It feels like it has been so long since I have written a post on this website! Alright, let’s do this.
This week on Reading Books and Writing About Them: Train man. Novel. Internet/Romance/????. Author: everyone and no one all at once (officially, Hitori Nakano, which is a Japanese pun referring to all people part of message boards on the internet).
Train Man is an extremely unique novel, and it’s origin story is one of the reasons this story became so popular. The novel Train Man tells a story through a collection of chat posts from an online chat forum called 2 Channel. The story is that of your average Japanese geek (code name: Train Man) who meets a girl (code name: Lady Hermes) on the train and breaks out of his geekiness to try to win her over. Train Man turns to a chat forum he frequents to ask the people of the internet for help, since he doesn’t know how to act around girls.
Theoretically, this is a true story, and everything that was written down on this real internet chat room happened. According to legend, it became so popular that it spread from person to person, forum to forum, and Japanese people from all over fell in love with the story. Eventually, this novel (as well as a film, manga, and other media adaptations) was created as a byproduct. However, some people do not think that the story of Train Man is real. It seems to be a fact that the story did truly start online, but some people theorize that it didn’t actually transpire the way people want to believe it does (or at all). So, this raises the question; who wrote Train Man?
I think it was a combination of these guys (the internet as a whole):
And this guy:
While it is a story about Train Man, and the novel revolves around his relationship adventures, the Netizens were imperative in writing the majority of the novel Train Man. In fact, they even wrote some of the “lines” that Train Man used (or took into account when speaking to Lady Hermes), which makes it clear that the Netizens did play a large role in this story. However, to say they have authorship over what Train did, or his relationship, is absolutely ridiculous. They didn’t do any of the actual work, so Train Man is still the hero in my book.
The reason I see Train as the author of Train Man, is that his actions extend beyond the screen, or just the physicality of typing. While the physical book consists mostly of comments from the Netizens, the story is carried solely by Train Man. Train is able to actually break out of his shell, and he is the reason we have the story of Train Man today. Of course, the Netizens helped him break out of his shell, but they are more like the wise old man that gives the main adventurer a bit of aid at the beginning of his story.
The world is not in your computer and chat forums…
Train Man was an amazing novel! I would recommend it if you are interested, here is some more information about it. The story was one of modern love, and how you should always pay attention when you are riding on trains in Japan, because you never know what might happen.
I hope you enjoyed the post! Thanks for reading.
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