Somehow, Crystal

Seeking to write a novel that engaged the immediate material concerns of his own generation,[14] Yasuo Tanaka wrote Somehow, Crystal while attending Hitotsubashi University.[11] He has said that his use of annotations was inspired by Ambrose Bierce's satirical work The Devil's Dictionary.[15] In 1980 the story won a Bungei Prize with the support of literary critic Jun Etō, who praised the novel's "freshness" and formal innovation.[6] It was published alongside other Bungei Prize winners in the December 1980 issue of Bungei.[16] The awarding of the Bungei prize to Somehow, Crystal was highly controversial, with critics focusing on its lack of conventional narrative development and apparent endorsement of consumer culture.[17] Although the story was also nominated for the Akutagawa Prize,[18] the novel received what Norma Field has called "virtually complete critical dismissal".[19]

The following year Kawade Shobō Shinsha published Somehow, Crystal in book form.[20] In contrast to the version previously printed in magazine form, the book expanded the number of footnotes to 442, changed the writing style in the footnotes from plain form to polite form, and added final notes reporting statistics on population decline in Japan.[21] The book sold over 800,000 copies in its initial release,[11] and eventually sold over a million copies.[18] Historian Eiko Maruko Siniawer has observed that the book was a phenomenon of public culture, in which it was often cited as an example of Japanese consumerism, but also provided a useful guide for young people who were interested in pursuing the lifestyle portrayed in the story.[4] The term "kurisutaru zoku" (lit. "crystal tribe") came into popular use to describe these young consumers,[22] and companies began using the word "crystal" to promote their products.[23]

In the decades following the publication of Somehow, Crystal, scholars and critics have, for different reasons, identified the book as an important work of postmodern Japanese literature. Literary scholar Matthew Strecher identifies the book's publication as the starting point of a postmodern literary trend that "resists the concepts and definitions" of traditional Japanese literature, comparing it to the early work of Haruki Murakami.[2] Marc Yamada classifies Somehow, Crystal as an early example of postmodern "database fiction" that reflected the influence of new technology and information structures on Japanese literature.[24] In Masao Miyoshi's reading, Somehow, Crystal is the "most typical" example of postmodern Japanese novels that, through the "disintegration of narrative art", also remove the possibility of cultural resistance to commercial dominance.[10] From a different theoretical perspective, Norma Field calls the novel the "exemplary phenomenon of the decade in Japan", and suggests that the novel's narrative and notes together create a postmodern "atmosphere" from within which opposition to the "logic of cultural capitalism" cannot be mounted.[25]

Tanaka wrote a sequel to the original story that was published as a book titled Somehow, Crystal, 33 Years Later (33年後のなんとなく、クリスタル, 33 Nengo no Nantonaku, Kurisutaru) by Kawade Shobō Shinsha in 2014.[26] Written in the first person, the sequel takes the perspective of a married politician who meets up with ex-girlfriends, discusses the state of Japanese politics and society, and catches up with Yuri, the main character from the first novel, who is now a 54-year old businessperson working in public relations. Like the original novel, the sequel incorporated many notes, including updated statistics on the declining birth rate and overall aging of the Japanese population.[27] In a 2021 essay for Bungei Shunjū, Tanaka reflected that people largely had not responded to his concern about population trends in the original book, and noted that his original prediction that fertility rates could turn around had not been borne out in practice.[15]

Shortly after the book's release in Japan, multiple unauthorized Korean translations were published in South Korea.[15] A German translation, titled Kristall Kids, was published by Krüger in 1987.[28] In 2019, an English translation by Christopher Smith was published by Kurodahan Press under the title Somehow, Crystal.[29]