At the beginning, when I was still uncertain if my work was any good, I tended to take the criticism to heart, though I tried to shrug it off, but as time passed I gained a certain amount of confidence—never more than a certain amount, mind you—that my novels were turning out well. Nevertheless, the storm of criticism showed no signs of abating. To the contrary, the gusts only grew stronger. I came to feel like a tennis player whose ball is blown away every time he tosses it up to serve.
It seems there’s a sizable number of critics who will go on disliking whatever I write, no matter its quality. The fact that my form of expression rubs them the wrong way doesn’t necessarily mean that my writing is original, of course. That goes without saying. Generally speaking, the works dismissed by critics as unpleasant or faulty are just that. Yet that leaves open the possibility that their reaction also fulfills one of the requirements of true originality. Or at least this is what, when a critic savaged my work, I told myself, trying to be as positive as possible. Better to evoke a strong response, even a negative one, than to elicit nothing but humdrum comments and lukewarm praise.
The Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert had this to say: “To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream.”[2] Lines like these can really buck up your spirits!
I’m not a big fan of generalizations, but if you will permit me to venture one （my apologies!）， Japan is a country where most people really hate it when you go against the flow. For better or for worse, our culture places an extreme emphasis on harmony, which means that Japanese care way too much about “making waves.” To put it another way, the social and political framework of Japan tends to stiffen very quickly, making it that much easier for authority to throw its weight around.
In the case of literature, for a long time after the Second World War ended, the literary status of authors and their works was carefully arranged and slotted within an axis of fixed coordinates—“vanguard” vs. “rear guard,” “right wing” vs. “left wing,” “popular” vs. “serious.” At the same time, the big publishing houses （almost all of which were based in Tokyo） set the tone for what was considered good literature through their literary magazines, a set of standards that was confirmed by a system of prizes （or “goodies”） for authors. It was very hard to stand against this monolithic system. Leaving the axis meant forgoing all the goodies that were being passed around.
When I made my debut as a writer in 1979, this system was still firmly entrenched, its power basically unchallenged. Editors would say things like “There’s no precedent for that” or “That’s just not the way things are done.” It had been my impression that one thing an author had going for him was that he was free to write whatever he wanted, so comments like these truly puzzled me.
I’m not the type of guy who enjoys fighting and arguing （really!）， so I wasn’t up for battling the system, or duking it out with any of the unwritten laws. I am, however, an independent person who likes to think things out for himself. Having taken the trouble to become a writer, and realizing that we all get only one chance in this life, I was determined from the start to forge ahead and do what I wanted in the way I wanted. The system could go its way and I would go mine. As someone who had lived through the student protests of the late 1960s, the years of rebellion, it went against my instincts to “sell out” to those in power. Most of all, however, as a writer I wanted to remain spiritually free, beholden to no one. To write my novels the way I wanted, according to the schedule I myself had laid out. This was my bottom line, my assertion of authorial independence.
From the outset, I had a pretty clear idea of the novels I wanted to create. I could even picture what they should look like, once I had developed my skills to the point where I could write them. The novels floated directly above me, shining in the sky like the North Star. If I felt lost, all I had to do was look up. They would give me my location, and point me in the right direction. Had they not been there, I might well have ended up wandering all over the place.
Speaking from experience, it seems that I discovered my “original” voice and style, at the outset, not adding to what I already knew but subtracting from it. Think how many—far too many—things we pick up in the course of living. Whether we choose to call it information overload or excess baggage, we have that multitude of options to choose from, so that when we try to express ourselves creatively, all those choices collide with each other and we shut down, like a stalled engine. We become paralyzed. Our best recourse is to clear out our information system by chucking all that is unnecessary into the garbage bin, allowing our mind to move freely again.