lolita media library: audio reading of Novala Takemoto's "Variety Shop 'The End of the World'"

Overview

This is a promotional CD with audio excerpts from Novala Takemoto's short story Variety Shop "The End of the World" (世界の終わりという名の雑貨店). The reading is performed by voice actors and radio personalities Takahiro Sakurai (櫻井孝宏) and Shiho Kawaragi (河原木志穂).

Inside the CD booklet. The two voice actors that performed the reading are in the top left and bottom right photos.

Story synopsis (spoiler-free)

A building owner in Kyoto agrees to let a man occupy a small room in his building rent-free on the condition that he uses it to sell something. The man decides to open a variety shop and names it "The End of the World". One day in early winter, he sees a young woman standing outside. She particularly grabs the man's attention because she is dressed head-to-toe in Vivienne Westwood clothing. She enters the store and stays an unusually long time, and finally leaves after buying a small pack of paper soap. She keeps coming back to the store nearly every day.

Comments

 

This CD was made by the Japan Audio Producers' Association (JAPA), a professional association for voice actors and narrators. I am guessing that Sakurai and Kawaragi were both prominent members of the group at the time of release. It was a free gift with the purchase of the JAPA 2008 member directory at their booth at an event.

 

It is unclear how Novala Takemoto's short story ended up being chosen for this project, which is kind of disappointing since I am personally curious to know that exact thing. Here's Takemoto talking about his personal copy. His version has a different front jacket! I wonder if it's because it was a special one for him, or if there are multiple versions floating around with a different cover image depending on where it was handed out.

Since the reading is done by professional voice actors, the quality is quite good, at least as good or better than many other anime/manga drama CDs I have listened to in the past. Japanese is not my native language and I do not currently read fiction in English or otherwise on a regular basis, so I am very likely unaware of some of the quirks of the author's personal writing style and some of the signals of drama/gravity that a native speaker might gather from the text alone. While it is only portions of the short story and not the entire thing, I really liked the extra dimension the audio reading by native Japanese speakers brought to my understanding and enjoyment of the story. It also brought back memories of language classes during study abroad, and how thankful I am that my language teachers did an entire several-weeks-long unit on reading aloud / narration. It gave me lots of practice in learning patterns of emphasis within words (to sound more natural and be properly understood) and throughout whole sentences (both to sound more natural, as well as slightly different emphasis techniques for dramatic effect). It was difficult, but also really fun and informative.

 

In 2019, a full audiobook was made of this story as well as Missin' (the novel with which it was published in print) with different actors, so I suppose I'll listen to that to compare! You can listen to a sample here.

Contents

• Tracks: 4
• Run time: 60 min 
• Track listing*:
1. Pages 9-11: The opening paragraphs of the story. (2:33)
   
2. Pages 29-38: The protagonist/narrator of the story recalls the first time he met "you" and how they became acquainted. (14:17)
   
3. Pages 42-52: The protagonist recounts when he told "you" that he must close the shop and the surprising thing he learned about "you" from this interaction. (16:34)
   
4. Pages 89-102: The protagonist receives a letter from "you". (26:36)
   

* The tracks do not have official titles. My references to page numbers are based on the version of the short story published in the 2007 Shogakukan edition of Takemoto's novel Missin' (ISBN 978-4-09-408225-8).