Author of Izakaya (Kodansha)

When did you start reading?

I don’t remember. I guess about 5 or 6. I don’t remember being taught how to read and I doubt many people do. I wish I remembered the first sentence I read, and comprehended. Do you?

And what did you like to read as a kid?

When I was around 8 or 10 it was Tintin, The Hardy Boys, and the Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, who is still creating now and who I think is deep and brilliant. I have always liked combinations of visuals and text. I loved Donald Duck but I couldn’t stand Mickey Mouse. I also really got into adventure stories along British lines like Swallows and Amazons, King Solomon’s Mines, and some of Kipling. I wasn’t interested in The Hobbit or other fantasy literature – I wanted “real” stories. I think I wanted some kind of sexual tension in the stories. I don’t mean erotic, necessarily, but differences of perception between the male and female characters. Perhaps because our family had just two kids, me and my sister. I devoured her Enid Blyton books.

But most of my favorite mysteries were rather journalistic, by which I mean realistic, and the environment I grew up in was journalistic. In early high school I got into short stories by Hemmingway and Salinger. I was attracted to darker pieces. Minor key. I didn’t especially enjoy school but am really grateful for having had to study Catch-22 and Shakespeare, and Orwell. And I wish I had discovered books like Slaughterhouse Five earlier. I love that combination of realism and free-association, and I had completely missed this book until my aunt Noel lent it to me a few years ago. And I resent that Raymond Carver is not widely taught in schools.

When you were growing up did you have books in your home?

Yes many. We had a mixture of Japanese (Akutagawa, Tanizaki etc. in translation) and Western books. But many were non-fiction. My parents were journalists–my grandparents, sister, uncles and aunts were almost all journalists or involved in writing–and my parents who had lived in Japan in the 1950s to 1960s were close to people like the translator Ed Seidensticker, so there were always books and journals, people visiting, and lots of talk and dinner parties. But we never had any “salon” thing, my parents were just working journalists with a few literary friends.

When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?

I never thought of becoming a writer. As a kid I understood writing to be journalism and I took it for granted so it wasn’t attractive to me. I knew I could put words together–you find out that sort of thing pretty fast in the classroom. But for a long time I didn’t recognize the difference between making a decent sentence and writing. Growing up among journalists and being mildly rebellious I decided that I would never follow their path, and I wouldn’t go to university, and I would be a musician.

But when I left school I joined a theatre company as a trainee stage-lighting technician and for the next 10 years I worked in stage lighting, on the tech side and design. I was the lighting operator in Sydney for productions like Cats and Les Miserables, and for Dolly Parton and the Two Ronnies in London, and the Sydney Dance Company. After a visit to Tokyo and meeting my Japanese cousins who I hit it off with, I returned to Sydney and studied Japanese then worked on an Australian tour of kabuki theatre and after that went to Tokyo where I worked in stage lighting and after a year or so fell into a radio job in Tokyo and after that started writing for magazines, around 1990.

How do you write?

In notebooks and on a Mac. I like to sleep on things. But I need deadlines.

Do you have a daily routine?

I write at night. But I fit the work. Getting up really early when the pressure’s on is a buzz.

What’s good about it?

Having something come to you.

What do you hate about it?

Having nothing come to you.

Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?

The key to this book was in the research, conveying my enthusiasm for the project to the people I wanted to feature. Many of them were not interested in publicity and it took some time to convince them to take part. It was really crucial that I wanted to do this project, partly out of respect for them. It was also important to have everyone–design, editors, photographers–thinking along the same lines.

What some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing?

Strip it down.

What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?

You are unique. Don’t pretend.

How did you find the publisher for this book?

Working in the field.

What are you working on at the moment?

Freelance. Another book but I can’t say what.

What are you reading?

Cheese Slices, by Will Studd. An extraordinary book on cheese.