Nativeland and Elsewhere
Elsewhere because in japanese we use the word faraway from home more ,personally I’m not so familiar with the word? Elsewhere. And it sounds to me as if it’s ,somewhere not related to me but someone else’s homeland.In this meaning , my first Elsewhere experience when I was 6 in Hakkaido.In ?China and Japan ,usually we think only about bad & good histories ?of the counties ,but sometimes it’s interesting to change the way of ?thinking ,for example ,to think about the far northen roots between Ainu ?and Kazak.?My second Elsewhere is ?New York. After I came back to Tokyo in 1964 ,(Tokyo Olympic year) my ?life changed again to become a shopping girl. My generation Japanese is a ?little like Shanghai &Beijing young kids now; we grew up in an ?economically buoyant society, always think about enjoying life, buying ?new things that are fashionalble.In 64 I got my first Barbie doll? ,and ?her outfits. That was the very beginning of my shopping life. A few ?years ago ,I published an ethnology book about the Barbie doll ,Barbie ?was made in Japan from the beginning for more than 10years (1959-1972) ?at that time Japan’s products were just cheep and low quality ,but ?Mattel found Japanese were working hard and serious ,so they decided to ?make their new fashion doll in this
?country, and sent a Japanese American guy to coordinate everything. ?That was a very new and positive project between Us & Japan after ?the world war 2 era.I ?and my friends,many kids grew up buying ,dolls outfits every week, and ?their own outfits every week and started to go to new restaurants clubs, ?sometimes to write something for trendy magazines or travel magazines ?,but mainly we did nothing ,that was the trend ,when I was in my teens ?and twenty’s, all my friends including me never made money; we just ?spend spend? spend; we enjoyed? spending money. No profession was the trend. (now a days in Japan ?the situation ?has ?changed totally; there are working poor young people living in internet ?cafes and they are reading avant war proletarian literature In ?80’ my generation of Japanese girls &boys started to travel all ?over the world . And I found there are two types of the cities, type A ?,even as first time ,so familiar ,and close, which felt like I had ?visited many times already, for example ,NY ,Honolulu ,Sao Paulo, ?Beijing Helsinki etc. Type ?B, place where I felt that even if I visited then several times ,I was ?always touching only the surface of the city, for exampleParis, Seoul, L A, Madrid ,and Shanghai I ?visited Shanghai ,many times from Tokyo and from Beijing ,but I always ?stayed in the same Hotel and went to the same restaurants ,walking ?exactly the same street and stopping in the same café., so this time ?there ?is a big chance that shanghai changes from type b to type A.?As a writer , the normal way may be to write about your homeland and hometown ,but to me ,Tokyo is too real to write about.? It ?is too close to my own life or everyday life. In becoming a writer ,I ?found a writer’s life is not exciting at all. I don’t like to write ?about things too close to my life as a writer in Tokyo. So ?I need some fictional space in my stories. That’s why ,for almost all ?of my stories,I choose type A cities. The stay in type A is half real, ?half fictional ,very comfortable. Mishima said (or maybe Tanizaki???) in ?Japan we have unique space called Tsuginoma (anteroom )between corridor(or passage) and rooms..In the traditional Japanese house ,there is a small room between? inside ?and outside. the role of that space is important,I believe. Ideally, ?it’s in the middle of the heaven and the earth,; this world and another ?one. To me ,living in Type A? is living in two languages and two cultures ,like sleeping in the Tsuginoma?NY in 80th ?was my favorite Type A. city. I instantly liked the air of that city ?,that time ,and I visited many many times , sometimes staying a few ?months and then returning back and back again. Art and stockmarket (like ?now in Shanghai) My friend Page Powell was working for Andy Warhol’s ?factory , she introduced me not only to Andy but also to Basquiat, Keith ?Haring ?,Tama Janovits, Suzan ?Minot, Jay MacInerny, those kind of people. Parties and night clubs, ?galleries, so called bright lights big city, I walked everyday and felt ?inspired? ,blessed the air of? 80s NY.I ?loved to be in NY, as nobody then.I enjoyed it simply. The pressure ?looks last forever. And in Ny I met many important friends, ,for ?example. Kenji Nakagami, the famous Japanese novelist died in 1991 ,who ?was one of my favorite people I’ve met directly. He lived in NY then and ?some times we went out together .He loved Asian culture and foods ,so ?we met at ?34 th street Korean ?restaurants and karaoke bars . I’d never been to Korea at that time ,but ?learned something important from Nakagami’s Korean fever then. That’s ?just for one example. I believe I made the core of my writing during ?these days in NY.These ?last 10 years ,I joined asian writers meetings, sometimes visiting ?Korea or other places; ,each time I remembered nostalgically the cheap ?restaurants in 34th middle of the night in mid 80th?My ?writing is mainly about the misunderstanding of two different cultures. ?And silly but important love (affairs). Even now ,my favorite novelist ?is Manuel Puig ,my idea of love is very close to Puig’s. So, I continue ?to write strange misunderstanding love stories between two culture ,two ?languages, two cities ,and two people.
