Traveling (living abroad included) has always been a popular book genre as highlighted in the success of such books as ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert and ‘Shantaram’ by Gregory David Roberts. Among those who live in developed countries, furthermore, there has been an increasing interest in living abroad in recent years.

Human migration has traditionally occurred from developing countries to developed countries. For a variety of socioeconomic reasons such as lack of affordable housing, however, the reverse trend is being observed in the 2010s and 2020s. To illustrate this, a Gallup poll from January 2019 found that 16% of Americans, including 40% of women under the age of 30, would like to leave the United States. A similar trend is observed among Japanese nationals as well, a quintessential example of which is the Japanese diaspora in Thailand.

As of the Year 2023, 78,431 Japanese nationals, potential readers of my book, reside in Thailand. 67,424 in the Year 2015, and in the Year 2010, 47,251 Japanese nationals resided in Thailand according to Wikipedia. The size of the Japanese population in Thailand has been increasing year by year and the upward trend is clearly observed here. As of the Year 2024, over a hundred thousand Japanese nationals reside in China, so there is a very large number of overseas Japanese nationals in the combined region of Southeast Asia and East Asia, many of whom are potential readers of my book. (I also provide the following statistics as a reference: as of October 2023, approximately 414.62 thousand residents from Japan were living in the United States, the lowest number in five years.)

There is also a transgressive nature in this type of endeavor, i.e., living abroad, while transgressive fiction, too, has been a very popular book genre. I’d argue that many of those who migrated from developed countries to developing countries felt confined by the norms and expectations of their homelands and now attempt to break free of those confines in unusual or illicit ways, reminiscent of transgressive fiction. I’d also list Post Office by Charles Bukowski, a transgressive fiction novel, as a similar book to OAHS.

I'd like to mention lastly that corollary to what I described in ‘Target Audience’, Japanese manga is one of the fastest-growing genres in recent years. The overall global demand that anime shared across all content genres was 7.11% in December 2021, up from 4.2% in January 2020. I found that the writing style of Charles Bukowski is reminiscent of Japanese manga, which I attempted to emulate in the writing style of OAHS. There is an audience for a book, I strongly believe, that evokes this subculture.

Similar books and their sales records

• 'Post Office' by Charles Bukowski was a big inspiration to me. Parts of the novel are coarse, or even crass, but I felt that its coarseness and crassness fit into the story. At the same time, throughout the novel, the author Charles Bukowski expresses deeply philosophical thoughts. I also attempted to model my novel after this aspect of 'Post Office'. Sold over a million copies.
• ‘Shantaram’ by Gregory David Roberts. The author makes very close and intimate observations of a foreign country, in this case, India, which, I’d venture to guess, still is an unfamiliar place to most Westerners, Japanese and other Asian nationals. Thailand is also, I believe, still an unfamiliar place to most Westerners, Japanese and other Asian nationals. I am hoping that I was able to create a strong sense of Thailand in my own novel. Sold over 7 million copies.
• ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert. The author Elizabeth Gilbert does not spell it out, but the readers would know that at one point in her life, she asked herself, ‘What is the meaning of my life?’ Which prompted her to spend a year traveling in Italy, India and Indonesia. I do not pretend that I now know what the meaning of life is, but I think the feel and theme of my story are somewhat similar to ‘Eat, Pray, Love’. Sold over 10 million copies.