An Interview with Ousaka Gou

Last month I brought you the seventh in a series of author interviews conducted by . I have now gone to the beginning of the Way of the Book series and present an interview with the mystery novelist Ousaka Gou, the original transcript for which is available here. All photographs are courtesy of WEB本の雑誌.

Profile

Ousaka Gou

Mr Ousaka was born in 1943 in Tokyo’s Bunkyou ward. He read law at Chuo University and in 1966 joined the Hakuhodo advertising agency. In 1980 his first novel, Ansatsusha guranada ni shisu (Assassin: Death in Granada) received the O-ru yomi suiri shousetsu award for best new mystery writer. Since then he has published a stream of works including the Naoki Prize-winning Kadisu no akai hoshi (Red Star of Cadiz). In 1997 he left Hakuhodo to set up his own office in the Jinbouchou area of Tokyo in order to devote himself to writing.

On books

You’ve got an awful lot of books, it would seem

Ousaka: I can’t throw away any of the books I’ve bought. Some books I’ve used as resources, for example I’ve bought lots of books along the lines of reminiscences of people who were in Europe during the war. If I let any of those out of my grasp I’d never get them back. I couldn’t get rid of other books, like diplomatic records or books from overseas either. When I first moved to this office I had no shortage of elbow room, but that elbow room seems to have got a bit smaller….