revealed in "Challenge" that in the years when he was addicted to snowboarding, he lived a "ski-centered life", and the proportion of work in life became more and more unstable, resulting in the consequence that "the days when I don't go to the ski resort are basically the delivery date". In order to deliver the manuscript properly (without delaying skiing), he had to write more diligently. It turned out that skiing not only did not affect the progress of Keigo Higashino's work, but also greatly improved his output efficiency. In 2002, "Murder by the Lake", "Shi Sheng" and "Kidnapping Game" were published one after another, which is also the first time in six years that he published three novels in one year; in 2003, three other works "Letter", "Killing Gate" and "I Am a Cold Face Teacher" were published; followed by "Black Laugh Novel", "Suspect X's Dedication", and "Science?" Among them, "The Dedication of Suspect X" won the Naoki Prize, the highest award for Popular Literature in Japan in 2005.
However, none of the above novels have anything to do with skiing. As early as the beginning of his snowboarding studies, Keigo Higashino claimed that he was also going to "collect wind" and "accumulate material for writing novels", and he also mentioned many times that he would include the money for ski equipment and chairlift tickets in his writing expenses. Judging from the results, it is likely that his statement at that time was just to prevaricate the press's urging and allow himself to enjoy skiing for legitimate reasons (or even gratuitously). It wasn't until 2010 that Keigo Higashino's ski novels began to enter the public eye. The first is "Who's the Cuckoo's Egg," which tests humanity around the mysteries in the family of a former Olympic skier; Silver Jack (also known as "Snow Country Robbery"), published in the same year, directly sets the case on the ski slope, with a time bomb buried under the slopes. The protagonist of "Silver Jack", Nezu Sekihei, is a ski ranger with first-class skills, and his future girlfriend, Chiaki Sethito, is also very skilled, and the duo has appeared in "Wind Whirling", "Wind and Snow Pursuit", and "Gondola in Love" published a few years later, laying the foundation for Keigo Higashino's "ski series".
"Windswept Whirlwind"
[Japanese] Keigo Higashino translated by Tomoyuki Sosu
Modern Press 2014-05
Keigo Higashino also has an earlier ski novel that cannot be ignored, namely "The Birdman Project" published by Shinchosha in 1989. At that time, he had already won the Edogawa Rambling Prize for "After School" and was working on the material work of new works, at a time when major publishing houses were launching series of books on different themes. Kodansha promotes classical ballet works, while Shinchosha focuses on ski jumping. Keigo Higashino, who loves ski jumping, was pleased to get involved, not only getting the chance to go to Sapporo to interview the Japanese ski jump team, but also to meet the famous Finnish star Marty Nikenin, whom he admires. In The Birdman Project, the famous ski jumper Yujing, known as "Birdman", was poisoned and killed, and Nikainin is known as "Birdman" because of his flight trajectory like an eagle. Although this book was shortlisted for the Eiji Yoshikawa Literary Newcomer Award, it did not sell well in the end, and even the printing became a luxury.
Ironically, judging from today's public evaluation, the undersold "Birdman Project" is considered to be the best of Keigo Higashino's ski novels, and although the "ski series" he created after becoming a best-selling author has often exceeded one million sales, it has not been able to gain a good reputation like other works such as "Kyoichiro Kaga series" and "Detective Galileo series". On Douban, the average score of the "ski series" is less than 6.0, and loyal readers have complained that these works do not have the pleasure brought by rigorous logical reasoning, and lack novelty in the discussion of human nature and social issues, only the emotional line of the hero and heroine is still touching.
The Birdman Project
[Japanese] Keigo Higashino by Hoshino Kuku translation
New Classic Culture | South Sea Publishing Company 2011-06
Today, the word "skiing" has almost become a "bad work" symbol of Keigo Higashino. Storyline aside, many of the details of the Ski Series about skiing and skiing itself— such as the hostility of old skiers towards young skaters, the way ski resorts are run, the weather of the snow season, and the skiers' skilled techniques— can actually be found in Keigo Higashino's essays or autobiographies, and repeated writing will only make the reader lose more and more freshness. In "Gondola in Love", Keigo Higashino even completely put aside his reasoning and simply wrote about love and skiing. This cannot help but wonder whether the writer took material from skiing for the sake of writing novels, or whether he used novels to fill the numbers for the sake of writing skis.
Why did Keigo Higashino risk losing readers to write skiing repeatedly? In addition to his obsession with ice and snow sports, this may be related to his belief that the Winter Olympics are not valued by the Japanese. He mentioned in "Dream back to Turin" that compared with the Summer Olympic Games, many of the rules and systems of the Winter Olympics are not well known to the public, and the competition process is relatively lacking in tension and drama, so people will only care about whose medals are spent, but indifferent to the project itself. Coupled with Japan's unsatisfactory results since the Sapporo Winter Olympics and the Nagano Winter Olympics, the younger generation, who have not witnessed brilliant historical achievements, naturally have no interest in further understanding. As a writer, Keigo Higashino is afraid that only through novels can he pass on the fun of ice and snow sports to more young people.
On February 5, 2022, alpine skiers trained and prepared for the Beijing Winter Olympics. Image source: Visual China
As global warming has accelerated in recent years, Keigo Higashino has become increasingly worried that ski resorts and various fun snow sports around the world will eventually die out. He jokingly predicted at the end of "Dream back to Turin" that in 2035, the Winter Olympics would be suspended indefinitely, and only the popular figure skating in many sports would be retained and included in the Summer Olympic Games. "It would be lonely to forget the fact that skiing, snowboarding, bobsleigh racing, punting, and other sports once existed." As Keigo Higashino wrote this passage with a little sadness, he may have decided to do everything in his power to incorporate skiing into the novel, even if it had nothing to do with reasoning.