Veteran comedian Nabeyakan says he has gone more than a year without receiving royalties owed to him for one of his books, and that when his talent agency’s president pressed the publisher for an explanation, the publisher’s president allegedly replied that he had been waiting for his own pension payment to come in before settling up.
According to a post Nabeyakan shared on X on August 1, the payment deadline agreed upon with the publisher, Sakura Sha, came and went with no transfer. He said his agency president then called the publisher directly to ask what was going on, and was told, “My pension hasn’t come in yet, and I was planning to pay once it did.” Nabeyakan asked his followers whether royalty payments funded by a publisher’s personal pension were something they had ever heard of, and appealed to other authors who had worked with the same publisher to share their own payment experiences.
The post quickly spread online, drawing thousands of reactions. Several commenters pointed out that royalties for printed books in Japan are typically calculated and paid out based on print run rather than actual sales, meaning a modest, pension-sized sum would suggest the book had a small print run to begin with. Others recalled similar experiences with small, independent publishers relying on financing from distributors to stay afloat. Writer Junichiro Nakagawa responded that the same publisher had once approached him about a book deal, only for an editor to halt the project a month in, reportedly telling him, “There’s almost no way we can pay royalties. I can’t let you go through with this.” Some social media users also noted that Sakura Sha’s president is widely known as Shingo Furuya, a former Shonen Magazine editor associated with the classic manga Ashita no Joe, which added to the surprise at the situation. As of this report, Sakura Sha has not issued a public response to Nabeyakan’s claims.
Who is Nabeyakan?
Nabeyakan (なべやかん) is a Japanese comedian who made his debut 35 years ago and is a member of Takeshi Gundan, the group of performers who came up under comedy legend Takeshi Kitano. He regularly appears at comedy live shows and events held almost monthly, and is currently affiliated with the talent agency Goddess Entertainment. In recent years he has also built a following documenting his collection of high-value items on TikTok under the handle “Oku-goe Collector Yakan.”
Author’s Comment
A publisher telling an author "I’ll pay you once my pension lands" is the kind of line you couldn’t invent if you tried, and I say that with love for how gloriously Showa it sounds. Small publishers running on fumes is an open secret in this industry, but usually nobody says the quiet part out loud to the author’s own agency president. What gets me is the maths: if pension money can cover it, we’re not talking about a bestseller here, and everyone online did that arithmetic in about four seconds flat. I hope Nabeyakan gets paid, and I hope somebody at that publisher invests in a calendar.
