Ira Ishida (石田衣良) is a Japanese novelist, actor, and TV commentator.
After graduating from Seikei University, he worked for a number of different advertising production companies and as a freelance copywriter. In 1997, he published his first novel, Ikebukuro West Gate Park, which won the 36th All Yomimono New Mystery Writer's Prize. In 2003, he won the Naoki Prize for 4-Teen.
His novels describe the culture of young people in Japan, particularly young women and otaku without a college education. Many of his works have been adapted for manga and television. As an actor, he made his first appearance in a leading role in the 2006 film Love My Life.
Ishida's pen name, Ishida Ira, was derived by splitting his real family name Ishidaira.
In the afterword, the author mentions that this was originally serialized, and--of course--he had no idea what he was going to write about as the deadline approached. Those things all make the book make more sense. In no world did it need to be this long. And especially toward the end, there was a LOT of repetition and filler.
But the beginning had an intriguing concept (which tricked me into pushing past page 300) and set up an interesting world. For pulp scifi trapped in JP storytelling tropes, it's not bad.
Basic outline: We open on a man in mid-2000s Tokyo living on the ~47th floor of a tower in Shinjuku, in the latter stages of a battle with a large brain tumor. His emotionally distant wife (who's having an affair with his younger supervisor from work) is dutifully caring for him until he dies so that she can inherit their magnificent apartment. But in the midst of this malaise, he gets a piercing headache and wakes up 200 years in the future living in the 2 km-high Blue Tower, where only the lucky few survivors have huddled to protect themselves from a bioengineered flu virus that wiped out 90+% of humanity. He, of course, is one of the lucky ones who lives on the top level and belongs to a 30-member council that governs the tower.
What will he do??
Because it's pulp, .["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>