11 minute read
Suzanne Kamata interviews Diane Nagatomo,author of The Butterfly Café
AUTHORS INTERVIEWING AUTHORS
Suzanne Kamata interviews Diane Nagatomo,author of The Butterfly Café
Set in modern-day Tokyo, Diane Nagatomo’s debut novel The Butterfly Café tells the story of American Jessie Yamada. When her emotionally-abusive husband suddenly dies in a traffic accident, she is overcome with guilt because while making plans to leave him, she had often thought how much easier it would be for her if he were dead. Those feelings quickly shift to shock and anger after discovering her entire marriage had been built upon secrets and lies. Jessie unexpectedly inherits a dilapidated café full of cats, where with the help of old friends and quirky neighbors, she constructs a new life for herself and her daughter. But just when things finally seem to be going right, a twist of fate forces her to make a decision that will have a far-reaching impact on herself and all the people she loves. The Butterfly Café explores issues such as friendship, family, and love. It shows how second chances at happiness can be found in unexpected ways.
As a fellow member of the Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese, I have known Diane for many years, and even used her textbooks in my English classes. I was thrilled to read her new novel in advance of publication. After reading, I had a few questions for her.
Suzanne Kamata: First of all, congratulations on the publication of your first novel! I love the title, and as you know, I love the book as well. I think that in Japan, you are widely known, but for folks who are learning of your work for the first time, could you tell a bit about yourself? Let’s start with your childhood. Where did you grow up? What was your family life like?
Diane Nagatomo: Thanks Suzanne! Thanks for giving me the opportunity here to talk about myself and my book.
Well, my father was a sergeant in the US Air Force, so I grew up all over the place. I was born in England and moved to Nebraska when I was two. Then, at the age of six, my family moved to Madrid. My family didn’t live on base, but in downtown Madrid. I didn’t understand this at the time, but General Franco’s daughter was our landlord, and she would occasionally come to collect the rent. One memory from those years was traveling from Madrid to Rome and back by car. My father drove, and the passengers were my older brother, mother, grandmother, great aunt, and me. With no place for me in the car, I made the entire trip sitting on someone’s lap. From Spain we moved to Massachusetts, Nebraska, and New Mexico before my dad retired and moved to California. I was so happy I could start and finish at the same high school and I graduated from CSULA before moving to Japan in 1979.
SK: What did you read and write as a child? What did you study in college? Did you always know you were going to be a writer?
DN: I don’t think I wrote anything as a child, but I was a voracious reader. I only owned a few books, but we went to the library every single week and came home with stacks of books. Because my brother was eleven years older than me, I didn’t really have any playmates at home, so books were my friends. My favorite classes in high school were those that involved independent reading. I devoured all of John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck, and even went through a Solzhenitsyn phase. In college I majored in Child Development and Education with the vague idea that I’d become a teacher. I really wasn’t all that career-minded back then.
SK: How did you wind up in Japan?
DN: I had the opportunity to come to Japan in 1973 when I was 16. My brother bought my airplane ticket for me, and I visited the family of a girl who went to my high school. It was the adventure of a lifetime and that sparked my life-long interest in the place. I came to Japan again in 1979 with the intention of staying just one year. I thought I’d learn perfect Japanese and go home and become an elementary school teacher. That was 44 years ago!
SK: I think that we first “met” in an online writing group comprised of foreign women married to Japanese men in Japan. I was working on my first novel, which would become Losing Kei. I know that you had already been writing and publishing by then. What is the first thing that you published? (If it was published abroad, please also tell us about your first publications in Japan).
DN: I have such fond memories of that group in the early 2000s. I think that it is because of that group, the idea of writing fiction came to me. Of course, it took a couple of decades for me to get around to doing that!
The first things I published in Japan were short 300-word articles in the 1980s for the Mainichi Weekly. I wrote for them off and on until the early 2000s. At one time I had a monthly column Pet Talk, and I got letters from readers! One woman liked to send me pictures of her chihuahua named Mick Jagger!
I used to do a lot of voice narration for textbook companies in the 80s and 90s. After one job, I started thinking that I could probably write a textbook myself. So, I went home, typed up a proposal and a chapter on an old-fashioned word processor, printed it out, went to the post office, and mailed it to the editor in charge of the book I had just done narration for. He called me on the landline, and Conversation Topics for Japanese University Students was published by Kinseido that same year in 1993. Since then, I’ve written ten textbooks for that company.
SK: What was the impetus for The Butterfly Café? When did you start working on it?
DN: This is my third novel. The first one was dreadful, but I learned a lot from the process of writing it, and I got a lot of great feedback from the Tokyo Writers Workshop. The second one I abandoned because I couldn’t figure out how to fix some of the issues. I started The Butterfly Café about four years ago, incorporating some ideas and themes from Novel #2 (like an inheritance). I guess a seed of an idea for the story was planted when I learned from a foreign wife friend years ago that her mother-in-law had been a geisha. There were a few other things in The Butterfly Café that I always wanted to incorporate into a story. For example, my former colleague (who wrote a vocabulary book for Japanese high school students that sold a million copies a year for decades) was always decked out from head to toe in unbelievably flashy jewelry. And I found a 1911 copy of Swiss Family Robinson in my office with an English inscription in it. These things I’ve worked into the story. The part about the emotionally abusive husband with his secrets and lies comes completely from my imagination. People who haven’t read my book yet ask me if it is autobiographical, and I have to say, “No!” My husband of 44 years is actually quite nice.
SK: Are there any writers or books in particular that influenced your writing style and/or choice of subject matter? Or books that have taught you something about writing?
DN: I had to think for a while before I could answer this. I read so much it’s hard to pinpoint a particular genre that has influenced my writing. I read so many books by fantastic writers, but I don’t feel I can write like they can. At least not at this point in my life! But there are some kinds of books that I return to again and again because of their “feel good” qualities. I like books that emphasize friendships among female protagonists along with a touch of romance. I think that’s why I often enjoy reading books by Nora Roberts and similar writers. I want my literary world to be set in a comfortable place, like Stars Hallow in the television show The Gilmore Girls. Maybe I’m too much of an optimist.
SK: What is the expat writing scene like in Tokyo? What kind of support did you have as you worked on this novel?
DN: After I finished writing an academic book called Identity, Gender, and Teaching English in Japan (2016), I decided to give fiction writing a go. I hadn’t written any fiction at all since a few attempts way back since you started that online writing group. I did a google search and found “Tokyo Writers Workshop” in Google Meetups. I reserved a spot and went to a meeting. The next month, I submitted something. I have to say, if it hadn’t been for the wonderful support from TWW members, I probably would have given up a long time ago.
It has also been fun to take part in the annual Japan Writers Conference. Little did I know back in 2006 when a mutual friend (Jane N.) came up with the idea for the conference and asked me to host it at my university, that I would be a regular attendee more than ten years later. In the early years of the conference, I was too busy finishing up my Ph.D. and doing academic writing.
SK: How is publishing your first novel different from previous publications?
DN: It was a big learning curve shifting from academic writing to fiction. In my previous books, I needed to make sure I had my facts straight and I could put forth an argument that was convincing and (hopefully) interesting. I realize now that kind of writing is quite linear. But in fiction you need to think of subplots and issues that motivate characters. A lot of things need to be woven into the story that may not seem significant at the time but could become important a hundred pages later. This took me a long time to figure out, and I think I revised my novel at least a hundred times. I’m still learning how to do this! I also had to learn how to write in a less formal tone. A friend of mine read an earlier draft of The Butterfly Café and pointed out that my characters’ speech had few contractions. Well, contractions, of course, are a big no-no in academic writing.
Writing textbooks also involves an entirely different mindset, especially in creating dialog. You want to be as authentic as possible, but at the level of learner that’s being targeted. Unfortunately, that results in a type of speech that is never actually spoken by a human. Fiction is a lot more fun to write, but I also enjoy trying to create learning materials that might be fun for the students.
SK: We were recently raving to each other on Messenger about Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. What else have you read recently that you’d like to recommend to others?
DN: Oh, I loved Copperhead so much! What a voice that character had. I wish I could write like Barbara Kingsolver! Well, one book I enjoyed tremendously recently was, of course, your book The Baseball Widow. I was sad when it ended and was kind of wondering if there might be a sequel in the works.
In the past few months, I’ve been making a point of reading novels written by authors who publish with my publisher, Black Rose Writing. I feel honored to be included in a group of so many talented people!
SK: Thank you for mentioning The Baseball Widow! Finally, I have to ask, what’s next? Is there another novel in your future?
DN: Yes, I hope so! I’m currently working on Novel #2. Now that I know a little bit more about fiction writing, I went back and revised it. It’s about a half-Japanese woman who inherits property in Nebraska from her American father that she hadn’t seen since she was three years old. I’m having a lot of fun with the characters and building a world that reminds me of my mother’s tiny rural hometown that I visited every year with my kids.
