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.