I Am a Japanese Writer

by Dany Laferriere

  I AM A JAPANESE WRITER

  A NOVEL

  I AM A

  JAPANESE

  WRITER

  A NOVEL

  DANY LAFERRIÈRE

  translated by DAVID HOMEL

  Copyright © 2008 Dany Laferrière

  Translation copyright © 2010 David Homel

  First U.S. edition 2011

  10 11 12 13 14 5 4 3 2 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without

  the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian

  Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence,

  visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Douglas & McIntyre

  An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.

  2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201

  Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4s7

  www.douglas-mcintyre.com

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

  ISBN 978-1-55365-583-1 (pbk.) • ISBN 978-1-55365-639-5 (ebook)

  Cover and text design and voodoo doll by Peter Cocking

  Cover photograph by John Sherlock

  Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

  Text pages printed on acidfree,

  FSC certified, 100% post consumer paper

  Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

  We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for

  the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British Columbia

  through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada

  through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities. We acknowledge

  the financial support of the Government of Canada, through the National

  Translation Program for Book Publishing, for our translation activities.

  ...........................

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: For Basho, I wish to acknowledge the versions

  by Sam Hamill and David Landis Barnhill. The translations of

  Paul Veyne are my own. DH

  The beginning of all art

  in the deep north

  a rice-planting song

  BASHO

  FOR everyone who would

  like to be someone else

  Contents

  The Fastest In America

  At The Fish Store

  An Anxious Salmon

  A Pocket Guide To Asia

  Life On Your Feet

  Basho In The Metro

  The Kiss At The Café Sarajevo

  The Nippon At The Eiffel Tower

  The Bjork Voodoo Doll

  Primitive Painters

  Objects

  The Midori Gang

  A Poison Kiss

  Eiko's Endless Back

  Crisscross

  The Human Machine

  The Negro's Defeat

  A Sunday In The Provinces

  In The Bath

  La Petite Mort

  The Final Leap

  A Song For Midori

  French Kiss

  A Ping-Pong Game

  Do You Like Sushi?

  Are You A Writer?

  Manga Death

  Plato And The Landlord

  Hideko's Secret

  The Park

  The Trojan War

  A Dish Of Spaghetti

  In Front Of The Tv Set

  The Cop's Nightstick

  The Time Of The Mimosas

  The Weather Girl

  The Sorrows Of Mr. Tanizaki

  Americanize /Japanize

  Ego Zoom

  The Coldest Eye

  Soft Skin

  Kamikaze

  The Publisher Of Stockholm

  The Cannibal In His Hometown

  Metamorphoses

  A Splendid View Of The River

  Chronicle Of A Dispossession

  Magic Moment

  Are You Playing The

  Whore Now Haruki?

  A Hotel Room

  The Man With The Snake Tattoos

  Richard Brautigan's Cowboy Boots

  Closed Eyelids

  A Forgotten Secret

  The Quest For Gold

  I'm Not Borges And Mr. Tanizaki

  Isn't Mr. Tanizaki Either

  Landscape

  The Final Voyage

  THE FASTEST IN AMERICA

  MY PUBLISHER CALLED while I was out buying fresh salmon. He wanted to know what was going on with that damned book. I’d rather talk salmon. Once, I couldn’t stand the stuff. I ate it and ten minutes later I was puking. The last time was at a friend’s place. I missed the bowl in her bathroom. I cleaned up the floor, washed my face and went back to the living room. I swore it was the last time I’d eat it. Okay, it’s not the first promise I haven’t kept. I am under no obligation to keep promises I make to myself—except the one to write this book. My publisher’s voice was acid despite all the sweetness he was trying to put into it. I can understand him. He didn’t exactly twist my arm to get me to do this book. I’d started nodding my head as hard as I could when he told me I absolutely had to write a new book. The word “new” has always frightened me a little. Why a new book? After all this time, we should know there’s nothing new under the sun. But we keep on trying. The customer always wants something new and different. I wasn’t about to get into that discussion; he knows it by heart, anyway. We talk about it every time we meet. The setting: his tiny office (one day someone will have to drag him out of there, from under the multicolored manuscripts and red books) or one of the neighborhood cafés. He’s a tall young man with eyes like globes and a disarming smile. He has a habit of running his hands through his hair, as if to brush away the clouds that have gathered there.

  We hadn’t even got to the café and I’d already found the title. I’m good at titles. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. apparently told his wife, who told me (I’m talking like a journalist now), that I was the fastest “titler” in America. The fastest titler in America, sure, why not, but I wouldn’t have minded knowing in what context he said that. Vonnegut was always out of context. That was his specialty. Do we really need a context to be the breakfast of champions? Billy the Kid: the fastest gun in the West. No need for a context there. The description is complete and autonomous. Even the tone is there. Had he said it ironically? His wife didn’t elaborate. It’s like saying that’s all I’m good at— with me, don’t bother going past the title. I guess that’s better than a bad title that keeps you from reading further. You can’t imagine the number of good books that are read clandestinely because of their bad titles. In bookstores, of the rare comments I hear about a book, 90 percent are about the title. Readers often ask me how I find my titles. I really don’t know. I just sit there for a while, and suddenly the title comes to me. This time I didn’t even need ten seconds; the title was there, waiting for me at the next corner. Are you looking for a title? How did you guess? It leaped at me and stretched out on the white sheet of paper. I need to contemplate a title, to turn it every which way. Each word—no—each syllable, each letter has to be in the right spot. Whatever the book is, these words will represent it. These are the words people will see most often. For the others, they’ll have to open the cover, while these words will always be there, before our eyes. They’ll contain all the other words in the book. You don’t have to reread García Márquez’s book; all you have to do is say One Hundred Years of Solitude or Remembrance of Things Past if we’re talking about Proust (do we even have to mention his name? Doesn’t everyone recognize the title?), and all the images in the book pass before our delighted e
yes like a curtain of light separating us from unpleasant reality. The time we spent reading it (the days at the café, the nights by lamplight), hidden in the folds of our memory, rise to the surface with their rich parade of unnameable sensations. A good title is a fabulous password!

  When you put forward a title you like, you have to be careful. In general, publishers want to hear about the content. What is it all about? They ask stupid questions like that. But not my publisher: he leaned back from the table, a smile on his lips. I used the moment to scan some of the titles on the shelves. Nothing worthwhile there. So I casually sent mine over the heaps of manuscripts. What was it? I Am a Japanese Writer. A brief silence. Then a wide smile. Sold! We signed the contract: ten thousand euros for five little words. In my euphoria, I told the Vonnegut anecdote to my publisher. He could already picture the promo copy: “The fastest titler in America.” But we dropped the idea—too immodest. That’s the problem with Westerners: we’re too afraid of ridicule. Being ridiculous won’t kill us, but the fear of it will. The other reason we dropped the slogan was the ambiguity of the word “titler.” Most readers would have read it as “tattler” or “titter.” So really, we lacked courage. But let’s get back to the title itself. He took it in his hands as if it were a lighter in a no-smoking area. He weighed and measured it. My title passed every test. He began writing it on the nearest piece of paper. It was pretty banal, actually—except for the word “Japanese.” And that was no joke: I really do consider myself a Japanese writer.

  AT THE FISH STORE

  WHEN YOU’VE GOT the title, most of the job is done. Still, you do have to write the book. There’s no getting around it. I am still swimming between the title and the book. Floating. Taking the time to measure the distance to be traveled. I’m never in a hurry to get to the heart of the matter. In my head, I run through the images I’d like to see in the book. It’s important to get them to enter into your flesh, to mix with your blood, so that you can practically write with your feet—in other words, without thinking. It’s not easy to change an idea into emotion. You’re impatient, but these things take time. Time cares little for our impatience. The result is a kind of generalized anxiety that follows you everywhere, even to the fish store. The problem is, you’re not sure what that kind of monster feeds on. So you take your time. You sit on a park bench and watch the clouds go by. You watch with pleasure as a little girl plays with her dog. You examine the sky with its low belly, heavy with black storm clouds. Pretty soon you start wanting to open up that belly and see if it feeds off anxieties or images. You linger there, in a state of expectancy. Open. Anything can enter. A moment of perfect calm. You sniff the air in wonderment as a single dry leaf falls from a tree. The time that came before seems so carefree now. Nasty weather this morning. You look at people but don’t see them. You listen to them but don’t hear them. You give too much importance to small details. But what if everything begins with that detail? You take a number and join the line at the fish store. You’ve stopped listening to the people talking to you, but you’ve started paying close attention to the ones who aren’t speaking to you. You’re preparing to become everyone else.

  The fishman, a Greek, touches my forearm as he hands me my salmon, skillfully wrapped in brown paper.

  “Are you going to write a second book?”

  I’ve written fourteen books, but he’s still stuck on the first. Twenty years have passed and he still asks me the same question. He’s not interested in my answer. On to the next customer.

  On my way out, just to gauge his reaction, I tell him, “I am a Japanese writer.”

  His eyes cut back to me.

  “How’s that? You changed nationality?”

  “No. That’s the title of my new book.”

  A worried glance at his assistant, a young man busy wrapping fish. My fishman never looks at the person he’s speaking to.

  “Do you have the right?”

  “To write the book?”

  “No. To say you’re Japanese.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going to change your nationality?”

  “No way... I already did that once, that’s enough.”

  “You should find out about that.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know, at the Japanese embassy. . . Can you imagine me waking up one morning and telling my customers I’m a Polish butcher?”

  “I’d think you’d be a Polish fishman, since you’re in fish.”

  “Anything but a Polish fishman,” he answers, turning back to the next customer.

  A guy who gives you his opinion about everything always ends up planting a seed of disquiet in your brain. I decided to call my publisher and ask him. He shouldn’t have any objections.

  AN ANXIOUS SALMON

  I HAVE A special way of cooking salmon. It has nothing to do with the salmon itself. What’s special is me. I put a very small amount of water in a pot with the juice of one lemon, thin slices of onion, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, hot chilis and a large ripe tomato that I crush, keeping only the juice. I boil everything together for no more than three minutes. I lower the heat to minimum and place the salmon in the sauce. Then I leave the kitchen and come back twenty minutes later to begin cooking the rice and the vegetables. But this time, I don’t leave. I stand and watch the salmon simmering. For no good reason, I start worrying. About what? About everything. Why? I can’t say. Don’t worry about my worrying. I ask questions, then answer them myself to forget I’m alone. Otherwise, I’d be dead silent. It’s incredible all the things you have to do just to maintain life. Right now, wave after wave of worry is washing in and threatening to drown me. I’m sweating anxiety. I start worrying about my mother, back home. I didn’t like the way her voice sounded the last time we talked on the phone. Her small, frail voice. I know my mother’s voice is never strong, but that time it was really alarming. That call dates back a month, but I’m only reacting now. I’ve been busy, it’s true. Busy doing what? I don’t remember. Right now, I don’t have anything to do but watch my salmon simmering. She told me she wished I had a more secure job, and that makes me sad. Now, even after my fiftieth birthday, I still don’t know what kind of writer I am. I hadn’t thought of this before, but back home, what are they going to say about me having become a Japanese writer? I watch the salmon slowly firming up. I’ve ended up communicating my anxiety to the fish. Now I’ll have to eat anxious salmon one more time. I don’t even know if the anxiety comes from starting a new book or from becoming a Japanese writer. And there lies the fundamental question: what is a Japanese writer? Someone who lives and writes in Japan? Or someone who was born in Japan and writes in spite of it (there are nations that are happy without writing)? Or someone who was not born in Japan, who doesn’t know the language, but who decided one fine day to become a Japanese writer? That’s my situation. I have to get it through my head: I am a Japanese writer. As long as I’m not that naked writer who enters the forest of sentences with no weapon other than a kitchen knife.

  A POCKET GUIDE TO ASIA

  I DON’T KNOW anyone from Asia. I would fall for any girl named Asia—the name makes me think of silk. “Asia” makes me think of a blade, too. One thrust and the throat is slit. A necklace of blood. A quick death is almost reassuring. I think of that continent the way a nineteenth-century explorer would. My ideas are born in my room. I did know a guy who used to hang out in Carré Saint-Louis. I never really knew where he was from. Asia is so big. Does he even know where he’s from now? When someone doesn’t go back home for so long, origins lose their relevance. What good is coming from a place if you don’t even speak the language?

  “You wouldn’t be Japanese, by any chance?”

  “Korea. I’m Korean.”

  “Japan, Korea, isn’t it the same thing?”

  He gave me a furious look.

  “Still,” I told him, “I get the feeling you have something in common.”

  “What?”

  “Asia.”


  Obviously I’m in love with the word. It’s the continent closest to America. One is too old; the other, too new. Both start with the letter A. In the presence of this flesh-and-blood human being, I confine myself to semiology. That must be my European side.

  “What do you want, anyway?”

  “I’d like to have a Japanese experience.”

  The Korean wasn’t sure if I was serious or not. I put on my most serious face. For me, it’s easy: everything is serious, yet nothing is. That’s how I move through life. I can’t even separate what’s true from what’s false in myself. I don’t distinguish between the two. To tell the truth, all this business about authenticity bores me to death. I’m talking about the concrete fact of dying. When people start conjuring up their origins, I literally find it hard to breathe. We’re born in one spot, and afterwards we choose our place of origin.

  Suddenly the guy figured he knew what I was looking for.

  “Kama Sutra,” he said.

  “That’s India.”

  “Sure, but everybody thinks it’s Japanese.”

  “I’m not everybody.”

  “So what do you want?”

  “Just to be in the surroundings . . . The smells, the colors, the brush of fabric ...”

  “I know this transvestite ...”

  “It’s better if it’s a girl.”

  “What about Chinese twin sisters?”

  “I didn’t say China.”

  “But all of it’s Asia, you said so yourself.”

  “I’m not just talking about geography. . . For me, Japan is masculine, and China is feminine. I can screw China, but Japan will end up screwing me.”

  “You think you can screw China! Why not Korea?”

  “Japan is more modern.”

  “Workers with movie cameras.”

  “So you really don’t know anyone from Tokyo?”

  “If I find something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Can I ask you a question? When was the last time you were back in Korea?” The question combined space and time.

  “I don’t remember... I lost my passport.”