Nipponese Best-Seller

A United Press correspondent in Tokyo named Earnest Hoberecht had time on his hands. Nobody in Japan, he noted, had written a Hucksters, an Egg & I or an Amber for the postwar Japanese trade. He decided to do it himself.

Last week a Tokyo publisher brought out the result, a richly corned-up novel called Tokyo Romance. It had a U.S. correspondent for a hero, a Japanese movie queen for a heroine, a faint flavor of Madame Butterfly, a happy ending. Overnight, it became a bestseller: booksellers gobbled the first printing (100,000 copies), and yelled for more.

Author Hoberecht's plot was simple, sentimental and surefire: in captured Jap strongholds in the Pacific, War Correspondent Kent Wood found faded pin-up pictures of an almond-eyed cinema star (who looked a lot like Movie Actress Yetkiko Todoroki, good friend of the author). Later, in Tokyo, they met and fell in love. But they had to woo in secret, for her studio forbade fraternization. When another correspondent was murdered by a former Nazi spy, Hero Kent Wood was suspect. His girl friend tossed away her chance for a big role by confessing that she was with him at the time of the murder. She was fired, married her American and they went honeymooning at Atami hot springs. A telegram came from her studio: in view of her "democratic sacrifice," all was forgiven, and the big role was hers after all. Fadeout.

Quivering Detail. Most of the action took place at the "Tokyo Correspondents' Club" at No. 1 Shimbun Alley, the official billet for foreign correspondents. Hoberecht got most of its residents, and even its houseboys, between his covers. Added attraction: some sensuous illustrations by Artist Tsuguharu Fujita, billed as the first kissing scenes ever to adorn a Japanese novel. Since Japanese are unaccustomed to Western-style embraces, Hoberecht went into what he calls "great, quivering detail." (To one hot-blooded chapter the publishers added a solemn subtitle: The Ethics of Kissing) Last week, as his royalties piled up from Tokyo Romance (240 pp., 18 yen or $1.20), Hoberecht was rolling in yen--which he could not spend outside Japan. A publisher was hounding him for rights to an English-language edition. (Hoberecht wrote his book in English, got a Japanese friend to have it translated.) A Tokyo newspaper wanted to run the book as a serial, and two of Japan's three leading cinemakers were bidding for the screen rights. If he were asked to play the hero's role, said Hoberecht, he "probably wouldn't refuse." And he certainly would want to pick the leading lady.

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