RM : Your interpretation is very insightful and it is almost like an interpretation of "Rubicon Beach" by the writer himself. I think we should go back to this matter later on, but before that, I would like to talk about the act of writing. When I first start writing, I write from a scene just like in a movie, for example, a stop-motion scene, which pops up in my mind. The story or the characters come later. I try to describe this scene by giving details through words. This is how I write. So I wonder what's your way of writing, what is going on in your mind when you write, and how do you write?

SE : I think probably first I hear the voice of the book. I hear the voice and start dictating it. I think that most writers need that crucial first scene to begin with. Take Hemingway. He always stopped writing at the point where he knew what was going to happen next, so the next day when he returned to writing, he too had a kind of stop-motion. He had frozen the film in the camera, so he knew exactly where to resume. I think I probably do the same thing as Hemingway.

RM : What impresses me in reading a novel is the amount of energy that is used in description. For me, I find it difficult to describe actual objects with words but I also enjoy it because my intention in writing is to describe something in a way that is different from shooting from a camera. That is to say, to use the power of words. When you read somebody's book, what is interesting is not what the writer is trying to say, nor his opinion, but "how" something is depicted. So, do you have any opinions or thoughts on description ?

SE : Let me ask this question. I think I probably know the answer but I'll ask it anyway. When you write a book, do you have a sound track in your mind ? I mean, is there a sound track going on in your head as there would be in a movie when a scene is running, characters performing and the narrative taking place ?

RM : Yes. Not that it is like some background music in a movie but more like a sound effect.

SE : I guess what I'm talking about is a music sound track because it seems to me that, especially given your background in music and your writing about music in "Coin Locker Babies," I would imagine that there had to have been a musical sound track to this book going on in your head. That is what shapes and forms the descriptions that you were talking about. It's just the sensual feel and logic of the book.

I know that when I write a book, I sometimes hear a sound track in my head. Not necessarily some original piece of music, but a sound track derived from songs or various pieces of music. And I try to capture the feeling of that music in my book.

When I was writing "Amnesiascope," I kept hearing Middle Eastern music, Turkish and Moroccan music. I kept hearing the older Max Steiner's film scores and Film Noir music, wierd Brian Eno's music and it all got mixed up in my head. But it did have an impact, in some unconscious way, on what I wrote.

RM: By the way, I've heard that you are fond of Soseki Natsume's "Kokoro."

SE: Yes, it was given to me by an American friend who had spent time studying in Japan. I read it back to back with "The Wuthering Heights" (1847) by Emily Bronte on a very hot night when I was sort of in a feverish state. The novel Kokoro made a strong impression on me. It seemed to me a quite modern novel, and I was surprised to know that it was a classic novel because the emotional precision of it was, even in translation, something that I hadn't seen before. At the time I felt like it anticipated a lot of the existential fiction that came out in Europe thirty years later.

RM : Did you think "Kokoro" was two-demensional ?

SE : No, I didn't think it was two-demensional. There was a flatness of the voice, especially in contrast with a book like "The Wuthering Heights." The voice intentionally almost borders on this dreamlike hysteria. But something of the flatness of the voice made the drama that was happening between the characters. That was more powerful.

RM : Of course once a work is translated, its flatness is lost. Writers usually are happy whenever somebody says " Your work is polyphonic." On the contrary, writers feel depressed whenever somebody says "Your work is monophonic."

SE : That's a good point. I think in America, in the last fifteen years, "minimalism" has been all about a certain "flatness."

RM : Of course there is a goodness in this flatness of minimalism. But when it comes to minimalism, nobody would ever be able to beat the Japanese. This technique has already been built into Japanese literature. I think, for instance, Raymond Carver's works are boring. What do you think of Raymond Carver ?

SE : Is Raymond Carver popular in Japan ?

RM : Yes, another Murakami (Haruki Murakami) translates almost all of Raymond Carver's fictions.

SE : You know, I've never got Raymond Carver, I never saw what other people saw in his works. They say the whole underlined argument of Raymond Carver's work is that there is more than meets the eye, but I never saw the "more." To me, it was always "less." The people in America whose opinions I've respected a lot think highly of Raymond Carver, so maybe I am willing to acknowledge the possibility that I've just missed the work.

But I am very certain that, in my mind, Raymond Carver's influence has not been a good one. I'm sorry that a whole "school" of American fiction seems to come out of Raymond Carver. He himself may have had a lot of validity, but I don't think the changes that he created in American fiction hasn't been goodly succeeded.

RM : Maybe this is a little bit too much of generalization, but I think Raymond Carver is similar to Paul Simon, and you Bob Dylan.

SE : Well, thank you. I would rather be Bob Dylan than Paul Simon. I have to assume that as you read a lot of Carver's stories, they start to have an accumulative effect or impact. You read one story and you say "What's this?". But you read a bunch of stories and then you start to see some logic behind the work.

RM : I think there are two types of people who depict things. One is the writer who believes that nobody would understand, so he puts all kinds of things into his work very vigorously. For example, Jackson Pollock and Bob Dylan really put words into his short phrase.

The other type is a writer who has some sort of belief that somebody might understand his or her work, and might be able to share the writer's loneliness or sadness together. This type will put only one keyword into his work.

It's the difference between those who don't believe in communication and those who do. People who are optimistic about communicating with others apt to be minimalistic.