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is a novel by Japanese writer Koushun Takami. Originally completed in 1996, it was not published until 1999. The story tells of junior high school students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by the authoritarian Japanese government, now known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. It was previously entered into the 1997 Japan Grand Prix Horror Novel competition but was eventually rejected in the final round due to its content. The novel became a surprise bestseller. It was ranked fourth by the 2000 ''Kono Mystery ga Sugoi!'', an annual mystery and thriller guidebook, and sold over a million copies. In 2000, one year after publication, ''Battle Royale'' was adapted into a manga series, written by Takami himself, and a feature film. The film was also controversial and successful, with it being condemned by Japan's National Diet, yet becoming one of the country's highest-grossing films. The film spawned a sequel, and two more brief manga adaptations were also created. ==Plot== ''Battle Royale'' takes place in a fictional police state version of Japan known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大東亜共和国 Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku). From time to time, fifty randomly selected classes of secondary school students are forced to take arms against one another until only one student in each class remains. The program was created, supposedly, as a form of military research, with the outcome of each battle publicized on local television. A character discovers that the program is not an experiment at all, but a means of terrorizing the population. In theory, after seeing such atrocities, the people will become paranoid and divided, preventing another rebellion. Under the guise of a "study trip", a group of students from Shiroiwa Junior High School (城岩中学校 Shiroiwa Chūgakkō), a junior high school operated by the fictional Kagawa Prefecture town of Shiroiwa, are corralled onto a bus and gassed, only to awaken in a school on an isolated, vacated island, wearing metal collars around their necks. After being briefed about the program, the students are issued survival packs and a random weapon or a tool, and sent out onto the island one by one. While most of the students receive guns and knives, some students acquire relatively useless items like boomerangs, dartboard darts, or a fork. In some cases, instead of a weapon, the student receives a tool. Hiroki Sugimura finds a radar device that tracks nearby students, and Toshinori Oda receives a bulletproof vest. To make sure the students obey the rules and kill each other, the metal collars around their necks track their positions, and will explode if they linger in a "Forbidden Zone" or attempt to remove the collars. The Forbidden Zones are randomly chosen areas of the map that increase in number as time goes on, re-sculpting and shrinking the battlefield and forcing the students to move around. The collars secretly transmit sound back to the organizers of the game, allowing them to hear the students' conversations, root out escape plans, and log their activities. The collars also explode if the students go a full day without anyone dying. In the end, only four students remain: Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa, Shogo Kawada, and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. There is a car chase and shootout between the three main characters and Kazuo is killed. Shogo fakes Shuya and Noriko's deaths and boards a ship with the soldiers and Sakamochi. When Sakamochi reveals that Shuya and Noriko are alive and attempts to execute Shogo, Shogo kills him. Shuya and Noriko board the ship and kill the soldiers on board and meet up with Shogo, who succumbs to his own wounds and dies. Heeding Shogo's advice to "show no mercy," Shuya and Noriko escape to the mainland, where they become fugitives. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle Royale」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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