Novelist as a Vocation(11)

I do not consider myself a genius in any way, shape, or form. Nor do I think I am equipped with some special sort of talent. Of course, the fact that I have been able to make a living as a professional writer for over thirty years means that I am not entirely lacking in ability. I guess something within me—some aspect of my temperament, perhaps—must have been at work from the beginning. That line of thinking, though, has no payoff for me. I’ll leave it for someone else—if, in fact, such a person exists—to carry forward.

What has been (and continues to be) most important for me is my direct, physical awareness that some special power has given me the chance to write novels. I have been able to grasp that opportunity and, with no little help from Lady Luck, turn it into a career. Looking back, I have no idea who granted me this license, only that someone or something did. All I can say is that I am truly grateful. And that I will treasure it—as I treasured that wounded pigeon—while I go on happily turning out my fiction. What comes after that is anybody’s guess.





On Literary Prizes





Next, I think I’d like to move on to talk about literary prizes. Let’s start with a concrete example, the Ryūnosuke Akutagawa Prize. This is a sensitive, rather tricky topic for me, which makes it somewhat awkward, but I think it’s a story I should tell at this juncture, even at the risk of being misunderstood. That’s the feeling I have, anyway. Moreover, talking about the Akutagawa Prize is a good introduction to talking about prizes more generally, while talking about prizes may be a good angle from which to approach one aspect of the literary world in modern Japan.



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I was leafing through a literary journal not long ago when I came across a column at the back that included the following passage: “What a magical allure the Akutagawa Prize possesses! The commotion stirred up by the writers who don’t win serves merely to enhance its reputation, while its growing authority is confirmed by the case of Haruki Murakami, who removed himself from the literary world after being dropped from the running.” The author’s name was listed as Yuyu Aima, clearly a pseudonym.

It is a fact that over thirty years ago, two of my works were short-listed for the Akutagawa Prize and both failed to win. Since then, I have pursued my work quite removed from what might be called the literary world. These two facts, however, are unrelated: that I didn’t (or couldn’t) win bears no connection whatsoever to my distance from the literary world, a place I knew little about and had no desire to set foot in. It annoys me that someone has, quite arbitrarily, tried to create a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

There may be readers who believed this story. In a worst-case scenario, it might even become the standard version. I have always thought that writing was based on the ability to distinguish between inference and assertion, but I guess that isn’t the case. Perhaps I should be happy that the word on the street today is that I “removed myself,” unlike in the old days, when I was supposedly “rejected” by the literary establishment.



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One factor that helps explain my relative distance from the literary world is that I never set out to become a writer in the first place. I was just a regular guy who in his spare time tossed off a novel that happened to go on to win a new writers’ prize. As a result, I knew very little about the literary world and the awards they hand out.

I also had a full-time job, which meant that my hands were full taking care of the many things I had to look after. I was too busy, in fact, to think of anything other than what was absolutely necessary (a few clones would have been useful!). Once I had become a full-time writer, I was less busy, but because of my conscious decision, my schedule involved waking up and going to bed early, as well as regular physical workouts, so that I seldom went out at night. Not once, for example, did I visit those writers’ watering holes clustered in the Golden Street area not far from Shinjuku Station, where so much literary socializing takes place. It’s not that I felt any antipathy toward Golden Street and its inhabitants. Rather, I lacked the time or the need to go there—in practical terms, there was just no reason to go.

I have no idea whether or not the Akutagawa Prize possesses any “magical allure” or “authority.” I have never given the matter any thought. If there is a magical allure of the sort the author of the column describes, it certainly hasn’t found its way to my neck of the woods. Perhaps it took the wrong road.



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Although my first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, were short-listed for the Akutagawa Prize, to tell the truth (and I hope you believe me when I say this) I really didn’t care if they won or lost.

I had been overjoyed, however, when Hear the Wind Sing had won the Gunzo Prize. I don’t mind telling that to the world. It was truly a landmark event in my life, my ticket to becoming a writer. With it, I was guaranteed entry; without it, the story might have ended very differently. Doors began to open to me. With that ticket in hand, I thought, anything was possible. I had no time to spare to think one way or the other about the Akutagawa Prize.

Another thing was that I really didn’t consider my first two novels all that good. I knew in my heart that they only represented a small fraction—maybe twenty or thirty percent—of what I was capable of doing. I had never written anything before and had mastered none of the basic skills needed to put together a novel. Looking back, I think that it’s possible that the two books are actually better precisely because I was working at only twenty or thirty percent of my full capacity. At any rate, I was dissatisfied with a lot of things in those first two works.