Novelist as a Vocation(36)

If you’re not like them, however, if you’re not (sad to say) a rare genius, and you wish to, gradually, over time, raise the level of the (more or less limited) talent you do have, and make it into something powerful, I believe my theory might be of some value. You toughen up your will as much as you can. And at the same time you equip and maintain the headquarters of that will, your body, to be as healthy as possible, as sturdy as possible, so it doesn’t, as much as possible, hinder you—and this will link up with an overall balanced, enhanced quality of your life. My basic idea is that as long as you don’t mind putting in honest effort, the quality of the work you produce will also naturally be improved. (To repeat, this theory does not apply to genius artists.)

So, what should you do to raise the quality of your life? The method will be different for each person. Take a hundred people and you’ll have a hundred methods. Each person has to discover their own path. Just like each person must discover their own story, and their own style.

To give an example from Franz Kafka again, he died at the young age of forty from tuberculosis, and from the works he left behind, you get the image of a nervous, physically weak person. The truth is, though, he was surprisingly diligent about taking care of himself physically. He was a strict vegetarian, swam a mile in the Moldau River every day in the summer, and exercised daily. Kafka, with an earnest look on his face, exercising—that would have been quite a sight.

As I’ve lived and matured, I’ve found, through much trial and error, the way that works best for me. Trollope found the way that works best for him, and so did Kafka. You should find what works best for you. Physically and mentally, everyone’s circumstances are different. Everybody has their own theories. However, if my way of doing things might be a useful reference—meaning, that is, if it does have some universality—naturally, that would please me no end.





Regarding Schools





In this chapter I’d like to talk about schools. What kind of place (or environment) did I learn from? How did school education help—or not help—me as a novelist? These are the kind of topics I’d like to discuss here.

My parents were both teachers, and I’ve taught a number of courses myself in universities in the US (though I don’t have any special qualifications to do so). But honestly, I never liked school. When I think back on the schools I attended, it pains me to say it (my apologies), but the truth is, they don’t call up many pleasant memories. In fact, thinking about them makes my neck throb and ache. Maybe, though, the problem was less with the schools themselves than with me.

At any rate, when at long last I finally graduated from university, I remember being relieved, thinking, “Great. Now I never have to go to school again.” It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I’ve never felt any nostalgia about school, not even once (probably).

Okay, then why am I taking the trouble to discuss schools now?

I think it’s because I’ve reached a point—as a person far removed from school now—where it’s probably a good idea for me to gather my thoughts and feelings about my own school experience, and about education overall. Or, rather, I get the sense it’s an area I need to clarify a bit as I talk about myself. Additionally, another motivation may be conversations I’ve had recently with a few young people who are part of the trend in Japan of students refusing to attend (or avoiding going to) school.



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Honestly, from elementary school through college I was never that good a student. Not that I had bad grades or I was a dropout or anything—I managed to get by okay—but the act of studying itself was something I basically disliked, and I really didn’t study much. The high school I attended in Kobe was a so-called public college preparatory school, a large school with over six hundred students in each grade. We were part of the baby-boomer generation, so there were tons of kids. They would post the names of the top fifty students in the periodic exams we took in each subject (at least that’s my recollection of it), but my name was never on any of the lists. Meaning I was never in that top ten percent of students with excellent grades. If anything, I was probably in the upper middle range.

The reason I didn’t study hard was simple. It was boring. I just wasn’t interested. There were so many other things in life more fun than studying for school. Reading books, listening to music, going to movies, swimming in the sea, playing baseball, playing around with cats, and when I got a bit older, staying up all night playing mah-jongg with my friends and going on dates with girls…Compared to all those, studying for school was a total bore. I guess that goes without saying.

Not that I felt like I was sloughing off studying just to have a good time. Because deep down, I knew that reading lots of books, listening intently to music—and maybe I should include going out with girls, too—was, for me, a personal form of study that had real significance, a significance greater than studying for any tests for school. I can’t recall now to what extent I was explicitly aware of this or could have articulated it, but I was aware of being sort of defiantly anti-schoolwork. Of course, if the schoolwork involved a topic that interested me, I’d study it on my own initiative.

Another thing I’ve never been much interested in is competing with others for ranking. I’m not saying this to make myself look good or anything, but frankly I just couldn’t be bothered to care about specific numbers—grades or rank or deviation values (thankfully, when I was a teenager we didn’t have that way of ranking students)—used to show where people stood academically. It’s just my personality. I do sort of have a tendency to hate to lose (depending on the circumstances), but that doesn’t extend much to the level of competing with others.