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I can still remember, with total clarity, how I felt when whatever it was came fluttering down into my hands that day thirty years ago on the grass behind the outfield fence at Jingu Stadium; and I recall just as clearly the warmth of the wounded pigeon in those same hands that spring afternoon a year later, near Sendagaya Elementary School. I always call up those sensations when I think about what it means to write a novel. Such tactile memories have taught me to trust in that something I carry within me and to dream of the possibilities it offers. How wonderful it is that these sensations still reside within me!
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There is no basic change today—I feel the same pleasure and excitement I felt when I wrote my first novel. I wake up early, brew fresh coffee in the kitchen, pour some in a big mug, sit down at my desk, and boot up my computer （there are times, I must admit, when I miss the days of manuscript sheets and my fat Montblanc fountain pen）。 Then I sit there and muse about what to write that day. Such moments are pure bliss. To tell the truth, I have never found writing painful. Neither （thankfully） have I ever found myself unable to write. What’s the point of writing, anyway, if you’re not enjoying it? I can’t get my head around the idea of “the suffering writer.” Basically, I think, novels should emerge in a spontaneous flow.
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.