Anime Herald: You’ve ridden your motorcycle cross country from California to Florida. Any fun stories from the ride? Great stretches of road, or places that were fun to visit?
Kōji Suzuki: Why do you know about that?
Anime Herald: I’ve read every interview you’ve given.
Kōji Suzuki: I drove from Los Angeles to Key West. Have you been to Key West?
Anime Herald: I have.
Kōji Suzuki: In Key West, there is a bar named Sloppy Joe’s Bar. It’s famous for Ernest Hemingway drinking there every night. It’s a big bar, and there’s a stage. A rock and roll band played. I drank there. I was like a professional dancer, so I danced passionately to the rock band’s music. A few members of the band saw me and stopped playing. They put the spotlight on me and they shouted “now we have Jackie Chan.”
Anime Herald: (Laughs) I appreciate the cultural sensitivity.
Kōji Suzuki: American people are festive. People surrounded me and asked me to take pictures with them, so I did. So, I am an imitation of Jackie Chan.
Anime Herald: I appreciate that. That’s very impressive.
Have you always been interested in dance?
Kōji Suzuki: Yes, I have.
Anime Herald: Are you familiar with Christopher Walken?
Kōji Suzuki: Yes.
Anime Herald: That’s how he got his start. He was a dancer.
Kōji Suzuki: Oh!
Anime Herald: I know that you like yachting. Do you have any stories from being out in the ocean that you would like to share?
Kōji Suzuki: I met a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean. I thought I was going to die.
Anime Herald: Were you in sight of land?
Kōji Suzuki: I was sailing toward my home port. I could see land in the yonder. During the typhoon I couldn’t see anything around me.
Anime Herald: That is a scary story.
Anime Herald: Why did you decide to major in French literature?
Kōji Suzuki: I had a good friend in high school who advised me “Koji, if you want to become a novelist, you should major in French literature.”
Anime Herald: Was there any particular novelist like Dumas you wanted to study?
Kōji Suzuki: To be perfectly honest with you, when I was in high school, I had never read any French literature. But I absolutely trusted what my friend was telling me.
Anime Herald: Good friend.
Kōji Suzuki: Yes.
Anime Herald: What advice about parenting would you care to share with our readers?
Kōji Suzuki: I owe my success as a writer to being a parent first. I was married, and then I had kids. When I was an aspiring writer, I had no steady job. I was more like a freelancer.
I had children. My wife was a high school teacher. I took on the duty of parenting at home all by myself. At the time, I was only an amateur writer. After I became more involved in parenting, my writing started to progress and grow.
Right before I had kids, I had a concern that if we had kids they would take up all of my time and therefore I’d have no more time to work on my writing. That was my fear. But in reality, it was quite the opposite. One of the early works that I wrote while I was parenting was Ring.
When Ring became a successful story, that’s around the time my wife quit being a teacher. In that sense I am a lot like Stephen King.
(Editor’s note: Stephen King worked as a teacher, before quitting to write full time.)
Anime Herald: Let’s talk about your most recent novel, Ubiquitous.
Kōji Suzuki: The reason I chose the title Ubiquitous is because the word means something that exists everywhere, across time and space. When I learned about that word, I associated it with plants and nature. Plants are literally everywhere across this world. I thought it would be a perfect description of the story I was going to tell.
Anime Herald: Sarah Jarrett did a phenomenal job with the cover of Ubiquitous. Were you involved at all in the process?
Kōji Suzuki: It was a recommendation from my editorial team.
Anime Herald: Good recommendation.
Kōji Suzuki: I think so too.
Anime Herald: Do you have any questions for us?
Kōji Suzuki: Are you interested in Ubiquitous?
Anime Herald: I am. I’m looking forward to seeing it translated into English.
(Editor’s note: I spoke with Mr. Suzuki’s publishing company. Ubiquitous is being translated into English. There is currently no release date.)
Kōji Suzuki: I can confidently say that no other writer in the world could write a story like Ubiquitous.
Anime Herald: Thank you very much.
Kōji Suzuki: Thank you.
Thanks to Japan Society and Kodansha for making this interview possible.
