Nureki Chimuo Archive

The novel Double Fantasy, serialized in Weekly Bunshun by author Yuka Murayama, has been published as a single volume.

Back then, I found it in the waiting room of the dentist I was seeing for treatment. I read it sporadically in Weekly Bunshun and found it interesting, so I decided to read the whole thing (published by Bugieshunju, 1695 yen plus tax).

Around the same time, a dialogue between Yuka Murayama and Ira Ishida, centered on “Double Fantasy,” was featured in the February 2009 issue of “All Yomimono.”

(Since it’s the same publisher, it’s probably also serving as a promotion for the new book.)

This dialogue between the two is refreshingly candid and wonderfully interesting.

I wonder if it’s really okay to speak so boldly like this. I certainly couldn’t do it myself.

After all, these two are now popular authors with established status and prestige. Their influence must be considerable too.

Reading the “Double Fantasy” book while glancing at the magazine interview, I found myself grinning uncontrollably. It’s so entertaining, so utterly delightful, it somehow makes life feel light and buoyant.

When a man sleeps naked with a woman, the thing he worries about most is whether she is truly enjoying it.

How much she’s enjoying it, he can’t know. He’s not a woman, so he absolutely can’t know.

Since the author of “Double Fantasy” is a woman, unlike a male writer imagining and writing about it, I feel like it reveals her true feelings quite a bit.

That’s why it’s so intriguing, and why men get excited.

I find myself thinking that reading an interesting novel really is the greatest pleasure in this life.

And so, unable to resist the urge to record this feeling I have right now, I end up writing about drooling over “Double Fantasy” again, without returning to the Tsurukame Theater era.

(R-san might get upset, but this is how I feel right now, so it can’t be helped. Even though I’m enjoying this novel so much now, if a little time passes, this excitement will probably fade. I might forget the story, the characters, even the title. But the fact that I’m moved and engrossed right now is certain, so I want to honestly write down this feeling of mine, R-san!)

Damn, she’s good, this Yuka Murayama. No, calling her by her name alone feels disrespectful. From now on, I’ll write “Yuka Murayama-san” with respect and affection.

Now, where should I begin to convey the appeal of this novel?

That said, I’ve only just reached page 150 of its nearly 500 pages.

I haven’t even gotten to the part I read in the dentist’s waiting room yet.

But it really is interesting.

(I never expected Yukio Ninagawa to show up!)

I know I should wait until I’ve finished all the pages, calm down, and write about my overall impression. That’s probably the sensible thing to do. But right now, I just can’t wait.

I’m impatient.

Come to think of it, I’ve rarely been composed in my life.

I was born and raised in Asakusa, a born and bred scatterbrain.

In other words, I’m a frivolous person.

Since I’m saying it myself, there’s no mistake.

Both my father and mother were born and raised in Asakusa.

They loved entertainment, disliked working seriously, loved laziness, and were self-centered about everything.

When I was a child, it was the rainy season, and it rained every day.

My father said he hated working, so while it rained, he’d just lie around at home, sleeping on a futon spread out on the floor.

My mother slept too. They say birds of a feather flock together, and she was a lazy woman who also loved spreading out her futon and lazing around sleeping.

We three children (me, my younger brother, and my younger sister) also spent all day in the futon, skipping school and just lying around.

Futons were spread out on the tatami mats, and the five of us, parents and children, lay around all day.

Our family’s futons were always damp and sticky, giving off some kind of musty smell.

I liked the feel and smell of those futons.

Oh, what was I trying to write?

That’s right, I wanted to say that it’s all my parents’ fault I turned out to be this dim-witted, frivolous person, this clumsy vulgar individual.

I figured a vulgar Edo-period slang term like “clumsy” wouldn’t be in the dictionary, but when I looked it up just to check, I was shocked.

It was there.

“Otchokochoi” Flighty and shallow-minded. Frivolous. Also, such a person.

That’s just how it is. Being a scatterbrained, vulgar person since my parents’ generation, there’s no way I could ever write a logical, systematic critique.

So, with this “Double Fantasy”, I’ll just write about whatever parts I find interesting, without worrying about any particular order.

Writing in no particular order. That’s the only way.

What really startled me at first was the scene depicting the heroine, a thirty-five year old screenwriter named Natsu, secretly masturbating while lying in bed with her beloved husband.

There are plenty of scenes depicting female masturbation written by male erotic novels.

They’ve written them energetically, sensationally, and in vast quantities; enough to feed a horse.

Even in submission magazines like “Sexual Life White Paper,” there are mountains of female masturbation scenes written by male readers and contributors.

But the masturbation scene written by a female author, a young, beautiful, charming, and currently popular Naoki Prize Winner, which is so vividly raw that it makes you wonder if she really wrote this much, still manages to move me.

What really excites me is that in an interview for “All Yomimono,” Yuka-san actually spoke about this very thing with Ira Ishida.

Ishida: For example, imagine you’re eating at a dimly lit restaurant. I wrote about this in Sleeping Pearl, but I ask women to take off their panties.

Murayama: Oh my..

Ishida: If there’s a tablecloth, you can’t see their feet, right? So I say, “Well, take them off a bit,” and she’s like, ‘Huh? Here?’ while squirming like this (mimicking squirming), and then I say, “Could you put them on the table for a moment?” And she does.

Murayama: Woah.

Ishida: Then I pick them up, fold them so the lace shows, and tuck them into my breast pocket.

Murayama: What, that’s so erotic!

Ishida: Then you use it to pay the bill or whatever.

Murayama: So then the woman’s already head over heels?

Ishida: More like, she’s having fun. She’ll say stuff like, “Hmm, it feels kind of breezy.”

Murayama: That’s how you create that sense of the extraordinary.

Ishida: Not extraordinary, more like.. ordinary (laughs).

Murayama: Ordinary!

Ishida: Well, I could never say this on TV (laughs).

This talk by Ira Ishida, the Naoki Prize winning author currently at the height of his popularity, is bold and refreshingly witty.

Compared to a certain writer called “the grandmaster of the SM world”, who said, “There are stupid enthusiasts who carefully tie the wrists behind the back when binding a woman’s hands, but since the back can’t be seen anyway, there’s no need to put rope there.”

Ira Ishida’s chatter is enjoyable and likable.

(Incidentally I’m a fan of Ira Ishida’s novels and have bought and read many of his books.)

Come to think of it, that same “All Yomimono” magazine's roundtable page a few years ago also featured that extremely ignorant remark by a certain grand master writer of the SM world.

(Reading that roundtable article made me furious and appalled, so I wrote about it in detail on Fuji Planning’s blog, “Nureki Chimou’s Secret Bondage Stories.” If you’re interested, please read it there.)

Now, following the Murayama-Ishida dialogue, there’s a remark that makes me gasp.

Murayama: So, Ishida-san, you don’t find it difficult to write sex scenes, then?

Ishida: It’s just fun, purely.

Murayama: Unlike Ishida-san, I’m honestly incredibly wet while writing them.

Ishida: Hmm, that’s nice.

Murayama: Isn’t it? (laughs). But then, after writing one scene, I get completely drained. Totally, utterly drained.

Ishida: I’m a little jealous (laughs).

Murayama: It’s painful and leaves me frustrated. Words are just empty promises, after all. So controlling my own desires during the serialization was incredibly difficult.

What exactly does it mean for a young, cute female writer to “get incredibly wet while writing” sex scenes?

It’s not just about getting wet.

It’s about writing while getting “incredibly” wet.

It’s about “getting completely exhausted after writing one scene, utterly exhausted.”

That’s amazing.

How can she even say something like that?

And it’s a statement made in a monthly magazine published by a top-tier publisher that prides itself on its history and achievements, maintaining enormous circulation figures.

(I’ve been a devoted reader of this magazine since I can remember. As a boy, I eagerly awaited each issue of Nomura Koto’s “Zenigata Heiji: The Detective Chronicles.”)

It seems we’ve reached an era where such things can be stated openly even in a major magazine that could rightly be called national.

Several photos of Yuka Murayama and Ira Ishida are featured on the pages of this interview.

Ira-san’s dapper appearance is familiar from his frequent TV appearances lately, but Yuka-san is rarely seen.

And this photo of Yuka… well, she’s just so adorable.

Her face, wearing a slightly chubby, charming, and voluptuous white sweater, is perfectly captured.

The thought that such a charming, sensual and fresh woman writes novels like “Double Fantasy” and makes astonishing statements in magazine interviews makes a guy like me tingle all over.

The scene of Natsu, the thirty-five year old heroine in the novel, masturbating, and the image of Yuka writing that scene “while getting incredibly wet” blend together, overlapping in my mind until they become almost one and the same person.

Add a photo of Yuka herself to that, and well, the erotic fantasies spread endlessly, strangely, and eerily continuing to expand.

In their conversation, the two discuss this very thing with the flavorful language befitting writers.

Murayama: Once I started worrying about misunderstandings, it became endless, so I decided to think of everything I’ve written as fiction. The very words I chose to write were selected from countless others. By the time I intentionally wrote something, or, indeed, chose not to write something, it had already diverged from reality. Readers then translate it through their own experiences, causing further divergence. Thinking that way, I decided to stop worrying about trivial things, since everything becomes fiction the moment it’s written, regardless of reality. I became quite relieved, resigning myself to the fact that people might think Natsu is based on me. In fact, I figured, if I’m going to strip naked anyway, I might as well do it in the middle of Ginza’s busy streets (laughs).

Ishida: No, that’s exactly it. With novels, everyone inevitably misunderstands, so just let them misunderstand.

You understand perfectly.

That’s exactly right.

“Translation,” “misunderstanding,” “delusion,” they’re all the same thing.

Just let readers misunderstand, freely translate, and indulge in their own delusions.

For there is no greater pleasure than misunderstanding, translating and wallowing in delusion.

I was thinking of sharing a rather realistic masturbation scene from the novel here, but I decided against it due to copyright concerns.

Actually, when I read the description of this scene, I thought, “I could write something like this myself.”

But then, imagining Yuka-san writing it “while getting incredibly wet,” gazing at her plump, fleshy photos, adding a single rope while “translating,” my lust began to surge.

In short, I’m just a lecherous man.