The author answers readers' questions
Nishikata Shinji · 9/21/2026
Your given name “Takuto” is extremely rare, arguably one-of-a-kind and a wonderful name, and according to the book and Wikipedia it’s not a pen name but your real name, so may I ask about its meaning and origin? What did the person who named you (your parent or parents, etc.) say about it?
Even when I ask my mother, all she says is something like “it came down to me (descended to me)” during pregnancy, so it’s a complete mystery. I feel like she also said it had some kind of kokugaku (nativist Japanese classical studies) meaning, but she won’t tell me the details. People often mistake it for “shi” instead of “tsuchi” for the second character, or, because my given name is so unusual, on very rare occasions they think I might be half Chinese or something like that. When I received a blessing at Ookunitama Shrine in Fuchu, Tokyo, naturally the negi (a ranking Shinto priest), who seemed to have pretty deep learning in mythology and kokugaku and such, carefully, when handing over the ofuda (talisman), timidly asked, “Is this (are these the correct characters for your name)…?” and when I answered yes, that’s correct, he was a bit impressed. I want to know too.
Saikawa Mio · 7/29/2026
Question for both the prior similar-genre author Aizaki Toko and Aoyama Takuto: that you both have the initials “A.T.” in your names—was that utterly random and just a coincidence?
That’s completely just by chance and a coincidence. (wry smile)
Saikawa Mio · 4/8/2026
Mr. Aoyama, you have demonstrated that you can write essays more than well enough, but do you intend to take on the challenge of trying to write a novel in the future? As for the all-important “narrative prose” when it comes to writing fiction, I personally felt there was nothing to complain about.
Thank you for the question. At the very least, as a fringe member of the writing tribe, with this publication I’ve gained confidence and do have confidence that I can write enough when it comes to things like essays and articles, but when it comes to novels, that’s a different story. Well, there’s also the line that novels have a “structure,” and if you study and learn and understand structure, then after that if you write in an orderly fashion you can write them, and I suppose that’s probably true, but even so I still have far, far too little input. I’ve only ever read Mishima Yukio and Kawabata Yasunari in snippets in textbooks or exam passages, and I’m totally lacking in input for science fiction novels as well. When I was in elementary school, I was such a voracious reader I could finish a new Harry Potter book in a single night, but these days I’m not reading books of the reading-matter type at all. I’m only reading textbooks for studying for qualifications. From this state, to conceive and finish a novel—even a short story or a very short—will require quite a lot of input. I think it would take a lot of time and effort. The novels I finished last year were about Volume 1 of Tomihiko Morimi’s Uchoten Kazoku (The Eccentric Family), Bunji Sunagawa’s Platoon trilogy, and Hiroshi Mori’s The Perfect Insider. Other than that, maybe I read LaLande’s Nishida’s three-penny novel in Bungakukai (a literary magazine). Anyway, I am overwhelmingly short on input. With Uchoten Kazoku, I was in the camp that watched the anime first and then read the novel. I feel like visual works suit me better. But I haven’t read the manga of Platoon yet. With Harry Potter, I remember that when the original and the films intersected back when I was in elementary school, I felt both the good points and the insufficiencies in both and suffered over it. That’s the vibe. Did that answer your question? I hope it did.
Saikawa Mio · 3/24/2026
A question for the author, Aoyama Takuto. You took the mysterious phenomenon called the “Mandela Effect” as your theme and completed a massive work of over 230,000 characters, but to begin with, please tell us what prompted or motivated you to write this book. Also, if there were any episodes that left a particular impression on you during the writing process, or any points you struggled with, we would love to hear them.
Thank you for the question. I began my exploration of the Mandela Effect around 2017 to 2018, and the piled-up posts I made somewhere turned into something like a serial, and I thought that if I compiled this into one book it might become a valuable milestone, plus I wanted the royalties, and I wanted to burnish my credentials. Not many people publish a book at 27 years old, you know. Also, there were still few similar books, there wasn’t yet a book out there that would fully satisfy readers, I wanted to do agenda setting for the thinking in this scene and write a book that would become the de facto standard, Aizaki Toko published a prior similar book, and the monthly magazine Mu covered the Mandela Effect—those were also triggers and gave me a push. What was especially hard while writing was printing the manuscript to send to the publisher. I secretly used the office copier to print it and got found out, and I was made to run the whole stack through the shredder right then and there. I shaved down my sleep during the solo hours of the night shift and also during the nap-time block, and wrote over the course of dozens of days. That’s about it. On the Tsundoku Channel, Mr. Horimoto also says that turning a serial into a book makes for a better product than writing something from scratch. I’ll paste the video.