Novelist as a Vocation(47)
And it wasn’t like I was dying to write that style of novel. It’s just that I didn’t have the technical writing skills yet to directly come to grips with a lengthy novel, and could only, at this point, write in that sort of style that stepped lightly. And that airy way of writing just happened to strike some people as fresh and new. For me, though, since I’d made the leap to being a novelist, I wanted to write a novel that was a little deeper, more expansive in scope. But “deep” and “expansive” didn’t mean I wanted to write in a formally literary, or mainstream-fiction, kind of way. I wanted to write a novel that made me feel good writing it, a novel that had the power to break down the front door. I wanted to do more than just take images inside me and express them in words in a fragmentary, instinctive way; I wanted to come to grips with the ideas and awareness inside me and in a more comprehensive, three-dimensional way set them down in writing.
The year before I made this decision, I read Ryū Murakami’s novel Coin Locker Babies and was really blown away. But this was something only Ryū Murakami could write. I also read some of Kenji Nakagami’s novels and was really impressed, but again only Nakagami could have written them. They were both different from what I wanted to write. I had to carve out my own path, and with the example of these powerful works in mind, I knew I had to write the kind of novel that only I could write.
And so I proceeded to start writing A Wild Sheep Chase as a kind of answer to these propositions. I wanted to make the novel itself as deep and profound as I could without making my style any heavier, or harming the good feelings (or, to put it another way, without incorporating it into the system of pure literature). That was my basic idea. And to do that I had to proactively introduce the framework of narrative into the novel. This was very clear to me. Making narrative central would make it, inevitably, a work that took longer to complete. Unlike my previous works, it wasn’t something I could complete in the snatches of free time between my day job. So before I began writing A Wild Sheep Chase I sold the jazz club I’d been running, and became a so-called full-time writer. At the time my income from the jazz club exceeded my income writing, but I took the plunge anyway and gave up the business. I wanted my life to focus on writing novels, and devote all the time I had to writing. A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but it was a step from which there was no turning back, a sort of burning of bridges.
Almost everyone I knew was against this decision, claiming I shouldn’t rush into things. My café was doing good business at the time, with a steady income, and they felt it was a waste to give that up. “Can’t you let someone else run the shop while you write novels?” they asked. Most of them probably didn’t expect I’d be able to earn a living just writing novels. But I had no doubts. I’ve always been the type who, when he does something, plunges in headfirst. My personality just wouldn’t allow me to let someone else run the shop. This was a crucial moment in my life. I needed to make a firm decision and stick by it. Even if it was just one time, I wanted to use everything I had to focus on writing a novel. If it didn’t work out, then so be it. I could start all over again. Those were my thoughts then. I sold the café and gave up my apartment in Tokyo in order to concentrate on writing. I left the city, started going to bed early and getting up early, and began running every day to stay in shape. In other words, I did a complete makeover of my lifestyle.
Maybe at this point I should have had a clear sense of my readers in mind.
But I didn’t really consider who my readers might be. There was no need to. I was in my early thirties then, and it was obvious my readers were the same age as me or perhaps younger. Young men and women, in other words. At the time I was considered a “rising young writer” (I’m a little embarrassed to use the term), and the people who supported my work were clearly the younger generation of readers. And what kind of people they were, and what they thought about, was not something I had to ponder much. My readers and myself as a writer were, as a matter of course, one. It was a sort of honeymoon period, I suppose, between me and my readers.
As I recall, for a number of reasons A Wild Sheep Chase got a cool reception from the editorial staff at the magazine Gunzo, which first published it, but fortunately many readers enjoyed it, reviews were positive, and it sold more than expected. In short, it was a smooth start for me as a professional, full-time writer. And I got the strong sense that I was moving in the right direction. In that way, A Wild Sheep Chase was my real starting point as a novelist.
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Time has passed. I am now far removed from being a rising young writer. I didn’t plan it, but as time passes you naturally age (not much you can do about it). And as time has passed, of course the kind of readers who read my books has also changed. But if I were asked what kind of people read my books now I’d have to say I have no idea. I really don’t.
I get a lot of letters from readers, and have the opportunities sometimes to actually meet some of them. But there’s nothing connecting their ages, sex, and places they live, so I really have no mental picture of the main type of people who read my books. I get the feeling the sales departments at the publishers don’t have a good grasp of it, either. My readers are about evenly split between men and women, and apart from the fact that many of my women readers are quite beautiful—this is no lie—there’s no characteristic that they all share. In the past it seemed one trend was that I sold well in urban areas but not so much outside, but now there doesn’t seem to be any clear regional difference.