Novels Composed on Cellphones Topping Japanese Best Seller Lists

An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times has up an article examining the rise of blogs/novels that make the transition to published books. Recent Japanese best-seller lists have been heavy with these texts, many of them actually written on cellphones for a cellphone reading audience. Commentators note the popularity of this form of literature coincides with cell providers moving to unlimited data packages. 'The affordability of cellphones coincided with the coming of age of a generation of Japanese for whom cellphones, more than personal computers, had been an integral part of their lives since junior high school. So they read the novels on their cellphones, even though the same Web sites were also accessible by computer. They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.'"

Comments

cellphone novels

[H0D_G]

2 b or not 2 b tht is th ?

Re:cellphone novels

[ArwynH]

The thing is, Japanese is far easier to enter on a keypad phone than English, meaning short-cuts like you see in English are not required. In fact due to the predictive text software, using weird language slows down typing speeds. Predictive text software also works a lot better with Japanese than it does with English. Well used phrases and sentences can be reduced to just a few key-presses and the average word, around 3-7 key presses (~2 characters). The result is the ability to write a 30-50 character reply email, with decent grammar within 1 minute or so.

BTW that 25yrs age limit is way off-mark. The youngsters maybe faster than the rest of us, but everyone uses smiles, as well as a selection of graphical images available with the phone. I've even got them from my mother-in-law, who is way past the official retirement age.

Re:cellphone novels

[jrumney]

The thing is, Japanese is far easier to enter on a keypad phone than English,

I don't think its really any easier, just that Japanese have to use "predictive text" type input methods on computers too, so its the same interface for them, just with fewer keys. For English speakers, its a whole different way of inputting, that many people still can't get their heads around. The fastest English txters I know turn off predictive text, because they think it slows them down, I think in reality it is just that they can't change their mindset from typing everything out manually to letting a dictionary do the work.

Re:cellphone novels

[wrook]

Ya, the first time I used Japanese predictive text entry I was amazed. My Japanese is pretty bad, but I actually find it *much* easier to write text messages in Japanese than English. Now, I only text to my Japanese reading friends and directly phone English speaking ones. I hate English texting.

To give you an idea of what it's like to text in Japanese using predictive text entry, here's a kind of walk through the process.

First you type a character. Each character in Japanese is a phoneme/syllable (called a mora). The phone gives you a list of about 15 words that might fit. It's really amazing how often those fifteen words are right. Even if they aren't, by the next character, you almost always have the word.

Then the phone gives you a list of particles/sentence fragments. Almost every word in Japanese is followed by a particle - a single character word that indicates the grammatical function of the previous word. But since there aren't that many particles. they usually have room to give you a couple of common sentence fragments that could also fit in that context where you were typing; usually common grammatical constructions. You choose the one you want.

Then you type a character for a word again. You keep doing this until you get to a verb (usually at the end). At that point the software give you a choice of "okurigana" which will allow you to choose the inflection (sort of like a conjugation) and politeness level of the verb/sentence. And you are done.

You can type whole sentences in only a few keystrokes. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if people can type faster on their cellphone than they can on their computer. It really is that easy and convenient.

Re:cellphone novels

[Dogtanian]

My boss using "u" and "2" and such as words when she emails me. True, but it's not as bad as "Bon" and "Jovi" or "Nickel" and "Back".

Re:cellphone novels

[Rakshasa Taisab]

As someone who actually uses Japanese predictive text type input on both PC and phones, I'd say it is much easier than english.

The thing about japanese, is that you can represent much more information in a compact way and it is easier to predict what kind of words/structure come next. If I'd like to say "I don't want to go to a maid cafe today.", it would be written as "kyou MEIDOKAFUe ni ikitakunai".

The first word you'll get immediately by typing in the "ki" kana, since "ki" in the start of a sentence is very often kyou (today), kinou (yesterday), etc.

"MEIDOKAFEe" might be a rather rare in general use, but since I got a mail from a japanese girl inviting me to a maid cafe, it just requires you to type "me" and "i", plus "ka" since it gets split in to words the first time.

The particle "ni" is amongst the top 8 you can select right after entering any word that seems to expect a particle next.

"ikitakunai" you can write by using "i" to get "iki" with kanji. "takunai" is a pretty standard ending meaning you don't want to do something, and might be on the top of the list already. If it isn't, just typing "ta" will give you that option.

Current phones also make it so that you can navigate the list of words both horizontally and vertically, which makes it even faster.

That's the Japanese for You

[Eli Gottlieb]

Name something technologically possible to do that nobody would really want to do for any good reason, and chances are the Japanese have done it just to see what would happen. Oh, and to see if it could be used to sneak tentacle pr0n to middle school kids on their train home. The internet is for porn, after all.

Well, that and Slashdot.

Not difficult with the right equipment

[dotancohen]

I suppose that writing a novel on a cellphone might not be so difficult when your cellphone is a 3D mouse.

Hmm

[Rie Beam]

I guess my only real question is, are any of these novels any good? Or are they appealing just because of the gimmick used to compose them?

Re:Hmm

[dancingmad]

I guess my only real question is, are any of these novels any good? Or are they appealing just because of the gimmick used to compose them?

From what I hear they're awful. A lot are written by high school students, according to my coworker, and he personally found them rather stupid and boring. But he recommended them to me as a way to pick up contemporary spoken Japanese.

That said it's not because they're composed on cellphones that makes them interesting - they originally were cellphone downloads, if I am not mistaken. So a lot of people downloaded them when they had nothing else to do and read them during down time. Plus I think they tend to probably appeal to the high school set (in regard to themes, style, etc).

With Apologies to /.

[Rie Beam]

Composing with a cellphone? What a novel idea!

nuances

[Threni]

> They punched out text messages with their thumbs with blinding speed, and used expressions and emoticons, like smilies and musical notes, whose
> nuances were lost on anyone over the age of 25.'"

Or with an IQ over 25. Nuances? How is a smiley a nuance?

I fell in love. I felt like this :) But then Juliet died. This made me feel like this :(

actually came up at work last week

[dancingmad]

Keitai shousetsu, or mobile/cellphone novels are interesting. I was actually talking about them at work last week since one of my co-workers recommended them for picking up the nuance on contemporary spoken Japanese to me. He did mention however, that a lot of the authors were high school girls, and so he personally found the novels boring. I ended up doing an amazon search on published versions of the novels and checking the library, both of which turned up several books.

The books aren't brilliant works of art by any stretch of the imagination, from what I've gathered, but are mostly for people to read on their phones when there is nothing else going on (train rides, etc.). But like my coworker said they are probably a brilliant way to pick up contemporary Japanese; the writing style is that of young people today and the kanji used are a lot less (because these are high school kids not Akutagawa).

Re:After Reading This...

[Fred_A]

Oook ?