 In 1981, drawing on a news report about Leicester Hemingway's "New Atlantis", novelist Hisashi Inoue wrote a 700-page work of magic realism, "Kirikirijin", about a village that secedes from Japan and proclaims its bumpkinish, marginalized dialect its national language, and its subsequent war of independence.This single-handedly inspired a large number of Japanese villages, mostly in the northern regions, to "declare independence", generally as a move to raise awareness of their unique culture and crafts for urban Japanese who saw village life as backwards and uncultured.These micronations even held "international summits" from 1983 to 1985, and some of them formed confederations.