Abstract

“Hotel Royal” is a major literary success in the Japanese market, having been awarded the prestigious Naoki Prize following its initial release in 2013, with more than a million copies in print in Japan as of late 2020, and a feature film adaptation released in November 2020.

The work is a collection of seven interconnected short stories told in reverse chronological order, each focusing on different individuals and their connection to the eponymous love hotel. This sequence starts from the present, with the Hotel Royal reduced to an abandoned ruin, then goes backward in its history to its closure, its heyday, and to its founding, with the focal characters of each story intricately relating to the personalities of other stories, revealing little by little the history of the owner’s family and of the hotel itself.

Author’s Information

She was born in 1965 in Hokkaido. She won the 2002 All Yomimono Prize for New Writers for her short story "Yukimushi" [Snow Bugs]. Her first book, a short story collection including “Yukimushi” titled “Hyoheisen” [Frozen Horizon], appeared in print in 2007. She won the 19th Shimase Award for Love Stories for “Loveless” in 2013, and also won the 149th Naoki Prize for “Hotel Royal” in the same year. In 2020, She won the 15th Chuokoron Literature Prize for “Kazoku Jimai”[Family Closing]. Other her novels include “Garasu no ashi” [Reed of Glass], “Kishūteneki(Tāminaru)”[Terminals], and “Kori no wadachi“[Tracks in the Ice].