Novelist as a Vocation(6)

A novelist, however, sees the idea of “a leisurely life” as practically synonymous with “the waning of one’s creativity.” For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die.



* * *



—

This is why I hold all those who persist in writing novels over many years without getting fed up—in other words, my colleagues—in such high esteem. Of course my personal likes and dislikes cause me to prefer some of their works over others. Yet the fact that they have been able to sustain the energy to survive for decades as professional novelists, garnering a solid group of readers along the way, tells me that they must somehow be endowed with a core of steel. An intrinsic, internal drive compelling them to write. A tenacious, persevering temperament that equips them to work long and lonely hours. It is my belief that these are the qualifications required of a professional novelist.

It’s not difficult to write a single novel. Even a very good novel, depending on who you are. It isn’t easy to pull off, but it’s not impossible. What’s really hard is to keep on writing novels year after year. That’s not something just anyone can do. As I have pointed out, it requires a special set of qualifications. Qualifications that may be based on something quite different than “talent.”

So how do you discover if you have what it takes to be a novelist? There is only one answer: you have to jump in the water and see if you sink or swim. I know this sounds blunt, but when you get right down to it, I guess that’s the way life is. You can live wisely and well without writing a novel—in fact, it may be easier that way. Those who end up writing a novel do so because they have to. And then they continue. As a fellow novelist, I embrace them with open arms.

Welcome to the ring!





When I Became a Novelist





When I made my literary debut by winning the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, I was thirty years old, with a fair amount of life experience under my belt. The nature of that experience, however, diverged somewhat from the norm. In those days, most guys graduated from college, found work, and then, when things leveled off, got married. That’s what I expected to do as well. Or at least that’s what I figured would happen. It was the way of the world, after all. I had no intention to contravene (for better or for worse) what seemed to be the dictates of common sense. Yet as things turned out, I got married first, found work, and then, after some time passed, finally got around to completing my degree. In other words, I followed the exact opposite of the prescribed order. It was just the way things happened—our futures, it seems, don’t always unfold in the ways that we expect.

At any rate, having started out by getting married (it’s a very long story, so I won’t go into details), and hating the prospect of working for a company (those reasons would also take a long time to explain, so I’ll omit them, too), I decided that I wanted to open a jazz café, a place that served coffee, drinks, and some food. I was totally absorbed by jazz back then (I still listen to it quite a bit), so I was drawn to the idea of listening to the music I loved from morning to night. Marrying while still in school, however, meant that we had no money. So for the next three years, my wife and I took whatever work we could find to raise enough capital. We also borrowed money from everyone we could think of. In the end, we had a sufficient amount to open a café near the south exit of Kokubunji Station in western Tokyo. The year was 1974.

Fortunately for us, it was a time when, unlike today, young people could still start small businesses without a huge pile of money. Many of us detested corporations and the idea of selling out to “the system,” which meant that enterprises like ours were opening right and left: coffee shops, restaurants, variety stores, bookstores. A number were close by, all run by people about our age. There were also young radicals, wannabe members of the student movement, hanging around the neighborhood. All over the world, you could still find small niches in which to live. If you could locate one you could fit into, you could get by somehow. Things could get wild at times, but it was an interesting era.

I brought my old piano from home, and we began to feature live music on weekends. Many jazz musicians lived in the Musashino area, where Kokubunji is located, and everyone was happy (I think) to play for the pittance I could offer. The list included Shigeharu Mukai, Aki Takase, Kiyoshi Sugimoto, Yoshio Otomo, Takao Uematsu, Ryojiro Furusawa, and Fumio Watanabe. We were all young then, full of ambition and energy—though, sad to say, no one was making any money to speak of.

I loved what I was doing, but we had borrowed an awful lot of money and had to sweat to pay it back. Some of our debt was owed to the bank, and some to our friends. We paid the friends back in just a few years, with interest—what else could we do? But to do that, we had to work from morning until night and skimp on food. We (“we” being my wife and myself) lived a very frugal, Spartan life in those days. We had no TV or radio—not even an alarm clock. Nor was there any real way to heat our room, so when the nights were cold, we slept huddled together, clinging to our cats. The cats clung desperately to us as well.

One night my wife and I were trudging home with our heads down, too broke to make the bank payment that was due the next day, when we stumbled upon a crumpled wad of bills lying in the street. Whether it was synchronicity or some kind of sign, I don’t know, but strange to say, it was exactly the amount we needed. It really saved us, since otherwise our check would have bounced. (For some reason, strange things like this happen from time to time in my life.) We should have turned the money in to the police, but we were strapped, so we kept it. There isn’t much point in apologizing now. I guess I’ll have to repay my debt to society through other means.