Battle Royale (novel)

This article is about the novel. For the film, see Battle Royale (film). For other uses, see Battle Royale (novel) (disambiguation).

Battle Royale

First edition cover, as published by Ohta Shuppan.
Author	Koushun Takami
Original title
Translator	Yuji Oniki
Language	Japanese
Genre	Dystopian novel
Publisher	Ohta Shuppan
Publication date	April 1999
Publication place	Japan
Published in English	February 26, 2003
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	666
ISBN	4-87233-452-3

Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル, Batoru Rowaiaru) is a 1999 Japanese novel written by Koushun Takami. The story tells of schoolchildren who are forced to fight each other to the death.

The novel has been adapted into a 2000 film and a manga series, and translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, and Hungarian.

Plot

Map of Okishima Island, as seen inside the cover of the English version.

Battle Royale takes place in an alternate timeline—Japan is a member region of a totalitarian state known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大東亜共和国 Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku). Under the guise of a "study trip", a group of students from Shiroiwa Junior High School (城岩中学校 Shiroiwa Chūgakkō) in the fictional town of Shiroiwa, in Kagawa Prefecture, are gassed on a bus. They awaken in the Okishima Island School on Okishima, an isolated, evacuated island southwest of Shodoshima (modeled after the island of Ogijima). They learn that they have been placed in an event called the Program. Officially a military research project, it is a means of terrorizing the population, of creating such paranoia as to make organized insurgency impossible.

The first Program was held in 1947. According to the rules, fifty third-year high school classes are selected (prior to 1950, forty-seven classes were selected) annually to participate in the Program for research purposes. The students from a single class are isolated and are required to fight the other members of their class to the death. The Program ends when only one student remains, with that student being declared the winner. Their movements are tracked by metal collars, which contain tracking and listening devices; if any student should attempt to escape the Program, or enter declared forbidden zones (which are randomly selected at the hours of 12 and 6, both a.m. and p.m.), a bomb will be detonated in the collar, killing the wearer. If no one dies within 24 hours, there will be no winner and all collars will be detonated simultaneously.

After being briefed about the Program, the students are issued survival packs that include a map, compass, food and water, and a random weapon or other item, which may be anything from a gun to a paper fan. During the briefing, two students (Fumiyo Fujiyoshi and Yoshitoki Kuninobu) anger the supervisor, Kinpatsu Sakamochi, who kills both. As the students are released onto the island, they each react differently to their predicament; beautiful delinquent Mitsuko Souma murders those who stand in her way using deception, Hiroki Sugimura attempts to find his best friend and his secret love, Kazuo Kiriyama attempts to win the game by any means necessary (stemming from his lack of ability to feel human emotion due to a brain injury sustained in a car crash while in utero) and Shinji Mimura makes an attempt to escape with his best friend Yutaka Seto.

Cover of the first English-language edition.

In the end, four students remain: protagonist Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa, Shogo Kawada—a survivor of a previous instance of the Program—and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. Following a car chase and shoot-out between Kazuo and the main characters, Noriko kills Kazuo by shooting him, but to absolve the quiet and naturally good-natured Noriko of any guilt, Shogo then shoots Kazuo, claims he is in fact responsible for Kazuo's death, and then takes his two partners to a hill. After telling Shuya and Noriko that he will kill them, Shogo shoots in the air twice, faking their deaths for the microphones planted on the collars. He then dismantles the collars using information he had previously hacked into the government servers to obtain. Shogo boards the winner's ship, as do Shuya and Noriko, covertly, a short while later. On the ship, Shogo kills Sakamochi and a soldier, while Shuya kills the other soldiers on board. Shogo tells Shuya how to escape, succumbs to his wound from the battle with Kiriyama and dies. The two remaining students return to the mainland and attempt to travel to find a clinic belonging to a friend of Shogo's father. From there, they make plans to escape to the U.S., facing an uncertain future as they run from the authorities who have spotted them as they try to board a train.

Characters

Main article: List of Battle Royale characters

Background and publication

Koushun Takami completed Battle Royale when he stopped working as a journalist in 1996. The story was rejected in the final round of the 1997 Japan Grand Prix Horror Novel competition, due to its controversial content. It was first published in April 1999 by Ohta Shuppan. In August 2002, it was released in a revised, two-part pocket edition by Gentosha.

File:Battle Royale 2009 ediiton.jpg

Cover of the 2009 expanded English-language edition.

Takami describes the characters as possibly all being "kind of alike", being "all the same" despite differing appearances and hobbies, and being static characters. Takami used these descriptions in contrast to the manga adaptation he wrote, with Masayuki Taguchi illustrating, which he believes has a more diverse and developing cast.

English adaptation

The novel was translated into English by Yuji Oniki and released in North America by Viz Media on February 26, 2003. An expanded edition with a revised English translation and an afterword by Takami was published on November 17, 2009 by Haika Soru, a division of Viz Media. This version also included an interview with the director of the book's film adaptation, Kinji Fukasaku.

Supporting materials

Kōji Ōnuma (大沼 孝次, Ōnuma Kōji) wrote Battle Royale: Kyokugenshinri Kaisekisho (バトル・ロワイヤル 極限心理解析書, Batoru Rowaiyaru Kyokugenshinri Kaisekisho, roughly "Battle Royale: Analysis of Extreme Psychology"), a dissertation which explores the themes of the book.

Adaptations

Feature films

Main articles: Battle Royale (film) and Battle Royale II: Requiem

Battle Royale was adapted into a 2000 feature film of the same name, directed by Kinji Fukasaku and written by his son Kenta Fukasaku. It was followed in 2003 by Battle Royale II: Requiem.

Manga

Main articles: Battle Royale (manga) and Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale

A manga adaptation, written by Takami and illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi, was serialized in Akita Shoten's Young Champion Magazine from November 2002 to January 2006.

A second manga, Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale, first appeared on Young Champion Magazine on July 2003. Written and illustrated by Hiroshi Tomizawa, the new series ties-in with Fukasaku's second Battle Royale film, having no continuity with the original novel nor the first manga adaptation.

In 2011, a two chapter spin-off manga titled Battle Royale: Angels' Border was drawn by Mioko Ohnishi and Youhei Oguma (each drawing one chapter). They were published in Young Champion Magazine and later combined into one volume on January 20, 2012.

Theatre

In 2012, the Sipat Lawin Ensemble, a theatre company in the Philippines, adapted the novel and some elements from the manga version into a live theatre presentation called Battalia Royale, having the debut performance at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Performances were also held at an abandoned high school in Quezon City.

Reception

Battle Royale was highly acclaimed. In Entertainment Weekly, the writer Stephen King included it as one of the seven books in his 2005 summer reading list, after it was recommended to him by novelist Kelly Braffet (writer of Josie and Jack). King described Battle Royale as "an insanely entertaining pulp riff that combines Survivor with World Wrestling Entertainment. Or maybe Royale is just insane." He also notes that it has some similarities to his own novel The Long Walk. He concludes the review with a "No prob," as "Takami's Springsteen-quoting teenagers are fond of saying." In The Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society, Tom Good praises the novel, concluding that, as "a pulp-fiction horror tale, Battle Royale delivers plenty of thrills, action, suspense and fun."

The writer David N. Alderman, writing for the Red Room site, gave Battle Royale a score of 4½ out of 5 stars, stating that the "story itself is brilliant. Touted as being extremely controversial, especially for the time it was released, the book opens up all sorts of doors to conversations and thoughts about psychology, murder, survival, love, loyalty, and moral ground." While noting that those who "cringe at slash and hack" should "steer away from this" since "it is a bit gory," he states that it is "definitely worth the read" and concludes that it has "touches of romance, and definitely some great moral themes to spark off in-depth conversations with others." Complete review gave the novel a B rating, describing it as "a perfectly fine thriller, with a fun premise, quite well drawn-out." On the Barnes & Noble site, the novel holds an average user rating of 5 out of 5 stars.

Hunger Games controversy

The 2008 American young adult novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins has been accused of being strikingly similar to Battle Royale in terms of the basic plot premise and the world within the book. While Collins maintains that she "had never heard of that book until her book was turned in", Susan Dominus of The New York Times reports that "the parallels are striking enough that Collins’s work has been savaged on the blogosphere as a baldfaced ripoff," but argued that "there are enough possible sources for the plot line that the two authors might well have hit on the same basic setup independently." The general consensus in the time since has been one of amicable controversy, especially since the success of the film adaptation of the The Hunger Games.