Jaime SorensonProfessor David Pollack

JPN246 Modern Japanese Culture13 February 2009

Mobile Novels: A Novel Media

    Japan is usually considered to be at the height of cutting edge technology for many electronics,

such as cell phones. The cell phone is particularly integrated into the everyday lives of Japanese.

These cell phones are used to send e-mail, take photos, purchase items, surf the Internet, and

even conduct bank transactions. The newest applications on cell phones allow users to type up

short messages and upload these onto a host website, compiling them into novels. These novels,

keitai shosetsu, are causing a commotion in Japan as to whether they are beneficial or

detrimental to society and the future of literature and publishing. The keitai shosetsu trend

started with Japanese women in their 20s nearly a decade ago and has since spread to other

countries like China and the United States. Some argue that the poor spelling and grammar as

well as the violent and graphic topics will cause literacy and social behaviors to deteriorate.

Others see mobile novels as a great way to make reading accessible to anyone at any moment

and to nurture creativity and individuality. This essay will delve deeper into the reasons behind

the rise of this popular media, the structure and content of the novels, as well as their impact on

the future literary world.

    Mobile messages are not a new way of communicating. According to Japan Today, teenage

girls began messaging with pagers in the early '90s which led to Japan becoming the first country

to have widespread mobile communications (Galbraith). The first cell phone novel was written by

a Tokyo man in his mid-thirties called Yoshi. He set up a website in 2000 and started posting

"Deep Love" in small segments. The main character is a 17 year old girl who's boyfriend needed a

heart operation. To raise the money, she entered a form of prostitution called enjo kosai. As in

most of these novels, tragedy strikes: the money never reached the boyfriend, she dies from

AIDS, which she contracted from a client.

    Around the same time that "Deep Love" was being posted, one of the most popular blogging

sites, Magic iLand, added an application allowing members to upload texts into a novel template

and comment on other user's works. This piqued the digital generation's interest but what really

helped mobile novels become really popular and wide spread was the decision of cell phone

companies to offer unlimited packet data transmission at a flat rate. It used to be the case that a

writer would acquire a cell phone bill that easily reached $1,000 and would be unable to continue

writing until the bill was paid. Keitai shosetsu grabbed the attention of publishers after Yoshi's

self-published book sold 100,000 copies. Starts Publishing Company became very interested in

Yoshi's work and was allowed to publish "Deep Love" in hard-back form. The novel was then

turned into a manga, television drama, a film, and a series of novels that sold 2.7 million copies

(Goodyear). With the current economy in such poor shape, the success of mobile novels is just

what some companies need to keep up sales. Keitai shosetsu have opened the previously

selective field of literature to anyone with access to the internet. Many of these authors have

never written a novel before and very few of the authors or readers have even read a novel.

According to an article in the New York Times, many Japanese avoid reading real novels because

"the sentences are too difficult to understand, their expressions are intentionally wordy, and the

stories are not familiar to them" (Onishi).

    One of the topics of contestation has been the casual and child-like structure of keitai

shosetsu. The whole novel is written and uploaded in 140 character segments written with short

sentences and a lot of returns and spaces. Because of this character limit,writers of keitai

shosetsu are figuring out the importance of composition and how it impacts the flow of the story.

    Authors use the returns to end a line, making the choice of words very important. Spaces are

used to create a rhythm so that the overall look of a quiet scene is slow due to the high amount of

spaces. For the faster rhythm of a fight, the words are crammed together into very choppy

sentences. The structure of the sentences is very basic and compact. Instead of having longer

sentences that would describe a tight knit family and the basics of each member, the novels

describe this in broad terms: "Daddy / Mom /Yudai / I love you all so much" (Goodyear). All of the

locations and people are described similarly, giving the whole story a vague, fuzzy reality that

can be very easy to relate to.  There is a general worry in Japan that with such vague

descriptions, people will begin to feel bogged down by the colorful details in a normal novel

which will lead to even fewer readers of traditional paper-back books.

    The vocabulary and lack of editing of keitai shosetsu is also feeding this worry causing some

Japanese to be concerned about the literacy skills of reader. Keitai shosetsu are written in plain

everyday speech which is further embedded with emoticons and slang expressions like 'se-fure'

for 'sex friend' and 'mitaina' equivalent to 'like, you know'. In general, these novels reflect "the

average, ordinary girl talking to herself, the mumblings of her heart” (Goodyear). The vocabulary

is extremely basic, posing little challenge to elementary school children. The stories read like

diaries instead of lengthy traditional novels. The text is also written horizontally and mostly in

hiragana instead of the traditional vertical style with more kanji. On top of an already limited

vocabulary and short sentences, mobile novels rarely undergo any form of editing before being

made available to the public. With all of the spelling and grammatical mistakes, cell phone novels

have a very raw quality but many readers find very attractive. The same aspect also serves as a

rally point for critics to rage about the decline of the quality of modern literature. Exposure to

such poor quality has led adults to worry that mobile novels will stunt the growth of children's

vocabulary, accelerate illiteracy, and damage their ability to express themselves.

    Since 1977, the Japanese school system has been gradually reducing the requirements in

classes to try and reduce the stress on school-age children. This system, called yutori kyouiku,

has become quite controversial because some believe that the following generations of Japan will

be less intelligent. This fear has caused critics to begin calling cellphone novel enthusiasts

"yutori," slang for those who cannot properly read, write or think because of yutori kyouiku

(Galbraith). The simple sentences and basic vocabulary are beneficial to reach a younger

audience and make the stories easy to relate to, however the same structure may stunt the

creative growth of the younger generations.

    While the structure of mobile novels may have some impact on the future of Japanese

literature, the most shocking part of these novels is the content. The stories tend to be emotional

and highly melodramatic, covering popular genres like romance, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. The

content has the power to alter how readers perceive reality as well as society's attitude and view

of women.

    Because over half of all people who read mobile novels are young women, romance seems to

be the most popular and influential genre. The standard romance keitai shosetsu has portions of

drugs, prostitution, rape, fatal diseases, violence, and death. In Anatole Fuksas's essay, he

summarizes the results of a number of experiments investigating the connection between reading

and body motion. Fuksas states that "narrative references processed by means of sensory-motor

resonance while reading or listening to stories may interfere with the actual sensory experience"

(Fuksas). This statement is supported by the many cases where elementary school girls fantasize

about being raped by an older man who subsequently falls in love with them. Their young age

coupled with the desire to be raped is alarming elementary school teachers and parents. It is

instilling in young girls that they are to have little personal pride and also teaching them that

rape and violence is just another inevitable part of life.

    While it is important for girls to be able to speak about themselves, the stories echo the

conservative view that women are victims of their emotions and suffer passively. One mobile

novel, "Love Sky", has recently been released in theatres earning over $35 million. Clearly, the

movie was very popular but the moral of the story is not that sex leads to all kinds of pain and

should thus be avoided. It is that sex leads to all kinds of pain and pain is the center of a woman's

life. These issues are not appropriate for young children to feel intimately familiar with.

    Mobile novels can be used to incorporate important lessons that the readers can benefit from

as well. Jakucho Setouchi, a well known Buddhist nun who translated "The Tale of Genji" into

modern Japanese, has written a novel on her own cell phone. Even though most of her readers

have never read "The Tale of Genji", she still incorporated references to the 11th century novel.

Setouchi took important messages from "The Tale of Genji" and added them to her novel with

some changes. Since Genji never repents for his sins, her main character says at one point "I

shouldn't be happy because I did wrong" (Okamura), emphasizing what the correct and expected

behavior is in modern Japan. Girls can also draw courage from these stories. Many of the girls

have experienced at least one aspect of the novels and can empathize with the heroine.

Regardless of the embellishment of parts of the stories, they are still based off of the author's

personal experience or that of a friend. Therefore, the reader can see what happened to the

characters and learn from their mistakes, hopefully to not repeat them in real life. As a method of

expression, it leads to the empowerment of girls, but in regard to the content, it reinforces norms

that are popular in male-dominated cultures.

    Keitai shosetsu will remain a popular creative outlet for a while for many reasons. First, the

desire to read and write them must exist within the population. Given the wide selection of

topics, individuals can always find something interesting to read. The reader can always relate to

the characters in the novel and escape the social pressures on the real world. With a birth rate

low enough to be a national concern, women are facing even more pressure to find a man and

start a family. Women who fail to do so by the time they are 30 are known as "loser-dogs" and the

fantasy of rural life offered in keitai shosetsu becomes irresistible (Goodyear). Authors must also

be willing to write the novels to meet this demand. Writers are usually relating a personal or

provocative stories for the first time, using their stories as a way to release internal pressures

and reflect on their lives. Many start writing because they want to join the group of keitai readers

and writers in order to feel a sense of community and companionship.

    Next, the novels must remain available for them as a genre to exist. Because they are written

on a cell phone and uploaded to a website, they can be written anywhere. Similarly, they can be

downloaded onto cell phones to be read at anytime making keitai shosetsu much more accessible

than paper books. They are also very portable. One doesn't have to go out to the store, buy the

book, and carry it around in order to read it. The novels can be read online for little or no cost to

the reader. From this it would seem like the physical novel will disappear into nonexistence but

this is not the case. Enthusiasts will read a story on the internet and then support the author by

purchasing a physical copy from the bookstore.

    Finally, keitai shosetsu provide a way for individuals to express themselves while still

remaining anonymous. This desire for anonymity stems from the fears that others will notice an

individual's different behavior and will embarrass them. One author, Rin, stated that one reason

why she prefers to remain anonymous is because "others might think you were a bit strange if

you [wrote novels during recesses]" (Hani). Another author who goes by the name Mone regrets

almost everything that she has published, "I could have done a lot to cover things up and I didn't.

I feel a profound responsibility about that." In her online blog, she is listed as an eight year old

girl who live at the heart of the mountain with no photograph to accompany this absurd profile.

She says that she does not want to inconvenience anyone by bringing unwanted attention to her

or her husband's family (Goodyear). Because keitai shosetsu are easily available and satisfy the

desires of the Japanese population, they will last for many years.

    Ultimately, the phenomenon of writing novels on cell phones will persist regardless of the

criticism because they fill a niche in Japanese society. The world will have to learn how to adapt

to this new genre and guide it in a non-offensive direction. It is true that the poor spelling and

grammar will have an impact on the literacy of the readers, but this can be buffered by

encouraging readers to supplement keitai shosetsu with other novels. The content is very graphic

and can be inappropriate in some situations. Despite the shortcomings of this new genre, its

ability to act as an escape valve for a society that expects normalcy will outlast any criticism

directed towards it.

Works Cited

Fuksas, Anatole P. "Embodiment of Stories in Hybrid Environments:." The Ecology of the Novel. 19 Nov. 2007. 01 Feb. 2009 <http://ecologyofthenovel.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/embodiment-of-stories-in-hybrid-environments/>.

Galbraith, Patrick W. "Cell phone novels come of age." Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion. 26 Jan. 2009. 26 Jan. 2009 <http://www.japantoday.com/category/entertainment-arts/view/cell-phone-novels-come-of-age>.

Goodyear, Dana. "Young women develop a genre for the cellular age." The New Yorker. 22 Dec. 2008. 31 Jan. 2009 <http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/22/081222fa_fact_goodyear?currentPage=all>.

Hani, Yoko. "Cellphone bards hit bestseller lists." Japan Times. 23 Sept. 2007. 31 Jan. 2009 <http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20070923x4.html>.

Okamura, Naoto. "Japanese nun writes mobile novel at 86." Asiaone. 26 Sept. 2008. 31 Jan. 2009 <http://www.asiaone.com/Digital/News/Story/A1Story20080926-90199.html>.

Onishi, Norimitsu. "Thumbs Race as Japan's Best Sellers Go Cellular." The New York Times. 20 Jan. 2008. 03 Feb. 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/world/asia/20japan.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1>.