The third reason was that I had started to steadily publish works in the US, which people had begun to notice, and I was seen as a promising newcomer. The fact that The New Yorker thought highly of me was a tremendous influence. The legendary editor of The New Yorker, Robert Gottlieb, who succeeded William Shawn, for some reason took a personal liking to me, and I have a wonderful memory of him personally giving me a tour around the offices of the magazine. The literary editor I worked with directly, Linda Asher, was a charming woman, and got along amazingly well with me. She stepped down a long time ago from The New Yorker, but we’re still close. Looking back on it, it’s like The New Yorker trained me for the US market.
The result was that getting connected with these three people in the publishing world （Binky Urban, Sonny Mehta, and Gary Fisketjon） was a major reason that things went well. They were all very talented, enthusiastic people, with numerous contacts and a decided amount of influence in publishing. One other thing is that from my early collection The Elephant Vanishes to my latest novel, the covers of my books were all designed by Chip Kidd, the well-known designer for Knopf, and were all well received. There are people who wait for my new books just because they’re looking forward to his cover designs. Having Chip work on my books was another great blessing. （Author’s note: Sonny passed away in 2019, and Gary retired from Knopf in the same year. Binky and I are still working together.） And another reason I was successful, I believe, was that though I was technically a Japanese writer, I put that aside and was, from the very first, determined to stand on a level playing field with other American authors. I found my own translators and had them translate the works for me personally, checked them myself, then brought the translated manuscripts to my agent to sell to the publisher. This way my agent and publisher treated me the same way they would an American writer. Not as a foreign writer writing novels in a foreign language, but as someone standing on the same playing field as American novelists, playing by the same rules. The first thing I did was to make sure this system was firmly in place.
I decided this the first time I met Binky and she told me, in no uncertain terms, that she doesn’t deal with works she can’t read in English. She reads works herself, determines their value, and only then starts to work on getting them published. So if you bring in books she can’t read, you won’t get anywhere. It’s only natural, I suppose, for a literary agent. That’s why I made sure, at the time, to have satisfactory English translations ready.
People in publishing in Japan and Europe often say American publishers are commercialized, only concerned about sales, and don’t take the time needed to develop writers. It doesn’t rise to the level of being anti-American, but I often feel an antipathy （or lack of goodwill） toward the American-style business model. It would be a lie to say that the American publishing industry is totally free of that aspect. I’ve met several US writers who’ve told me, “Agents and publishers are wonderful to you when you’re selling well, but if you don’t sell, then they give you the cold shoulder.” I do believe that does happen. But that’s not all there is to it. I’ve seen examples where for a certain work they’re fond of, or an author they think is the one, agents and publishers will concentrate on developing them without worrying about the short-term bottom line. Here an editor’s personal devotion and enthusiasm for a work plays a key role. I think this must be about the same anywhere in the world.
As far as I can see, in any country people who go into the publishing field or want to become editors basically love books. Even in America, if someone wants to earn a lot and have a huge expense account, they don’t go into publishing. They either work on Wall Street or on Madison Avenue. Other than a few rare exceptions, salaries in the publishing industry aren’t that high. So the people who work there, for the most part, have the pride and spirit that come from knowing they are doing it because they truly love books. Once they love a book, they work hard to promote it, but not because they’re concerned about sales.
Since I lived on the East Coast of the US for a time （New Jersey and Boston）， I got to develop a close personal relationship with Binky, Sonny, and Gary. I live far away now, but when I was nearby or visiting, I tried to get together every once in a while to talk and have a meal together. This applies in any country, I think. If you let your agent handle everything and never meet the people involved, thinking you’ll leave it all up to them, then nothing will ever get going. Naturally, if you’re talking about an immensely powerful literary work, then those things aren’t so necessary; but truthfully, I wasn’t that confident, and I’m the type who, in anything, likes to do whatever I can do myself, so that’s what I did. What I did when I debuted in Japan I did all over again in America. In my forties I pushed the reset button back to being a newcomer.