A night on the town with best-selling author Kenta Nishimura (APRIL 17-2011)Struggling in poverty, yearning for the warmth of a woman, left to wander ... That has been the life of 43-year-old author Kenta Nishimura. His latest book, "Kueki Ressha" (Train of toil) has become a best-seller, selling around 190,000 copies, and it has won him the Akutagawa literary prize. I spent a night sharing food and drinks with the alcohol-loving Nishimura in one of Tokyo's downtown areas.
Neon lights, touts persistently trying to pull us into their establishments, a gaudily decorated car advertising a bar ... this was the setting for an evening in the raunchy Kabukicho district in Tokyo's Shinjuku area. Nearby, even a group of tourists from China was wide-eyed in amazement.
I entered a yakitori place along a back alley together with Nishimura. Inside was everyone from middle-aged men absorbed in their evening papers to suspicious-looking couples to cabaret club girls obsessed over their mobile phones. Against this backdrop, the large, bearded Nishimura somehow fit in.
"You know, it seems like I have a reputation for spending night after night pub crawling. I have a record of 23 flasks of sake at an izakaya (Japanese-style pub) in Uguisudani. But lately I've been at home doing work until around 3 a.m, and after that having five or six glasses of watered-down "Jun" shochu (Japanese distilled liquor) before going to bed. The only food I have with it is canned food or "kaki-pi" (spicy rice crackers with peanuts). Shinchosha, the publisher of my book, said they would give me alcohol in celebration of my winning the prize, so I had them send me four cases of Jun. Ha, ha, ha," laughs Nishimura.
Right, it's now time to eat and drink. Nishimura downs some raw liver, stuffs his mouth with yakitori, and gulps down cold shochu mixed with oolong tea. He isn't sparing with the cigarettes, either. His decadent ways make me wonder if Kabukicho might be his favored stomping grounds, but he claims differently.
"Usually when I go out it's to Gotanda or Otsuka, because that's where the young girls are going, rather than Shinjuku or Shibuya. But since winning the prize, I haven't gone out to those places. I can't. Those girls have blogs, you know, and they'll make fun of me on them, and I don't want to dishonor myself as the winner of the literary prize named after Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Still, I don't think I can take staying away much longer. Maybe if I shave off my beard and mustache and change my hairstyle ..."
As he drinks, Nishimura shifts his large body in his seat, his voice grows louder, and his mood more cheerful. I had heard a rumor that he sometimes becomes unpleasant when he gets drunk, so I am relieved. Over the izakaya's speakers, a song by Yujiro Ishihara plays.
"It's a cool song, isn't it? I've been a fan of Ishihara since he was on the TV drama 'Taiyo ni Hoero' (Howl at the sun)."
Incidentally, Yujiro Ishihara's older brother, politician and Akutagawa Prize screening committee member Shintaro Ishihara, raved about Nishimura's work during the Akutagawa Prize selection, saying, "His rebellious picaresque novel, released amid a very spoiled and abundant time for society, is extremely fresh."
Nishimura, however, says "If he meant what I think he did by a 'picaresque novel,' that's not quite right. The main character, Kanta, is not a power-wielding rogue, just a petty one, a calculating one. Even so, Ishihara's evaluation was the one that made me the happiest, because I've read his works for a long time. His early work, "Kanzen na Yugi" (Perfect game) was interesting. He's made a lot of mistakes as governor of Tokyo, but as an author he's done great. He said he'd disappear like Kurama Tengu (A fictional hero) and not run for office again? That choice of words is so bad. He should have been more humble." (Despite his statement, Ishihara successfully ran for a fourth term as governor.)
In Nishimura's book, Kanta is living near the end of the Showa era (1926-1989), on the eve of Japan's bubble economy. With only a junior-high school education, no money, no friends and only alcohol to comfort him, Kanta is a 19-year-old day-laborer, working on the wharves. Pitiful though he may be, he still has enough energy to scrape by.
These days, however, Japan has entered a recession with no end in sight, and graduating university students face a severe employment "ice age."
"You could say it's all their own fault. From the start, rather than going to university, they could have been apprentices at sushi shops or something. How can someone blame society when they don't get their ideal life after just following the path that's presented to them?"
In a pocket of his work trousers, the book character Kanta secretly carries a work by Taisho era (1912-1926) author Seizo Fujisawa, who wrote "I-novels," a type of novel that describes one's life experiences and feelings. Fujisawa, after making his literary debut with the long novel "Nezugongenura" (Behind Nezu Shrine), ended up dying in abject poverty, freezing to death on a bench in Tokyo's Shiba Park at the age of 42.
On Fujisawa, Nishimura has written, "Nearly all of the few works he produced have as their motifs poverty and repressed sexuality. The underlying current is the author's 'grudge' against those things, but the uniquely written, bitter prose carried on that melody includes not only the feelings of the author, but also the societal problems of the time, such as the unprecedented depression and the approach of fascism."
Nishimura's admiration for Fujisawa seems endless. Not only is he planning on releasing a seven-volume complete collection of Fujisawa works, he has already secured his own grave site next to Fujisawa's. When I tell Nishimura that Fujisawa's "Nezugongenura" was listed on a catalog at an old book store, he slowed down his drinking.
"I heard about that, too. I think the price was around 470,000 yen. I had been thinking of buying the first edition of Kazuo Ozaki's "Nonki Megane" (Carefree glasses), the first I-novel that won the Akutagawa Prize, as a memento of my receiving the award. But now that Fujisawa's book has appeared like this, I would be a coward not to act and grab it," he says.
"I've already lived longer than Seizo (Fujisawa). If I had died in my 20s, I would have made literary history, but I messed that up. I clung to life. After I've got the complete collection (of Fujisawa's works) out, I can die anytime. But I won't copy the way Seizo died, I'll die in my own way. Right before he killed himself in Ichigaya, (post-war author) Yukio Mishima left his will with reporters from NHK and the Sunday Mainichi, right? Maybe I'll do that, too. Ha ha ha," joked Nishimura.
While he laughed about death, I could glimpse his desire for life. That he seemed to contradict himself helped me relax. Taken in by a strange sensation, I matched my drinking to that of the man in front of me, and before long my footing had loosened. In a dream-like haze, I think I joined Nishimura for drinks at one more place, but I don't remember. (By Takuma Suzuki, Evening Edition Department)
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