Monogatari Series Volume 2 - Bakemonogatari Part 3

Afterword

While there’s no telling how many people have found themselves concerned
about how to draw the line between their hobbies and their work, I believe the
problem is such a difficult one because we start from the assumption that
hobbies and work have the same absolute value. Hobbies. And work. I will
admit, they are both major issues in one’s life. When I think about it closely,
though, it seems somehow unnatural that we treat the two as mutually
exclusive. Or rather, some deep-rooted ethical notion that hobbies and work
should never be one and the same seems to exist prior to the premise. It’s said
that you shouldn’t make your hobby your work, but we can’t survive without
working. Meanwhile, life feels empty without hobbies. In that case, we in fact
ought to encourage people to make their hobby their work, or their work their
hobby, from an efficiency standpoint. So then why is it said that you shouldn’t
make your hobby your work? Probably thanks to a contradiction such as
follows: seeing work, which we perform in order to live, in terms of enjoyment
is inappropriate, while hobbies, which we have in order to live better, are
meant to be enjoyed. But it’s not as if making your hobby your work means that
it stops being a hobby, and it’s also not as if something ceases to count as work
because you’re doing it as a hobby. Your hobby is not your work, and your work
is not your hobby. It is your hobby, and it is also your work. There may be
nothing cooler than someone who can stand tall as a living example of this idea.

So, at the risk of being misunderstood, I’d like to say that BAKEMONOGATARI
was written entirely as a hobby. There isn’t a speck of anything work-related
about it. It started as a novel I wrote as a diversion to fill a hole in my schedule,

and I honestly wonder whether I should really be releasing it like this. Because I
wrote it as nothing more than a hobby, I’m terribly ashamed that the author’s
favorite characters could be ranked far too easily, but I had so much fun writing
scenes of any of the characters talking that, for the first time in a while, I was
reminded of the days when I was just starting to write novels. As before, VOFAN
was kind enough to adorn these pages with his work. I am of course reluctant to
part ways with it, given that it was a hobby, but this brings an end to the five
stories in these volumes. This has been BAKEMONOGATARI, consisting of
“Hitagi Crab,” “Mayoi Snail,” “Suruga Monkey,” “Nadeko Snake,” and “Tsubasa
Cat.”

Thank you very much for humoring my hobby.

NISIOISIN