Sunday, July 6, 2008

By DAVID HICKEY

Staff writer

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Did you grow up with violence?

Executed killer Yoshio Kodaira KYODO PHOTO

No, not personally. The violence is the thing I find hardest. I often think that the majority of crime novels and film and TV, while their often very graphic, they sometimes sanitize (the violence). I don't think it's portrayed in a realistic way. With, say, the Yorkshire Ripper or Kodaira, one of the things I've tried to do in the books is show the suffering of the victims. But in order to show their suffering you have to show the violence inflicted on them. You have to show it in a way that, (although the reader is) never going to be able to suffer in a way the victim suffered, to some extent (the reader is) able to feel some empathy for the victims. But it's a fine line.

In America, some female critics thought that "Tokyo Year Zero" was somehow voyeuristic in the rape scenes, saying it was designed to turn on men. It's the hardest thing to get right. I've yet to meet a bloke who's said to me, "I've been turned on by the stuff you've written."

Do you think you've ever gone too far?

No.

Is there a single theme that connects your books?

Some people said from "The Damned Utd" to "Tokyo Year Zero" was a big leap — "It's the first book you've not written about Yorkshire" — but actually the themes are quite similar. I've always been interested in places and people at times of defeat, for example, Yorkshire in the '70s with the Ripper, and during the miners' strike (in Peace's fifth novel "GB84"). "Tokyo Year Zero" is taking that to an extreme — the defeat of a city, but also, as well, with all the characters, I never buy into this mainstream idea that there are good guys and bad guys. In "Tokyo Year Zero," Detective Minami is the narrator and ostensibly the hero, but he does some very unheroic things. Personally, too, I do things that I don't regret but I do things that I do regret.

People are very, very complex. And in the books I try to reflect the complexity.

One expat commentator hailed "Tokyo Year Zero" as "the best novel in English about Japan." What reaction did the Japanese translation get here?

The Japanese press would ask — and they mean this is a compliment — "How could you get inside the Japanese mind?" As if there is only one Japanese mind. I always find this a very strange concept. Even liberal, well-educated journalists and friends of mine who are Japanese will say, "It's amazing how you could write as a Japanese."

The government and media perpetrate this myth of one Japanese mind, as if everyone's got f**king ESP or something. And yet there's 120 million people in this country, and I've been here 14 years and every single person I've met has been a unique individual. So as I was writing, I wasn't really thinking, "Is this what a Japanese person would do?" I was just thinking, "Is this what this character would do?"

Did you set out to try to write the Big Postwar Japan Novel?

I don't even think, "It's going to be a crime novel." It is what it is. I would never set myself up in competition. I think that's really dangerous. Basically, I write the books for me. That sounds either selfish or arrogant, but it's just because I think it's more arrogant to presume there will be readers. As long as I think it's all right, then I'm to some degree satisfied.

One of the things I was really surprised at was how positive people (expats) have been in Tokyo about that book. When anyone's ever written a book on Tokyo, foreigners — myself included — have thought, "That's just not right." I've read books and thought, "That's ridiculous." Often these books are only written by people who make flying visits anyway, but I think anyone who lives in a foreign country, there's some reason why they're not living in their own country. Of course, to a great degree we can reinvent ourselves in a way that's not possible in your own country, and you construct your own version of Tokyo, and the minute you read something that contradicts it, you get upset, you get kind of threatened by it. I think this is why foreigners ignore each other on the trains (laughs).

It wasn't an attempt to write the Great Tokyo Novel, but it was certainly an attempt to avoid writing a bad Tokyo novel. That was why my Japanese editor was so helpful, because I didn't want to have anything that was incongruous, a mistake.

As a writer, do you find Tokyo an intellectually stimulating environment?

Yeah, very much so. And also, by the very definition of being an outsider, which will never change, it's always mysterious and it's always unknown.

I find cities fascinating places. The more you know the history — (for example) if you know that slope we walked up (near Peace's office) is called Ijinzaka, Slope of the Foreigners, because when Todai (Tokyo University) first accepted foreign professors they used to have to come to and from university separately from the Japanese. I'm always looking for signs, little bits that are left over that you can see. I don't really think the past goes away. I think it's all around us. That's why I like history.

You're able to capture so vividly a variety of different worlds, from journalism to police work to prostitution. Is that down to imagination or research?

I think it's a combination of the two. With the Red Riding Quartet, with scenes between the police and the prostitutes, and to some degree with "Tokyo Year Zero" — I've got to be very careful with what I say — but there are large parts based on experience or people I've known or friends I've known. For the scenes to work, I have to completely empathize with the people involved in the scene. I suppose it's half empathy and half research. And of course imagination.

I don't really have an interest in serial killers — at least I hope I don't. What fascinates me is why these things occur. So with "Tokyo Year Zero," I started off with the stuff from Ed (Seidensticker) and the stuff from Mark (Schreiber), and went to the Diet Library at Nagata-cho and I went through The Nippon Times, as (The Japan Times) was then, and the Mainichi (Daily News) and went through all that.

My kanji reading is really poor and I was very worried about the research. But (publisher) Bungei Shunju have got a massive archive and about once a week I'd meet my editor there and he'd pull out the papers and read off the headlines to me and if something sounded interesting, like "Baby eaten by rat," I'd make some notes and ask him about the weather, things about music, films that were going on (at that time).

At the same time, I was also reading as many novels as I could in translation — things like (Osamu) Dazai, some of the early (Shusaku) Endo novels that are all set in the postwar period. As I'm researching, some things will strike me as "scenes." It sounds utterly pretentious, but the voices start to speak to you. For example, the sound of ton-ton-ton (symbolizing a hammering sound) comes from a Dazai story.

I think the use of imagination is probably stronger in "Tokyo Year Zero," because it was the first time I was writing about a time and place I hadn't grown up in, so I wanted it to be kind of ultravivid, as much for myself (as the reader). I know a lot of people don't like the constant references to the hammering and the scratching, but it was important to remind me that while all this is going on there is this reconstruction and the terrible aftermath of the war.

You mention the repetition, a device you use that seems to have developed over the seven novels. Is this a case of you honing your style, finding your 'voice'?

Yeah. Techniques used in one book I'll expand on in another book. In "1980" (the third in the "Red Riding Quartet"), in order to portray the victims of the Ripper, I use this unbroken stream-of- consciousness text, but that follows on directly from "1977." The way I check all the text, not just those bits, is to read it aloud to myself. If it works when I read it aloud then I know it's OK.

Life to me is very fragmented. You have thousands of things going on in your mind and around you. (The questions are), "What is the reality? And how can I convey that?" So the use of italic text, or separating text (both devices that Peace used in "Tokyo Year Zero"), really interested me a great deal. But I feel to some extent I've taken that as far as I can.

What also interests me about repetition is the way we replay events. You'll often have a conversation with somebody or you'll do something, and then you'll go away and wish you hadn't said it or you regret it, and the way you deal with it, I think, is you replay it in your mind until you actually become comfortable with it.

I think (the repetition) also comes from the fact that I tend to construct the sentences more like poems than prose. Life, while it's fragmented, it's also repetitious, and the repetition adds a kind of rhythm that it's hard for me not to listen to. I've been really trying to break it, though, with the new book.

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