I wonder what love is.
I don’t know how old I am

The 19th installment of Koji Yukiya’s popular series, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” which depicts the large Hotta family who run the long-established second-hand bookstore “Tokyo Bandwagon” in the downtown area, will be published.
The protagonist of this story, the stubborn Showa-era man Kan’ichi Hotta, is now 90 years old, but he still sits at the front desk of his store and shows his presence with energy. Now, in this work, there is a commotion around Kan’ichi, with rumors of infidelity and suspicions of infidelity, and more than usual… At the end of the story, even a fuss about Gan’nin’s secret child arises, making for an exciting development.

However, once you open the book, you will find that it is riddled with heartbreaking human emotion and love, and as always, a heartwarming, satisfying finale awaits readers.
How to handle the theme of this episode, “LOVE,” in a family drama? Koji-san talked about the difficulties and determination involved, along with stories of the mischievous love he experienced in his younger days.

Interviewer/editor: Miyauchi Chiwako / Photographer: Kawajiri Ryoichi

Cheating and adultery stories,
Stop at the last moment

— This time, just like the title of the Beatles song “Can’t Buy Me Love,” the story revolves around love, with various romantic relationships, extramarital affairs, and even a story about young people getting married. I can almost hear Ganjin’s voice saying, “You can’t buy love with money.”

Yes, when I decided on the title “Can’t Buy Me Love,” I already had the idea to make it all about love. Recently, Ganjin hasn’t been causing any fuss, so I thought I’d create a fuss about Ganjin’s secret child, and from there I started thinking of various stories about love, mainly about young people.
As for Aiko’s daughter Hanayo, she is set to marry Rintaro (a member of Ganjin’s band Love Timer, and Bon’s only son), but she is currently a medical student and has said that she will marry after becoming a doctor, so I had been thinking about what to do about that for a long time. If I waited for Hanayo to become a doctor, Kanichi would be almost 100 years old. So I thought I would create a somewhat exciting incident and have Hanayo decide to get married at this point. So I decided to basically have a double feature of Hanayo’s marriage and Ganjin’s love affair.

— I see. Hearing it like that gives you the big picture, but as a reader I’m quite worried about what will happen next, with Hanayo, the medical student, getting caught up in an infidelity scandal, and suspicions of infidelity rising about Kento’s wife, Merie.

I think the plot was a little complicated, but if I went too deep into the stories of infidelity and cheating, it would have been long and too graphic, so I stopped just short of it (laughs). On top of that, I thought that if I tied the whole thing together with music, the nastiness of stopping just short of it would disappear a little, so I tried to make it feel like it flows smoothly with the music.

— Unless something like that happened, Hanayo wouldn’t have been motivated to decide to get married.

Yes. If things continue like this, Hanayo will probably never get married. That has been bothering me for about three years. Of course, marriage isn’t everything, but as a family drama, if they don’t get married at some point, there’s no conclusion. So I thought I’d use this kind of love-related incident and someone’s death as a trigger, and I had the wife of the former detective, Mr. Chino, go to heaven. Even Grandpa Kanichi doesn’t know when he’ll die, and if you don’t make a decision now, you never know what will happen to you. With that change in her mindset, Hanayo finally made a snap link between living as a doctor and living as Rintaro’s partner. It was difficult, but I think it worked out well.

The guest bookstore clerk who appears in this work is
Famous influencers

— In connection with a love incident separate from Hanayo, a new star appears in the form of Homma Haruka, the talented writer and lead singer of an idol group that ends up collaborating with Kento’s band.

Yes, the model for Haruka Honma is our guest bookstore clerk, Yu Honma. Whenever a book is released in paperback, we always think about what kind of character the guest bookstore clerk should play in the story, but this time, when I thought of Kento’s relationship with music, I thought, “Isn’t an idol a good choice?”
Honma-san is the manager of “Saga Bookstore,” which was opened by Naoki Prize-winning author Shogo Imamura inside Saga Station, and is also a famous person who is active as a “honfluencer” mainly in Saga. He has literary talent, is still young, and we thought he was the perfect fit for the image, so we asked him to play a talented idol.

— I’m sure she would be very happy to play the role of a cute idol who is good at singing and has literary talent. What’s more, she’ll also be the main character in a little love story.

That’s right. When I decided to make Honma Yu an idol, the whole story came together smoothly, and I was convinced that this would work. As I said earlier, I didn’t exaggerate the affair scandal with Honma Haruka because some people might have a negative reaction if I went too deep into it. I thought it would be good if it would be a plot twist that would end up with a quick conclusion at the end of the scandal about Ganami’s secret child, so I stopped just short of that (laughs).
To begin with, it’s very difficult to depict adultery or infidelity in a television family drama slot. In this series, each chapter of Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter is considered to be a 45-minute drama slot, and the story unfolds within that pattern each time. This pattern sometimes deviates from the norm, but it is the basic principle of family dramas. It is fundamentally impossible to include a vivid story of adultery or infidelity within that, and this time I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to balance it.

Although the roots are dry,
He has a strong possessiveness towards the woman he loves!?

— Aside from the constraints of a family drama, there aren’t many characters in your “Tokyo Bandwagon” who are driven by romantic feelings, are there? So you’re worried that the characters you create won’t progress in the areas of marriage or romance…

Maybe I am like that myself. I think it’s partly my nature. This time, I’m mainly talking about LOVE, but even at my age, if someone asks me what love is, I still wonder what it is. You never know what love is, no matter how old you get. Even if I think about what kind of person is the type to run after love, I don’t really know because I don’t have any experience myself (laughs). A writer is someone who can write even without experience, but this is a difficult thing to do.
Maybe it’s because I don’t want to take the plunge. This is from my experience when I was younger, but I always got rejected by the people I asked out. When I was in my twenties, I asked out a few women, but I got rejected by all of them. The last one to reject me was Naoko-san.

-Naoko (laughs).

Yes, I was blown away by Naoko. My birthday is in April, and the night before, I got a call. I answered “yes,” and it was Naoko. Since it was my birthday the next day, I assumed she would arrange a date, and when I started talking about what we should do tomorrow, she suddenly said, “No, actually, I want to break up.”

– Did you ask him the reason?

I asked him why. Then he said something like, “I want to be free.” I seem to be the type of guy who restricts the girls I love.

— Wow, you’ve been friends for a long time, but I don’t get that impression of you at all.

Isn’t that right? I don’t have that problem myself, but it seems that the women I dated felt that way. Since then, I’ve tried not to fall in love with women again (laughs).

– So, did you get married because you fell in love with her?

Ah, that’s true. My wife might read it too, so I’m not sure what to say about it, but I think she was the one who approached me first (laughs).
But what I don’t like is that when I get a call like that saying they want to break up, and I say “Okay, see ya” and hang up, I immediately start thinking about who I should date next.

— The roots are surprisingly dry.

He’s completely dry. He doesn’t respond at all. Although he’s dry at heart, he has a strong possessiveness towards the women he loves, so he seems to be a man with a rather two-sided personality. He’s a good-for-nothing to begin with. When I was younger, I was the kind of man who would take anyone who came along and change women all the time, so I can’t write about deep love, or rather, I shouldn’t write about it, and I think I’d definitely get in trouble if I did (laughs).