Works
- Novel
- Overseas Publication
First Period (The Romtanticism Triad)
After reading Yukio Mishima's Temple of the Golden Pavilion at 14, Hirano became a fan of literature, and wrote his first novel at the age of 17. Following that, and until his debut as a published author, he wrote three stories, all of which still remain unpublished to this day. With the conclusion of the Cold War and the collapse of the economic bubble in Japan, Japanese society itself began a new era of self-hunting, in which the seeds of Hirano's literature were sown. As apocalyptic events such as the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Tokyo subway sarin attacks continued to perpetuate a feeling of devastation in Japan, Hirano's debut work The Eclipse was announced out of the blue.
1《Eclipse》
1998/10/15
2《Tale of the First Moon》
1999/04/15
3《Farewell to the Departed》
2002/08/30
Second Period (Short Stories/Eperimental Period)
It was Hirano's plan to write novels set in the modern day after his first three early works, but while writing Farewell to the Departed, the aftermath of the 9.11 attacks in the United States and the expansion of the internet added a few extra years of trial and error in learning how to depict the new world that had come to be. The experimental nature of his next batch of short stories gained a reputation for being difficult to understand, but his freely flowing ideas and keen foresight allowed him to break into the world of 21st century literature after his third batch of works.
4《Takase River》
2003/03/28
5《Ripples of the Dripping Clocks》
2004/06/29
6《Nudes Without Faces》
2006/03/29
7《You Weren’t Here, Dear》
2007/01/30
Third Period (Early Dividualism Period)
After the variety of experimentation done in his second batch of works, Hirano’s literature finally began to venture into the philosophy of dividualism, which made up his third batch of works. The 2000s opened to the appearance of cyberspace and the terrorist attacks in the USA. Word views and human nature were forced to fundamentally be rewritten as neoliberalism exerted force and inequality materialized in society, while the momentum of technological advancement grew rapidly. In a stagnating, yet rapidly changing world, these four full-length novels presented a new image of the human race, and led Hirano to be recognized as a modern author within and outside of the literary world.
8《Breach》
2008/06/25
9《Dawn》
2009/07/10
10《Artificial Love》
2010/12/10
11《Fill in the Blanks》
2012/10/26
Fourth Period (Later Dividualism Period)
Hirano explained the dividualism presented in his third batch of works in a new book, What am I? From Individual to Dividual, and ever since, it has been Hirano’s fundamental view of humanity. With the backdrop of the divide between further development of globalism and exclusive nationalism in the 2010s, dividualism began to shift weight from internal analysis of a main item, to analyzing its relationship with environment. Hirano’s stories began to show more strong colors in depicting destiny, and while plots became clear, phenomenon and relationships became more detailed and multi-layered. This is also a criticism of the spread of self-accountability. After the Matinee became a bestseller, and ever since The Eclipse, Hirano’s image has been updated.
12《The Transparent Labyrinth》
2014/06/30
13《At the End of the Matinee》
2016/04/08
14《A MAN》
2018/09/28
15《Heart of Hearts》
2021/05/26