Monogatari Series - Volume 13 - Chapter Aft

Afterword

I think this marks something like my fiftieth novel, and it strikes me that the number of “liars” appearing in those books is proportionally very high. The real question is, how many “honest people” have I actually written about? I imagine this imbalance reflects the author’s firm, utterly unshakable worldview that “all tales are lies!” And if the package is a “lie,” won’t everyone inside it inevitably be a “liar” as well? But that begs the question of the world outside the tale, the reality we all inhabit. It’s not exactly overflowing with “veracity,” is it? Even if people don’t mean to “lie,” aren’t aware of “lying,” they still “lie” “unwillingly” all too often. And conversely, sometimes people refuse to accept the “truth” as “true,” interpreting it instead as a “lie” and ending up believing in its “falsehood”… Even though someone relates something “true,” the listener takes it as “false” and so the “truth” spreads as a “lie,” coming to exist as such. In that case, doesn’t the “truth” become directly equivalent to a “lie,” without any need to turn it inside out or upside down? Here I am spilling all this ink, but actually, maybe it’s just that the author is a liar so all his characters are too, end of story. Then again, would a book featuring just honest people even be interesting?

And so this has been a book featuring just liars. During the writing process, I myself got thoroughly mixed up about what was true and what was false, what was honest and what was not. In any event, this is the final volume of the Monogatari Series Second Season. We had narrators switching places, innovatively for me, and as an author I was filled with trepidation when different viewpoints cast the same people and events in an entirely different light: Hey, buddy, this is totally different from what you wrote before! It’s surprises like these that keep me writing novels. At any rate, this book completes the publication of every installment of the Monogatari Series announced thus far. The schedule was insane, but I was able to pull it off thanks to assistance from many quarters. I’ll never make such incautious promises in the future again, beware. Oops, I swear. There we go, a novel written one hundred percent in bad taste, this was KOIMONOGATARI “Chapter Romance: Hitagi End.”

Senjogahara once again graces the cover of this book, which as it turns out marks a triumphant return five years in the making. Crazy, right? VOFAN has been kind enough to depict Senjogahara amid the snow for us.* I’ve caused all kinds of trouble schedule-wise for the editors at Kodansha BOX, but this is the last time, so please find it in your hearts to forgive me. And I want to offer my deepest gratitude to all the readers who have accompanied me on the fly-by-night journey through this Second Season.

Thank you so much.

There’s a preview of the Final Season after the colophon,† so stick around for that.

* This, as well as the time frame, is in reference to the original edition’s cover art, which has been included as a color insert.

† The copyright page is inserted at the end in Japanese books. The ads that follow in this edition are not for the Final Season, but rest assured that the series will continue to appear in translation.

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