Male and female author -Murakami Radio-

        When you go to the fiction section of a bookshop, there are often separate shelves for 'male writers' and 'female writers'. The books I have written are, of course, on the male writers' shelves. They are usually sandwiched between Teru Miyamoto and Ryu Murakami, in "A-I-U-E-O" alphabetical order. I know that it is commonplace, but as far as I know, bookstores in other countries rarely have separate shelves for male and female authors. I don't know about the situation in bookshops in Africa or Islamic countries, but at least I have never seen such a classification in the West. They are all lined up on the same shelves in alphabetical order, regardless of gender.

People are surprised when I tell them that this is the way it is in Japan. I explain that in Japan, most male readers tend to read books by male authors and most female readers tend to read books by female authors, but they ask, "Even if that is true, what is the point of having separate shelves for male and female authors?" I am asked. When they say that, I think, well, there may not be any point. I mean, by separating books by female and male authors, it might encourage women to prefer reading female authors and men to prefer reading male authors, which is probably not a very healthy thing. It's not a public bathhouse, and I think it would be more natural to have a variety of novels in one place, with a mix of men and women. The genital structure may be somewhat different, but they use the same language and write about the same world events. Instead, there are 'gay and lesbian writers' sections in large foreign bookshops. You won't find this in Japan for the first time. Most of the people who visit here are probably gay or lesbian, and they come to bookshops in search of 'gay and lesbian novels', i.e. with a clear sense of purpose, so there seems to be a necessity to have that genre on a separate shelf. The situation is different from how bookshops in Japan separate male and female writers, but when I went to a fish shop in my neighbourhood recently, they sold shishamo (Japanese shishamo) separately for men and women (male and female). The male ones were much cheaper. The females are more valuable because they have eggs. The males are slimmer and look cooler, but from a fishmonger's point of view, this non-metabolism is not valued at all.

Nevertheless, it is a pity that they are sold at such a low price. As a man, my heart aches. I felt sorry for him and bought a male shishamo, saying, "Please give me this one", as if I were Urashima Taro helping a tortoise being bullied. But when I got home and grilled them, I found that they were not tasty at all. I realised once again that good shishamo is female. As I drank a bottle of Shijikizuru Jun and munched on a slim, tasteless shishamo, I thought to myself, without any clear context, that male writers must write novels that are as tasty as their female counterparts, so as not to be in the same situation as the male shishamo.

The readers of my novels have always been roughly 50-50 split between men and women. And many of my female readers are beautiful. I am certain about that.

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