Novelist as a Vocation(14)

Once the habit of reading has taken hold—usually when we are very young—it cannot be easily dislodged. YouTube and 3D videos may be within easy reach, but when we five-percenters have free time (and even when we don’t), we reach for a book. As long as one in twenty is like us, I refuse to get overly worried about the future of the novel and the written word. Nor do I see the electronic media as a threat. The form and the medium aren’t all that important, and I don’t care if the words appear on paper or on a screen (or are transmitted orally, à la Fahrenheit 451). As long as book lovers keep on reading books, I’m happy.

My only serious concern is this: What can I offer those book lovers next? All other questions are peripheral. After all, five percent of the Japanese population adds up to six million people. Shouldn’t a writer be able to keep his or her head above water with a market of that size? If you look beyond Japan to the rest of the world, the number of readers increases that much more.

But what about the other ninety-five percent? They have few opportunities to encounter literature face-to-face in their daily lives, and those chances may grow even slimmer in the future. The move away from reading may continue. Yet, from what I can see, at least half of those people—another very rough estimate—might take a work of literature in hand and read it if they had the chance, either as a sociocultural phenomenon or as intellectual entertainment. These are the latent readers, the “undecided voters” in political terms. They need a welcome counter to usher them into the world of literature. Or maybe something like a showroom. Perhaps this is (and has been) the job of the Akutagawa Prize, to act as a welcome counter for new readers. It could be compared to Beaujolais Nouveau or the Vienna New Year’s Concert or the Hakone Ekiden relay; in short, to those entry points into the worlds of wine, classical music, and marathon running. Then, of course, there is the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is when we come to the case of the Nobel, though, that things become more complicated.

I have never served on a selection jury for any literary prize. I have been asked, but have always politely refused. That is because I feel I am not qualified for the task.

The reason is a simple one—I am just too much of an individualist. I am a person with a fixed vision and a fixed process for giving that vision shape. Unavoidably, sustaining that process entails an all-encompassing lifestyle. Without that, I cannot write.

That is my yardstick, my recipe for success, but although it works for me, I doubt it would be suitable for other writers. I cannot pretend that my way is the only way, and I respect many of the other methods adopted by writers all over the world—yet there are approaches that I find incompatible or that I just can’t get my head around. I am the sort of person who can only appraise things that fit with his own viewpoint. Looked at positively, this is an example of individualism; negatively, the mark of a self-centered and egotistic person. Were I to extend this self-centered focus and use it as a yardstick to evaluate the works of other writers, they would likely find it intolerable. Experienced writers might be able to handle it, but I shudder to think how those just starting out might react to having their fates influenced by a viewpoint as slanted as mine. I just can’t do it.

Should someone attack me for having abandoned my social responsibility as a writer, I would have to confess he or she might have a point. After all, it was thanks to the Gunzo Prize for New Writers that I got my start—it was at their gate, so to speak, that I got my ticket punched. I doubt that had I not won that prize, I would have continued as a writer. “Oh, well,” I might have thought, “so much for that.” Given that experience, why don’t I extend the same opportunity to the younger generation that I myself was offered? Whatever my biases, shouldn’t I grit my teeth and muster the minimum amount of objectivity required to issue a similar ticket to those following in my footsteps, to give them the same chance? I must admit that, too, makes sense. Perhaps I am to blame for not putting in the effort.

There is, however, another way to think about this. A writer’s greatest responsibility is to his readers, to keep providing them with the best work that he is capable of turning out. I am an active writer, which is to say, someone whose work is still in progress. A writer perpetually groping to discover what to do next, inching forward through the perils of the literary battlefield. The task set before me is to survive, and to try and keep moving ahead. Developing the objectivity needed to approve of or reject others’ works in a responsible manner, however, sits entirely outside the boundaries of that battlefield. If I were to undertake that new task seriously—and of course that is how it must be done—it would consume no small amount of time and energy. That in turn would cut into the time and energy I have for my own work. To be honest, I don’t have that much time to spare. I know that there are others who can manage both, but my hands are full trying to carry out the tasks already on my plate.

Is this egoism? Certainly it’s self-centered. I can’t argue with that. I simply have to swallow whatever criticism comes my way.

Nevertheless, from what I have seen, publishing houses seem to have no problem putting together juries for their literary prizes. Nor have I heard of publishers forced to terminate a prize for a lack of jury members. To the contrary, from what I can see, the number of prize competitions is only increasing. It feels, in fact, as if someone is being awarded one every day. My failure to serve, it seems, is not causing a social problem by reducing the number of tickets for aspiring writers.