Novelist as a Vocation(18)

Suppose, for example, that Beethoven had composed only one symphony in his life—the Ninth. How then would we evaluate him as a composer? Could we deduce the Ninth’s intrinsic significance, or its degree of originality, in isolation? I think it would be very difficult. Looking at his symphonies alone, I think it is only because we are able to see the Ninth as a continuation from the First through the Eighth that we can fathom the Ninth’s greatness, and its overwhelming originality, in a three-dimensional and contextualized way.

I hope to be “original” in my expression, just as I imagine all artists do. As I have already explained, however, it’s not something I myself can determine. However loudly I proclaim it from the rooftops, however often I am praised for it by the critics and the media, our voices are fated to vanish in the wind. All I can do is entrust the final decision to those for whom I write—in other words, my readers—and the passage of an appropriate amount of time. My sole task is to work as hard as I can to provide as many “cases” as possible. In short, to keep adding works I can be satisfied with to the pile, buttressing and extending my total oeuvre.

One saving grace—or at least a possible salvation—for me is the fact that so many literary critics have harshly criticized my works. One famous critic has even branded me a “con man.” I guess by that he means that I have been swindling my readers by feeding them meaningless drivel. Since a novelist is, to some extent, an illusionist by trade, I suppose being called a con man may be taken as a kind of reverse compliment, in which case maybe I should rejoice at being attacked in those terms. Still, to be honest, having someone say those things about me—or, more precisely, write them down on paper for public consumption—isn’t a lot of fun. An illusionist is, after all, an occupation of sorts, while marriage fraud is a crime, which makes me feel the expression is rather lacking in delicacy. (Then again, perhaps the problem is not an absence of delicacy but a sloppy choice of metaphor.)

There were members of the literary community, of course, who looked favorably on my work, but they were few and their voices were lost in the din. Overall, in my estimation, the nos emanating from the literary establishment outweighed the yeses by a wide margin. In those days, if I had leapt into a pond to save an old woman from drowning, the critics—and I mean this only half-jokingly—would have found something to carp about. “A mere publicity stunt,” they would have scoffed. “Surely she could have swum to shore.”

At the beginning, when I was still uncertain if my work was any good, I tended to take the criticism to heart, though I tried to shrug it off, but as time passed I gained a certain amount of confidence—never more than a certain amount, mind you—that my novels were turning out well. Nevertheless, the storm of criticism showed no signs of abating. To the contrary, the gusts only grew stronger. I came to feel like a tennis player whose ball is blown away every time he tosses it up to serve.

It seems there’s a sizable number of critics who will go on disliking whatever I write, no matter its quality. The fact that my form of expression rubs them the wrong way doesn’t necessarily mean that my writing is original, of course. That goes without saying. Generally speaking, the works dismissed by critics as unpleasant or faulty are just that. Yet that leaves open the possibility that their reaction also fulfills one of the requirements of true originality. Or at least this is what, when a critic savaged my work, I told myself, trying to be as positive as possible. Better to evoke a strong response, even a negative one, than to elicit nothing but humdrum comments and lukewarm praise.

The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert had this to say: “To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.”[2] Lines like these can really buck up your spirits!

I’m not a big fan of generalizations, but if you will permit me to venture one (my apologies!), Japan is a country where most people really hate it when you go against the flow. For better or for worse, our culture places an extreme emphasis on harmony, which means that Japanese care way too much about “making waves.” To put it another way, the social and political framework of Japan tends to stiffen very quickly, making it that much easier for authority to throw its weight around.

In the case of literature, for a long time after the Second World War ended, the literary status of authors and their works was carefully arranged and slotted within an axis of fixed coordinates—“vanguard” vs. “rear guard,” “right wing” vs. “left wing,” “popular” vs. “serious.” At the same time, the big publishing houses (almost all of which were based in Tokyo) set the tone for what was considered good literature through their literary magazines, a set of standards that was confirmed by a system of prizes (or “goodies”) for authors. It was very hard to stand against this monolithic system. Leaving the axis meant forgoing all the goodies that were being passed around.

When I made my debut as a writer in 1979, this system was still firmly entrenched, its power basically unchallenged. Editors would say things like “There’s no precedent for that” or “That’s just not the way things are done.” It had been my impression that one thing an author had going for him was that he was free to write whatever he wanted, so comments like these truly puzzled me.

I’m not the type of guy who enjoys fighting and arguing (really!), so I wasn’t up for battling the system, or duking it out with any of the unwritten laws. I am, however, an independent person who likes to think things out for himself. Having taken the trouble to become a writer, and realizing that we all get only one chance in this life, I was determined from the start to forge ahead and do what I wanted in the way I wanted. The system could go its way and I would go mine. As someone who had lived through the student protests of the late 1960s, the years of rebellion, it went against my instincts to “sell out” to those in power. Most of all, however, as a writer I wanted to remain spiritually free, beholden to no one. To write my novels the way I wanted, according to the schedule I myself had laid out. This was my bottom line, my assertion of authorial independence.