I tried out Koizora

After the lecture about cell-phone novel, I tried to find a translation of the Koizora in English or Vietnamese and well, there were several translations other there but I could not find a completely translated edition of the novel.

Here is one of the translations:


http://jiahuishousetsutranslation.blogspot.com/2009/02/koizora-chapter-1-page-1.html


okay, even though I am quite not updated since this novel was published way back to 2005 and the trend of cell-phone novel has already cooled down a lot, I still would like to note down some thoughts on some chapters of the novel.


Koizora was claimed to tell the true story of a high school girl named Mika (who is also the author). What she has gone through tore a lot of readers' hearts. It was a train of misadventures for her: from meeting Hiro, a rebellious boy, to having sex with him, getting bullied by Hiro's ex, getting raped, getting pregnant and then miscarriage. The story ends with the death of Hiro because of serious disease, leaving Mika behind(wikipedia).


What Mika had to go through is unimaginable and it made a lot of people doubtful of the story to be true. Nevertheless, the novel turned out to be a huge success since a movie and a TV drama series were produced right after.



About the novel:
Take a look at this short exert of the translation


For a moment, the one that came up on my mind was
Hiro's face.

I had never met him...
It's just my selfish imagination
Hiro's face.




"...I think there isn't"


Hearing my answer,
without waiting Aya said,


"I am now in love!" 


(taken from http://jiahuishousetsutranslation.blogspot.com/2009/08/koizora-chapter-1-page-10.html)


It is not wrong to say cell-phone novels damage the purity and formality of literature!
The plot is typical, simple. The writing is abrupt and doesn't require strong literature talent (which you would expect from a novel).


The happenings in the story are also told with brief and not deeply developed depictions. Everything happened to Mika was just like the outlines of an essay. The story was written as first-person pronoun, there are a lot of Mika's emotions going on throughout the story, however, nothing goes too developed, nothing can be called deep, thought-provoking here.


This is due to the nature of the cell-phone novels that they are written and often read on cellphones, the wording cannot be too long or complicated. Nevertheless, a kind of literature that even an elementary kid can write (without the content of sex and rape,...) like this, cellphone novels can be a threat.


Also, to me cellphone novel plots are no different from the shojo mangas that i used to read. One is conveyed through words and the other is drawn into pictures. And if i have to say anything about Shojo mangas, It would be they are often misleading stories about high school girls, who never study, only care about appearance and boyfriends. So imagine, the popularity of cellphone novels can develop misleading images as well to the readers. Would parents want their daughters to read stories about prostitutes, about adolescence sex, about rape when they are not mature and mentally grown-up. (cellphone novels come of age - Patrick W Galbraith --- http://www.japantoday.com/category/arts-culture/view/cell-phone-novels-come-of-age) 




In conclusion, even though i would not like to finish the whole story, but there are a lot of elements coming out from Koizora that we need to think about. This is a product of popular culture and it reflexes the inner mind of the culture it stands for. Cellphone novels, though their popularity has cooled down but the study of them is a good source to learn about the development of jpop in Japan.