January 7
We receive a notification informing us that Oe Kenzaburo’s novel "The beautiful Annabel Lee was chilled and killed", which we published in "Shincho", was selected for the "Annual Foreign Novels 21st Century Award" in China. It’s the first time that a novel that I've been in charge of won an international prize. It is of course a wonderful thing when a work that I'm emotionally attached to receives an award here in Japan, but this time it’s on a totally different scale, almost as if I aimed at a goal but the ball I kicked flew out of the stadium and right into a goal in a remote arena.
January 8
A team from the still young Korean literary magazine "Jaeum & Moeum" is visiting our office. Our guests are president Kang Byung Cheol, popular novelist - and with 29 the youngest in the team — Kim Ae-ran (a big Fishmans fan), (female) editor-in-chief Jung Eun Young, executive director Sung Lim Lee (who studied in Japan), and novelist Park Seong Won, who covers everything in Japanese literature from Ogawa Yoko to Azuma Hiroki. When hearing their brief introduction of the features of the stylishly designed newest issue, I feel that I have something in common with these people. Maybe we can collaborate on some project in the future. Come to think of it, the first book that I was involved in as an editor was a translation of Korean Chang Jeong Il’s novel "When Adam Awakens" (1992). My guests are quite amazed when I tell them about this. Chang left his hotel in a "Jean Genet" fashion during his stay for a Japanese-Korean literature symposium, and spent the night in my tiny apartment. I learn from the visitors that he’s not writing anymore, but teaching at a university now.
We have dinner together, and later visit the bar "Nekome", a popular hangout for writers and editors in Shinjuku. We browse through Moriyama Daido’s photo book "Hokkaido" (5kg) and Ohtake Shinro’s "Zen-kei" catalogue (6kg) that we find at the bar, and for some reason Park Seong Won’s wish to hear Ishida Ayumi’s "Blue Light Yokohama" comes true. Then they suddenly tell me about their ambitious plan to put out separate magazines specializing in each of the three parts that make up "Jaeum & Moeum" — Korean literature, foreign literature and critique. "We're traveling to Japan and China several times every year, and would like to create some kind of public literary space that connects these countries." These people are truly enthusiastic about what they do, and I realize that it wasn't me who kicked a ball into their goal, but they came in fact over into my arena. I'm extremely happy that they did.
January 9
While Tokyo sees this winter’s first snow, I take a late train to Misaki. I didn't have dinner, so from the station I walk straight into the "Uoyoshi" pub. The tuna here is not worth a mention, and the place will never be featured in a travel guide, but I really love this pub. It’s only my third time here, but the seemingly rather quiet manager tells me many things about Misaki. He tells me about his time on a tuna fishing boat in the "golden years" of Misaki in the 1960s. The fishermen spend more than half a year crisscrossing the seas, and earn enough to build a house after two years or so (if they choose to spend their money that is…) They keep landing in Misaki, which according to the shop manager is "for the wine and the women." He explains that "people who spent months on a ship are in an abnormal mental state, and never hesitate to get out their knives when there’s trouble." I tells me about a year-end party with two hundred hostesses, half of which were brought in from the Ginza district; about how they took a taxi to a Ginza bar, had the driver waiting for them, and returned to Misaki later that night; about those who lost their fistfights and end up as stewed as a prune in the ditch; about the town’s three movie theatres, and a record store that used to be number one in Japan in terms of sales. Such stories about the good old days I actually hear frequently, also in other shops of the old-established kind.
January 25
The "Invisible Sound / Unheard Picture" essay that Ohtake Shinro has been contributing to "Shincho" since five years was published as a book late last year. Today I do a talk show with Ohtake at Aoyama Book Center to celebrate this occasion. The series in "Shincho" still continues, with a layout that reflects my urge to squeeze as much as possible of Ohtake’s writing into the spread that’s reserved for his text. I'm considering these two pages that are filled with 100% pure words about creativity as a guardian deity for our magazine.
Like Ohtake’s, Sugimoto Hiroshi’s regular feature "Utsutsu na Zou" that had appeared in "Shincho" for one year was made into a book as well. I become aware of our role as a pioneering literary magazine in the Far East every time New York-resident Sugimoto unveils his newest ideas in "Shincho", an not in a gallery or museum somewhere else in the world.