Spice and Wolf - Volume 16 - Chapter Aft

AFTERWORD

It’s been a while. Hasekura here. Volume 16. I believe it was advertised as the final novel of the series. It’s been fifteen years since I began writing Spice and Wolf. My main laptop stayed with me until the bitter end without crashing once, but the battery’s weak and the fan and so forth are beaten up, so it overheats quickly, and the exterior finish is a mess.

I wrote all sixteen novel manuscripts with this laptop, but just lately, I bought a new one and am using it. Old notebook, your efforts are appreciated.

Now that the series is reaching its end, I thought it’s finally time to write an afterword with talk about the work I’ve never done before. It’s just, as I’ve already been writing Everything Spice and Wolf with each volume, I wanted something more ­all-inclusive.

The title Spice and Wolf is a twist on French economist Jean Favier’s Gold and Spices: The Rise of Commerce in the Middle Ages (translated by Hidemi Uchida). Thinking back to when I read it, I recall thinking I’d love to use things from this, which gave me inspiration for the first volume.

It has been often said that a debut to the light novel genre with an economics theme is a rare thing. Furthermore, though in the fantasy genre, neither swords nor sorcery played any role.

I’ve been called a fairly twisted person for it, but it’s simply where my way of thinking ended up.

In other words, from long ago, many people have used settings with nobles and kings, knights and wizards, demon kings and heroes, including a number of great classics. I wondered if I could wedge myself into all that and win on their terms. For that same reason, I hadn’t written much of anything in school.

Even when reading textbooks, I was largely confined to academic journals, definitely not the kinds of books people oriented toward writing fantasy novels read. I wasn’t reading primers on medieval economics, either, but rather books for experts, well aware I didn’t fully understand them. For the mythos, I did not read an encyclopedia on world mythology, either, instead restricting myself to things like the Bible and The Golden Bough. Part of me was vain for reading difficult books, but the fact I was reading the same books as people with talent, not thinking I had any talent myself, was the foremost reason I didn’t think I could write more interesting novels than those people with talent.

So Spice and Wolf, where neither swords nor sorcery played any role, was the result.

Although I had a fairly firm feeling about what the work would revolve around, I think the books I have read indeed had a large influence on the path leading the main character and the heroine forward, the so-called theme for writing the novel.

In particular, Schopenhauer stands out. I kept thinking, when writing about Holo and Lawrence doing business, whether this was a story that could continue to be a happy one. Schopenhauer is thought of as the incarnation of pessimism, but to me, it is the opposite: The simple fact it was possible for him to continue to be happy while asking such critical questions makes him a fundamentally ­forward- thinking person in my mind. After all, when Schopenhauer wrote his first book, he said to his mother, then an author, “Decades from now no one will read your book, but mine shall be the basis for a hundred others” (even though Schopenhauer’s book was not selling at all), so he was no pessimist.

Also, a tale where the continuation of happiness falls into question seems just the right leg to stand on for the exceptionally ­long-­lived Holo and the bad-at-giving-up merchant Lawrence.

I think that this, the sixteenth novel, is the summation of all that, demonstrating the path that both of them must follow. I believe both Holo and Lawrence will persist in walking that path together.

There may be people wondering, Eh? That’s it? Huh? What? and the like. My honorable editor said those things to me, too. But this is my aesthetic…philosophy…and…stuff. If there’s one thing about the series I regret, it’s that Nyohhira never emerged in a concrete way.

Since I have such feelings remaining, I’m doing a total epilogue for the sequel.

As it will also include works too short to be their own books, I hope all of you who want one more little peek into the world of Spice and Wolf will read and enjoy it! It’ll probably be out in early summer.

…But as the world of Spice and Wolf is not about viewing the world in itself, but the “Spice” and “Wolf” (Holo and Lawrence) in it, it’s actually the antithesis of that universal metaphor, so in other words… et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.

Now, I truly want to thank those who have been wondering, What is Isuna Hasekura going to be doing next? I’m tentatively scheduled to have a new work coming out around summer 2011. There’ll be animal ears in the next one, too. Animal ears are my philosophy, y’know. But this won’t be a medieval fantasy, or academic work, or science fiction, or a mystery. I intend to write a novel to make people say, Why is it so rare for things like this to come out?

I think that the moon, which played a role in my debut work, will play a large and pivotal role here.

I have a bit more work left for Ayakura-sensei, who keeps drawing those incredibly pretty illustrations, but thank you, ­Ayakura-­sensei! Sensei and Keito Koume are doing a wonderful job drawing the splendid manga version of Spice and Wolf, too. Thanks to all the anime staff and everyone related to Media Mix. Manager T and Manager A, thank you very much. I look forward to your help in the future.

And thank you to all of you readers who have stayed with me until ­now—­truly, thank you all so very much!

—Isuna Hasekura