The full text of “The Burning of Hakusan Street,” the grand prize-winning work of the “Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com Collaboration Award,” based on a YOASOBI song, is published, along with a special interview with YOASOBI!
Thank you for using monogatary.com.
“monogatary.com” is a novel submission site operated by Sony Music Entertainment. It is a platform where users can freely submit “stories” in response to “themes” given by the operators every day, and have fun by adding various reactions to the stories, such as illustrations and comments.
Monocon is an annual contest held by monogatary.com. This contest has collaborated with many artists and has given birth to YOASOBI, a “novel-to-music unit” that has become a global artist, and is also a place where chemical reactions based on literature are born.
At last year’s Monocon 2023, various projects were held with the theme of “KAIKO” with the aim of creating a place where many people can come together through stories, i.e. a place for “encounters”. One of the highlights was the Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com Collaboration Award. This award, which was co-hosted with Bungei, a literary magazine published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, and had Akutagawa Prize-winning author Hitomi Kanehara as the selection committee chairperson, received the most applications of any Monocon 2023 event.
The grand prize-winning work “The Burning of Hakusan Street” (written by Arite Mado) will be turned into a song by YOASOBI. A book compiling all the winning works is scheduled to be published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in the fall of 2024. In addition, a collaboration has been realized with Recruit’s “Encounter Not Yet Here. Music Not Yet Here” project, which resonates with the purpose of “Encounter”, the theme of “Monocon 2023”. In commemoration of the “encounter” between “Bungei”, “monogatary.com”, “YOASOBI”, and the “Encounter Not Yet Here. Music Not Yet Here” project, we are bringing you this commemorative free magazine!
An unexpected encounter through music and literature.
◆For more information, click here
https://www.yoasobi-music.jp/news/566518
(YOSAOBI official site)
■About the Memorial Free Magazine
Booklet name: RECRUIT | Literature | monogatary.com presents Memorial Free Magazine
Unexpected encounters through music and literature
Distribution period: From Monday, September 2, 2024
Distribution format: Free paper (free)
Distribution locations: Recruit free paper racks installed at stations in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama, Chiba, Osaka, Aichi, Hokkaido, Miyagi, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka
*Please refrain from contacting railway companies or station staff.
*Please note that the distribution start date may differ depending on the distribution preparation status of each location.
*Delivery may be delayed due to weather or traffic conditions.
※Please note that we cannot reserve items.
*There are no plans for a reprint.
■ Highlights of the contents
①Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com Collaboration Award Grand Prize Winner
The full text of “The Burning of Hakusan Street” (author: Aritemado) is published!
We take a look back at the Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com collaboration award, and also feature the acceptance speech by Arite Mado, the author of the grand prize-winning work “The Burning of Hakusan Street,” which was selected from a total of 897 entries, as well as the selection comments from the chairperson of the selection committee, Kanehara Hitomi!
②Special interview with Hitomi Kanehara and Aritemado
To commemorate this award, we bring you a special conversation between the grand prize winner, Arite Mado, and the selection committee chairperson, Kanehara Hitomi! In addition to discussing the appeal of the work, they also talk about the behind-the-scenes story of the application process, writing untold tales, and advice from Kanehara Hitomi on being a writer!
3.YOASOBI 5th Anniversary Special Interview
This year marks the 5th anniversary of YOASOBI’s founding. To mark this milestone, it has been decided that the Grand Prize winning work of the Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com collaboration, “The Burning of Hakusan Street” (written by Aritemado), will be made into a song, and production is currently underway for the commercial song of Recruit’s “An encounter that hasn’t been here yet. Music that hasn’t been here yet.” project. Here is an interview in which we asked the two about YOASOBI’s history, their new song, and their thoughts on “encounters” and “encounters”! We bring you excerpts from the interview of the two of them on turning the Grand Prize winning work of monogatary.com’s “Monocon” into a song for the first time in 5 years!
Ayase-san
“It’s a return to our roots. It’s a good opportunity for us to get ourselves back on track and go back to our roots, so I think it’s great that we were able to do it at this turning point in our fifth anniversary year.”
ikura-san
“It’s been five years already, I thought, but it was also an opportunity to rediscover my original intentions, and I felt like it was fate.”
■About Literature
Bungei, a quarterly literary magazine published by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, celebrates its 90th anniversary in 2023 and is always introducing new talent to the world, including producing many Akutagawa Prize-winning authors. In 2019, it underwent a major renewal under the name “Literary Reboot.” The catchy visuals and in-depth content have attracted attention from not only book lovers but also many other people, and the 2019 fall issue attracted attention even before its release and sold out in a few days, making it an extremely rare third printing for a magazine. It is a unique literary magazine that continues to be a top runner as a medium for conveying the “now” of literature. This time, at Monocon 2023, it co-hosted a new writer’s award with monogatary,com and selected “The Burning of Hakusan Street” as the grand prize winner. A collection of short stories including the grand prize winner is scheduled to be published this fall.
HP:https://www.kawade.co.jp/np/bungei.html
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/kawade_bungei/
■About the “Encounters that are not here yet. Music that is not here yet.” project
“Encounters that are not here yet. Music that is not here yet.” This project was launched in 2022 as an opportunity for artists who agree with the purpose to express the “possibilities of encounters” through music. This project was started with the desire to provide various “encounters” so that by taking action, even if it is something small, you can meet new people, experiences, perspectives and opportunities, and discover a new you and gain confidence, and to accompany the discovery of new opportunities through music. This embodies the company’s efforts to be a company that supports each individual to make choices that better suit their values. As part of this project, the company’s CM song will be a song based on “The Burning of Hakusan Street,” the grand prize-winning work of “Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com” by YOASOBI.
HP:https://www.recruit.co.jp/madakoko_music/
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/recruit___official
YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/user/recruitholdings
About YOASOBI
YOASOBI is a “unit that turns novels into music” consisting of composer Ayase and vocalist ikura. Their debut song “Racing into the Night,” released in November 2019, attracted attention immediately after its release, dominating various domestic distribution charts, and has now surpassed 1 billion total streams, a first in history. Their opening theme song for the TV anime “Oshi no Ko,” “Idol,” topped the Billboard JAPAN comprehensive song chart “JAPAN Hot 100” for 21 consecutive weeks, breaking the all-time record for consecutive top spots on Billboard JAPAN, and surpassing 400 million total streams in history. They also topped the US Billboard Global Chart “Global Excl. US,” Apple Music’s “Top 100: Global,” and YouTube music charts TOP 100 songs Global, setting new records for the first time in J-POP history. In April 2024, they will perform at Coachella, one of the world’s largest festivals, held in California, and this fall, celebrating their 5th anniversary, they will hold a 4-day dome concert in Tokyo and Osaka. This time, they are returning to their roots as “Monocon” for the first time in about 5 years. They have announced that they will be making a song out of the work that won the Grand Prize at the “Monocon 2023 Bungei x monogatary.com Collaboration Award”.
HP:https://www.yoasobi-music.jp
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/yoasobi_staff_/
About monogatary.com
This is a novel submission site operated by Sony Music Entertainment, where users can freely submit “stories” to the “topics” given by the site’s management every day, and have fun by commenting and reacting. The genres of submitted works are diverse, including romance, horror, suspense, comedy, haiku, and poetry, and there are more than 200,000 submitted works. The site also focuses on turning submitted novels into songs, films, comics, and other works, and the original novel for the debut song “Yoru ni Kakeru” by YOASOBI, a unit that turns “novels” into music, was born from the annual contest “Monocon 2019”. While producing many songs and works through a wide range of collaborations with artists, recently, perfumes, bread, sweets, nails, and other products based on novels have also been commercialized. At “Monocon 2023”, the site will co-host a new talent award with the literary magazine “Bungei”, and the grand prize winning work “Hakusan Street Burning Case” will be published as a book and a song by YOASOBI. A novel submission site that continues to challenge the unexpected form of “stories”.
X:https://x.com/monogatary_com
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/monogatary.com_staff
TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@monogatary.com
YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/@monogatarycom
*Inquiries regarding the contents posted
monogatary.com ✉support.monogatary@sonymusic.co.jp
