T A B L E+T A L K What was the last book you read that made you laugh out loud? Join the discussion in the Books section of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Allan Gurganus By Dwight Garner (12/08/97) Mark Leyner By Laura Miller (12/08/97) Doris Lessing By Dwight Garner (11/11/97) Gus Van Sant By Cynthia Joyce (10/15/97) Edmund White By Daniel Reitz (10/15/97) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERVIEW ARCHIVE R E V I E W S A Certain Justice By P.D. James In her wry new mystery, James introduces us to a lawyer who has "four weeks, four hours, and fifty minutes left of life." (12/16/97)		The outsider page 2 of 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - This book also feels more Japanese. Some of your other books seem, to Western readers, as if the characters could be Western. Really? Yes. Perhaps because your characters are so fond of Western culture. It doesn't feel, reading them, that the story is happening in Japan -- but that's the impression of a Western reader. This book, however, definitely feels more focused on Japan. Why did you decide to do that? That's because I was living in the States! I was here from 1991 to 1995, which was when I was writing this book. That's the reason why I was looking at my own country and my own people. When I was writing my other books, in Japan, I just wanted to escape. Once I got out of my country, I was wondering: What am I? What am I as a writer? I'm writing books in Japanese, so that means I'm a Japanese writer, so what is my identity? I was thinking about that all the time when I was here. I think that's one of the reasons I wrote about the war. In a way we were lost, the Japanese. We have been working so hard since just after the war. We were getting rich. We reached a certain stage, but after reaching it, we asked ourselves: Where are we going? What are we doing? It's a sense of loss. Also I guess I am looking for some reason or cause to write. It isn't easy to explain. It's too hard for me. How did Japan seem to you once you were far away? [A long pause] It is too big a thing. Would you like to try in Japanese? [In Japanese] Even in Japanese, it is very difficult to explain ... [Wanderlust Editor Don George, in Japanese:] Is it that if you are looking at your own country from a distance, from another country, the meaning of being Japanese -- what it is to be Japanese -- becomes clearer? When you are in Japan, living in Japan, you just don't think about such things -- but when suddenly you find yourself in another country, you get a different perspective on what it is to be Japanese. Yes, that's part of it, but ... It's really too overwhelming for me to talk about, to articulate. Can we move to another subject? Certainly. Your heroes don't conform to the hard-working Japanese ethos that you observe was so powerful after the war. What do you like about characters like Toru in "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles," who is unemployed and stays home a lot? I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven't belonged to any company or any system. It isn't easy to live like this in Japan. You are estimated by which company or which system you belong to. That is very important to us. In that sense, I've been an outsider all the time. It's been kind of hard, but I like that way of living. These days, young people are looking for this kind of living style. They don't trust any company. Ten years ago, Mitsubishi or other big companies were very solid, unshakable. But not anymore. Especially right now. Young people these days don't trust anything at all. They want to be free. This system, our society, they won't accept such people. So these people have to be outsiders, if they graduate from school and don't go to any company. These people are becoming a big group in our society these days. I can understand their feelings very well. I am 48, and they are in their 20s or 30s, but I have a Web page and we're corresponding with each other and they're sending me so many e-mails saying that they appreciate my books. It's very strange. We are so different, but we can understand each other very naturally. I like that naturalness. I feel that our society is changing. We were talking about my heroes. Maybe my readers are feeling some kind of empathy or sympathy with those heroes. I believe so. My stories appeal to some sense of liberty or freedom in my readers. Your heroes live a little bit like writers because they work on their own. Is it hard to be a writer in Japan? It's not that hard. I'm the exception. Even the writers in Japan have made a society, but not me. That's one reason why I keep escaping from Japan. That's my privilege. I can go anywhere. In Japan the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way. It's ridiculous, I guess. If you're a writer, an author, you're free to do anything, go anywhere, and that's the most important thing to me. So, naturally, they mostly don't like me. I don't like elitism. I am not missed when I'm gone. Do they have a problem with what you write? I love pop culture -- the Rolling Stones, the Doors, David Lynch, things like that. That's why I said I don't like elitism. I like horror films, Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, detective stories. I don't want to write those things. What I want to do is use those structures, not the content. I like to put my content in that structure. That's my way, my style. So both of those kinds of writers don't like me. Entertainment writers don't like me, and serious literature people don't like me. I'm kind of in-between, doing a new kind of thing. That's why I couldn't find my position in Japan for many years. But I'm feeling that things are changing drastically. I'm gaining more territory. I have had my very loyal readers in these 15 years or so. They're buying my books, and they're on my side. The writers and critics are not on my side. I'm feeling responsibility as a Japanese writer more and more as I gain territory. That's what's happening to me right now and that's why I came back to Japan two years ago. Last year I wrote a book about the sarin gas attack on the subway train in Tokyo in March 1995. I interviewed 63 victims who were on the train that day. I did it because I wanted to interview ordinary Japanese people. It was a weekday, a Monday morning -- 8:30 or something like that. They were commuting to the center of Tokyo. It was packed, as you know, rush hour, and you can't move, you're like this [hunches shoulders together]. But they are very hard-working people, ordinary people, ordinary Japanese, and they were attacked with poison gas for no reason at all. It was ridiculous. I just wanted to know what happened to them. Who are those people? So I interviewed them one by one. It took one year, but I was impressed to find who those people are. So, I myself hate those company people -- salarymen, businesspeople. But after those interviews, I had some compassion for them. Honestly, I don't know why they are working so hard. Some of them got up at 5:30 in the morning to commute to the center of Tokyo. It takes more than two hours by train, all of it packed like this [hunches]. You can't even read a book. But they are doing that for 30 or 40 years. That's incredible to me. They come home at 10 p.m. and their kids are sleeping. The only day they see their children is Sunday. It's horrible. But they don't complain. So I asked them why not and they said it's no use. It's what all the people are doing, so there's no reason to complain. Do they envy you? No, they don't. They're used to it. They have been doing that life for many years. They don't have any alternative. There's a similarity between the cult people and ordinary people. When I studied those interviews, the similarity was in my mind. When I finished, I was looking at the difference instead. It's hard to say. In other words, I love those people. I'm listening to their stories of their childhood. I asked, who were you as a child? Who were you in high school? What kind of person were you when you married? What kind of girl did you marry? There are so many stories in their lives. Each person has his own interesting stories and that was very exciting to me. Now when I ride on the train, and when I see people like that, I don't know them, but I'm feeling more comfortable with them right now. I can see that these people have their own stories. Those interviews did good to me. I guess I'm changing. What was the reaction to that book? I had many letters from readers. They were so impressed. Some were encouraged. It was a strange reaction to a crime nonfiction book. But they said they were encouraged. People are working so hard and so sincerely, and they were moved by that. This isn't the same as what we used to think -- that working so hard was a good thing. It's not that. It's a kind of compassion. N E X T+P A G E +| Why cult members needed to hear "a good story"