An Interview with Kawakami Hiromi (Part 3)

This is the third and final part of my translation of an interview with the author Kawakami Hiromi. Part 1 can be found here, and part 2 here.

This and that

Who’s your favourite author?

Kawakami: That’s a bit difficult. Uchida Hyakken, Irokawa Takehiro, Fukuzawa Shichirou, Fujieda Shizuo. I feel like that’s rather a lot. Among living writers I like Kouno Taeko, Kuze Teruhiko, Ekuni Kaori, Yamada Amy, Tanabe Seiko. A lot of women. I feel like I’m forgetting someone important, though.

When did you start reading?

When I was in my third year of primary school I had to take a term off for illness, and it was during that time that I began reading. I was confined to my bed, so I started reading a volume of children’s stories that we had in the house. I really enjoyed Robinson Crusoe. At first I got my mum to read them to me. Then I started reading them myself.

An Interview with Kawakami Hiromi (Part 2)

Part 1 of my translation of this interview of Kawakami Hiromi can be found here.

On books

Where do you find out about books?

Kawakami: I go into a book shop and, after having looked at the covers and spines, get something. I wouldn’t want to do things any other way. Though I have at times used the internet to get hold of something I really wanted but couldn’t find anywhere else, I tend not to.

Even If I jot the names of books I want down in a notebook, I end up forgetting them. Or I don’t even have a notebook on me when I go into a bookshop. I suppose I just go into a bookshop and find something that speaks to me. I think of meeting books as being a bit like meeting people. I sometimes end up getting a book I never thought I would have.

Be it with boyfriends or friends of the same sex, when you’re young you don’t really know any better, but when you get a little older and have a little more experience, you have a better sense of what sort of person everyone is. In the same way, after you’ve been reading for a while, you come to be able to work out from the binding, from picking a passage at random, the blurbs on the cover, whether or not you’ll like a book. You rather know what book’s about from a good look at the cover and a quick flip through, don’t you? Sometimes you’re completely wrong, but that can be even more fun.

I couldn’t find a copy of volume 16 of “Shouta’s Sushi”. Then I looked really hard (laughs). I ought to have bought the

An Interview with Kawakami Hiromi (Part 1)

The following interview was conducted in 2001 by the Japanese book industry magazine Hon no zasshi. It is the seventh edition of a regular feature, which I have translated as “The Way of the Book”, in which prominent authors talk candidly about their book-buying and reading habits. As the feature contains a brief profile of Ms Kawakami, I shan’t include one of my own creation. I have chosen to divide the interview into three parts. What follows is the first of those segments. The original transcript can be found at Hon no zasshi‘s website

Volume 7: Ms Kawakami Hiromi

Kawakami Hiromi (courtesy of WEB本の雑誌)

Joining us for this more grown-up 7^th edition of “The Way of the Book” is Kawakami Hiromi, who this year won the Tanizaki Prize for Sensei no kaban (The Teacher’s Briefcase). The editorial department took a trip to Mitaka, where we nodded our agreement as we bent our ears to Ms Kawakami’s graceful words, which were so similar to the clear sentences of her prose.

Profile

Ms Kawakami was born in Tokyo in 1958. After attending junior high and high schools for girls, she read biology at Ochanomizu University, where her degree thesis was on reproduction in sea urchins. She then worked at Denenchofufutaba Junior High School. Marriage and relocation due to her husband’s work saw he become a housewife.

She won the first Pascal Short Story Prize for Newcomers in 1994 with her first published work, “Kamisama”(“God”). In 1996 her novel Hebi wo fumu (To Tread on a Snake) won the Akutagawa Prize. In 1999 her volume of short stories