Stadium. (Nobody ever thought that Yakult would win, so they had already arranged for their home
venue, Jingu Stadium, to be used for college baseball.) So I remember that time very clearly. It was a
particularly gorgeous autumn, with wonderful sunny weather. The sky was perfectly clear, and the
ginkgo trees in front of the Meiji Memorial Gallery were more golden than I’d ever seen them. This
was the last fall of my twenties.
By the next spring, when I got a phone call from an editor at Gunzo telling me my novel had made
the short list, I’d completely forgotten that I’d entered the contest. I’d been so busy with other things.
At first I had no idea what he was talking about. But the novel won the prize and was published in the
summer. The book was fairly well received. I was thirty, and without really knowing what was going
on I suddenly found myself labeled a new, up-and-coming writer. I was pretty surprised, but people
who knew me were even more surprised.
After this, while still running my business, I wrote a medium-length second novel, Pinball, 1973, and
while working on this I wrote a few short stories and translated some short fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Both Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 were nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, for
which they were said to be strong contenders, but in the end neither won. To tell the truth, though, I didn’t
care one way or the other. If I did win it I’d become busy with interviews and writing assignments, and I
was afraid this would interfere with running the club.
Every day for three years I ran my jazz club—keeping accounts, checking inventory, scheduling my
staff, standing behind the counter myself mixing up cocktails and cooking, closing up in the wee hours
of the morning—and only then writing at home at the kitchen table until I got sleepy. I felt like I was
living enough for two people’s lives. Physically, every day was tough, and writing novels and running
a business at the same time made for all sorts of other problems. Running a service-oriented business
means you have to accept whoever comes through the door. No matter who comes in, unless they’re
really awful, you have to greet them with a friendly smile on your face. Thanks to this, though, I met
all kinds of offbeat people and had some unusual encounters. Before I began writing, I dutifully, even
enthusiastically, absorbed a variety of experiences. For the most part I think I enjoyed these and all
the stimuli that they brought.
Gradually, though, I found myself wanting to write a more substantial kind of novel. With the first
two, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, I basically enjoyed the process of writing, but there were
parts I wasn’t too pleased with. With these first two novels I was only able to write in spurts,
snatching bits of time here and there—a half hour here, an hour there—and because I was always tired
and felt like I was competing against the clock as I wrote, I was never able to concentrate. With this
kind of scattered approach I was able to write some interesting, fresh things, but the result was far
from a complex or profound novel. I felt I’d been given a wonderful opportunity to be a novelist—a
chance you just don’t get every day—and a natural desire sprang up to take it as far as I possibly could
and write the kind of novel I’d feel satisfied with. I knew I could write something more large-scale.
And after giving it a lot of thought, I decided to close the business for a while and concentrate solely
on writing. At this point my income from the jazz club was more than my income as a novelist, a
reality I had to resign myself to.
Most people I knew were flat out against my decision, or else had grave doubts about it. “Your
business is doing fine now,” they said. “Why not just let someone else run it for a time while you go