132. Minae Mizumura — A True Novel with Lavanya Krishnan

KIM ASKEW: Welcome to Lost Ladies of Lit everyone, the podcast dedicated to dusting off great books by forgotten women writers. I'm Kim Askew.

AMY HELMES: And I'm Amy Helmes. Many of the authors we discuss on this podcast were hugely popular in their day, but long forgotten in this one. The author we're going to be discussing today, though, is alive and, we hope, well.

KIM: That's right. Minae Mizumura a Tokyo-based author who absolutely deserves more recognition here in the US--and everywhere else for that matter. Her novel that we'll be talking about today, the title is A True Novel, was originally published in Japanese in 2002 and translated into English in 2013. So it's definitely the most recent quote unquote "lost" novel we've discussed on this show.

AMY: Yes, and A True Novel is a loose retelling of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, but set in post-war Japan.

KIM: And If that doesn't pique your interest, though, let's be honest, we know it does, what if we told you it also had shades of The Great Gatsby and Middlemarch?

AMY: Uh, that sounds great, but really, come on, Kim, you had me at Emily Bronte. Seriously though, this book, A True Novel is epic, both in scope and execution, yet in Mizumura's own words, neither this nor her other novels have been commercially successful, although she has been called one of Japan's most important living writers. We are converts though, and it's thanks to our guest today who is on a mission to champion Mizumura.

KIM: I am so excited to talk about this novel with her, so let's read the stacks and get started.

AMY: Our guest today is Lavanya Krishnan, who co-founded a curated book box subscriptions company called Boxwalla that showcases literature from all over the world. Her recent book, subscription, curated with the writer Alexander Chee, focuses on American fiction, but a past collection included A True Novel and it's one of Lavanya's favorites, which is why she's here to talk about it. Welcome to the show, Lavanya!

LAVANYA KRISHNAN: Hi, Amy, hi Kim. Thank you so much for having me, um, and I'm thrilled that I was able to get you to read an 800-page novel. 

KIM: Yeah, you found the right audience. 

AMY: Yeah, and I have a funny story really quick before we dive into all this. I got a copy of A True Novel from the library, and if you'll see , I'm showing it on the screen, it's not very big. I started reading it and I'm texting Kim, like, Oh my God, Kim, I'm obsessed. I can't put it down. It's so good. You're gonna love it. And then I got to the end of this book and I texted Kim and I was like, I didn't like the ending. It's very abrupt and I don't know if this is a Japanese style of writing or what's going on. Well, about two weeks ago, thank God I caught this, I realized I read Part One only and it's the size of a full novel, right? So I thought this is the novel. It doesn't say Volume One very obviously anywhere on it. So it was like, Of course that's why I didn't like the ending, because it wasn't done yet. So listeners, please do not make the same mistake that I made. It's an 800-page novel, so,

KIM: Yeah.

LAVANYA: So the version I have, I have the two-volume novel, but when we showcased it in the box, it actually came as one big fat novel. So I'm not 

KIM: I have the big fat one right here. 

AMY: I can understand why they break it up, because sometimes it's hard to read such a heavy novel. It's physically hard.

KIM: Yeah. You don't wanna drop it on your nose in bed.

AMY: Yeah. 

KIM: So, Lavanya, do you remember when and how you first discovered Mizumura?

LAVANYA: So, um, in 2015, , my husband and I, my husband is the co-founder of Boxwalla, we were actively looking for unconventional, compelling love stories for a February box that we were doing. And we came across A True Novel, and my husband read a sample and he was very excited and he was like, You know, you have to read this book, you're gonna love it. And I was sort of simultaneously intrigued and skeptical because it was a retelling of Wuthering Heights. And Wuthering Heights was one of my favorite novels as a child. I mean, at that time I was wary of reading retellings in general, but especially a favorite book. And also the kind of reader I am, I don't actually want to see the narrative arc that the writer is aiming at. But then, you know, by definition a retelling is actually, you know, handing you over the formula. And I don't like to see the formula. So I was very wary, but then I needn't have been because, uh, I mean, Mizumura is extraordinarily skilled. Once I started reading, I was just sucked in. I couldn't stop. I think I read it over two days, a weekend and, um, I don't know how she does it, but, the book was so evocative and stirring, but she's never sentimental or sort of emotionally manipulative, so she just sort of hits the spot, and and I'm a huge fan of stories within stories, and, um, also the whole foreshadowing of sort of this doomed love story that casts a cloud over the whole book. I mean, I couldn't put it down. And I completely fell in love with it, and I was like, you know, I have to showcase this. I know it's sort of blasphemous to say this, but you know, I ended up loving it even more than the original. 

AMY: Wow. 

LAVANYA: But a few years later, after we showcased the book, I was preparing a list of my favorites for a newsletter and I was sort of looking to link the book and I realized it was out of print.

KIM: Oh yeah. 

LAVANYA: And I was upset and I was like, you know, this is not a book that deserves to go out of print. I mean, it's back in print now, but I think probably that incident is the reason that I actually thought of this book for the Lost Ladies of Literature, because it's a great book and it doesn't deserve to be ever out of print. There's always this danger that it, you know, might become lost to the English speaking world. So, yeah.

AMY: Absolutely. And yeah, I think you're right. When you first hear the Wuthering Heights connection, I kind of felt the same way. I was intrigued, of course, like, wow, that's a unique premise, but at the same time you're like, is this just gonna be gimmicky? 

KIM: Yeah. It's like there's the pressure of, yeah.

LAVANYA: Will it be derivative? You know, is it going to stand on its own as a novel?

AMY: Yeah, exactly. But the way she frames it is so unique and we're gonna be talking about that. But Kim, do you wanna give our listeners a brief sketch of Mizumura's bio first? And then we'll really delve into the novel itself because there's so much to talk about.

KIM: Yeah. Yeah, I would love to. And Lavanya, if there's anything you wanna add to her bio that you might know that we didn't figure out, please feel free to jump in. So there wasn't actually all that much information about her online, but while researching her, I did discover this really interesting essay on The Wayback Internet Archives, the piece was entitled, Why I Write What I Write. And in it, she gives a sketch of her life, um, her biography essentially, and links it to a through line in her first three books, the third book being A True Novel. And we'll link to that essay in the show notes. It's really interesting.

But anyway, Mizumura was born in 1951 in Tokyo. She moved with her family to the United States when she was 12. Her father was stationed as a branch manager in New York, and as she put it, she quote, Didn't get along with either the States or its language, English. Instead, she turned her back on that. She spent her entire girlhood reading old Japanese novels that her parents had brought for her and her sister to read. She was just waiting to be able to go back to Japan and live her full life there. She called her life in the States "a shadow of life," but it was a long time before she was able to move back to Japan.

AMY: Right. So while she's still in the States, she decided to go to art school and then she married a Japanese man. After a time she gave up painting to study French literature, but all the while she still dreamt of moving back to Japan and writing her first novel in Japanese, and she eventually did just that.

KIM: In an interview in Writing Routines, she said that she first decided to become a writer after reading The Brothers Karamazov in Japanese translation when she was a freshman in art college in Boston. But she said that, typical to a Japanese girl of her generation, it was. quote, More essential that I marry someone nice and suitable than try to fulfill what seemed like a childish dream. So she didn't begin writing until she was in her thirties.

AMY: Her first novel was called Light and Darkness, Continued, and it was published in 1990 and it was actually her sequel to an unfinished Japanese classic by another famous author. Um, and Light and Darkness was said to be the first true novel in Japan. And we're gonna get into that in a second. But Mizumura's second novel, An I Novel From Left to Right, was published in 1995, and A True Novel came out in 2000. It was actually serialized in Japanese initially, and it was her first novel to be translated into English in 2013 by Juliet Winters Carpenter.

KIM: And I think this is the perfect segue to launch into our discussion of A True Novel because the novel opens in Long Island with a teenage Minae Mizumura as the narrator, which is super interesting, right? So Lavanya, do you want to set the scene for our listeners?

LAVANYA: Yes. So the novel is, as I had mentioned, essentially set up as a series of stories within stories, nested stories. And each story has a very different and very distinct narrator. And I love how you learn as much about the narrator as about the story that they're telling. And so the novel opens up with the first narrator, who is, essentially, a fictionalized version of the author. And in this section, the author, teenage Mizumura, meets Taro Azuma, who's a Japanese immigrant, the novel's Heathcliff. And when she meets him, he has a pretty low position in her father's company, but then she witnesses his meteoric rise, and he becomes this millionaire, and then, eventually, a billionaire. But there's also something very different about him, and many other people around her also notice that. He doesn't seem to be like other Japanese immigrants. But I almost think that's why she actually feels a sort of connection to him, because of that sort of supposed weirdness that everybody feels when they're around him. And then, eventually, Mizumura meets Yusuke Kato, who is a young man from Japan who worked at a literary journal in Japan. And he comes to her with this story of Taro in Japan. He was born into poverty and he had a very difficult childhood. And so what that creates is sort of this rich, multilayered tapestry where each story adds color and texture to what we already know about taro from sort of the first section, and so it just makes for such a glorious reading experience, I think.

AMY: Right. And when Minae meets this young man, Yusuke, who comes to her, like, I've got this story and it's crazy and I wanna tell it to you, it's literally a dark and stormy night, right? It's exactly like the beginning of Wuthering Heights. So you're feeling it, you're feeling the tension and the mystery, and it's all starting to build. And you're also like, I don't quite understand how this is gonna line up exactly with Wuthering Heights. 

LAVANYA: Exactly. 

AMY: And that's what's kind of so brilliant about it, right? She's choosing to retell Wuthering Heights, but to make it Japanese. And she explains within the novel what her technique is. There's a whole section that's almost like an aside to the reader and she's like, Here, I'm gonna spell it out. This is what I'm doing. And so there are so many layers.

KIM: Yeah, so the title of the novel, A True Novel, and then her previous novel that we mentioned, An I Novel, those are actually the names for two different types of Japanese novels. Lavanya, do you want to explain the difference between an “I novel” and a “true novel?” We're gonna put that on you.

AMY: Yeah, we gave you the hard part.

KIM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LAVANYA: So I actually love that Mizumura actually explains the difference between the two kinds of novels in the novel itself. Um, so an “I novel” is essentially a novel where the author or the fictionalized version of the author is at the center of the novel, the subject and sort of the "I" of the novel, so to speak. For example, Osamu Dazai's No Longer Human would be an “I novel,” whereas a “true novel” is more of a sort of panoramic, Western- style of novel where a fictional world is created that is very different from that of the author's world. So Mizumura's novel, very interestingly, is actually set up as a “true novel,” which is the Wuthering Heights retelling, wrapped up in an “I novel.” 

AMY: So like the way I saw it, like an “I novel” would, in our parlance, almost be kind of like a memoir-ish? 

LAVANYA: I think, yeah, it would sort of be like what's now called autofiction, I think. 

AMY: Okay. Okay. Got it.

KIM: So in addition to being a retelling of Wuthering Heights, as we mentioned, Taro makes himself over a la The Great Gatsby. So you've got Great Gatsby going on here too. And then that made me realize something I hadn't before, which is The Great Gatsby is also a retelling of Wuthering Heights, so my mind was kind of blown. I wouldn't have known this maybe for a lot longer if I hadn't read this novel.

LAVANYA: Yeah, that's so true. It's kind of mind blowing when you realize two seemingly sort of unrelated works that are sort of classics in their own right are actually related .

KIM: Yeah. It's so cool.

AMY: I will say I thought Taro, who is the Heathcliff in this book, um, he does almost feel like more Jay Gatsby to me than Heathcliff in a way, because he's more likable.

KIM: Well, he is more Heathcliff later in the book, I would say. 

AMY: He does, he does have some Heathcliff moments, but I didn't struggle with him as much as you sometimes struggle with Heathcliff. 

KIM: Yes. 

LAVANYA: Yes. He's, I think, nicer, but also more brooding. So he sort of is a bridge between the two, so to speak, almost. Yeah.

AMY: Yeah. That's a good way to see it. So when we get to the part of the novel where the Saegusa's housekeeper, Fumiko tells the whole story to Yusuke, that was where I really became completely enthralled in the story. The same as Yusuke is. So he's on vacation there with a friend, but he can't stop going to Fumiko’s house to hear the story of Taro and Yoko. There's a lot of storytelling going on within, as Lavanya said, it's like nested within the overall. Narration of the novel, but honestly, I felt like Fumiko was the most interesting character, almost, in a novel full of interesting characters, and she was really pivotal to the plot. Lavanya, what did you think about Fumiko, herself, and her role in the novel?

LAVANYA: Fumiko's such an interesting character. She's sort of the Nelly Dean of this novel, but much more fleshed out, and such a nuanced character. Through her eyes you can sort of witness how Japan is changing. I love how self-aware she is, too, like she has her own prejudices, but she also seems aware of them. She's aware of the shortcomings of these rich families she's working for, but she's also strangely drawn to them. It's all so well done. You see some of the sort of World War Japan, the trajectory from poverty to sort of a more stable middle class that’s kind of happening within her lifetime, to her, as well. So yeah, she's, I think, a really important character and very well fleshed-out.

AMY: Yeah. It's almost like she took Nelly and made her the main character of the story. You, you hear her whole backstory from childhood on, which was fascinating. 

KIM: I love what you mentioned about Japan and postwar Japan. We're gonna talk about that a little bit more, but she has so much going on in this novel, but it's not too much. Like, she just makes it all flow together so beautifully and weaves it all together. But she's talking about America, Japan, their interactions. I mean, it's just, it's, it's amazing. She does an incredible job.

AMY: So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about the setting of the novel, post-war Japan and this resort spot, Karuizawa. We have the two families. There's the Saegusas and the Shigemitsus, who both have summer homes there, very nearby one another. Lavanya, can you talk about how they represent sort of the different aspects of post-war Japan ?

LAVANYA: Yeah, so we have these two families, the Shigemitsus, who represent old money. The old families of high social standing, were sort of losing their wealth after World War II. And then you have the newly rich, represented by the Saegusas, who now have the money, but are desperately seeking to elevate their social standing by association with these older families. So it's a very interesting interplay of class and money and, yeah.

AMY: Kind of like the Buchanans and Jay Gatsby. Yeah. Or the, um, Lintons and the Earns haws.

KIM: Yeah. So the three Saegusa sisters call themselves the three witches, jokingly, and they really do actually though at times act like witches, especially the oldest sister Harue. She can be really charming, but also really awful at the same time.

AMY: They're always kind of fun in a scene together, right? They're kind of catty and... 

KIM: They're always performing.

AMY: Yeah, yeah. Um, but I'll read a little bit that kind of gives this element. This is a little section where they first meet Yusuke and they find out in conversation that Taro, this Heathcliff kind of character, is back in town:

[amy reads from novel]

KIM: That's perfect.

AMY: So, yeah, Yusuke, every time he's in conversation with them, he just feels super awkward, and there is something mystical about them almost.

KIM: What did you both think of the character of Taro? Amy kind of mentioned a little bit, what she thought earlier, but we get his origin story, which is super interesting and poignant. Um, you know, and then we see how he sort of evolves as he grows older.

AMY: Yeah, I liked him. He's so mysterious and he is not even there for much of the time, right. He's not even part of the story for much of it, but he is looming over in America. There's this sort of distant mystery of Taro and who is he? I kept waiting like, “When are we getting back to Taro? When are we getting back to Taro? I wanna know his story.”

LAVANYA: Yeah. And for me, I think even when he's not there, he's always present. So for me, he is the essence of the book as you say, just looming. I loved how he was drawn, how nuanced he was, yet he wasn't, you know, the perfect hero either, but not as unlikeable as you might have thought she would make him.

AMY: Yeah, he's more reserved. I,

KIM: I know and the way that she talks about his growing up and how they sort of befriend him and bring him into their world. I mean, he's just a little boy and she's so good at making you care about him as a character. 

AMY: I loved, um, the lightbulb scene. 

LAVANYA: Yes.

KIM: Yeah. 

AMY: So we have these stories within the story, within a story basically. And she manages to have these two moments that interconnect and so when you get to the second story and the light bulb, you have a light bulb moment — literally, a light bulb moment in the book.

LAVANYA: I love that you brought it back because I had made a mental note to bring this up exactly, because when I was reading it for the second time for the podcast, and you know, I was trying to say, “Okay, so in this first section, what does that correspond to in the actual retelling of the story?” And with the light bulb moment, you get exactly that because you have that moment happen and you're like, “Oh, that's why he reacted that way!” Because it was such a... 

AMY: It was such a formative part of his childhood. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

KIM: It comes full circle. I mean, I'm gonna be reading this novel again. I know for sure, that's how I felt about it. Like I want to read it again with that knowledge. I think it will be a whole other experience. So…

AMY: Yeah. So I didn't really have any idea that the Japanese novel was not traditionally a novel as we think of it. That's a whole new premise for me. I was like, wait, what? I just assumed all novels were set in a fictional universe and told a narrative like that. So then once I learned a little bit more about how that works, then just to be able to go back and read it again and be like, okay, I see everything she's doing here. It's 

KIM: I 

AMY: But it goes back to, like you said, not wanting to know ahead of time that you're just getting a Wuthering Heights retelling. She certainly does not do that. There are some twists in here. Yeah.

KIM: Yeah, for sure. You will be surprised, definitely, by the things that happen.

AMY: So Mizumura wrote in the essay that Kim mentioned earlier, that even though she has what she calls a quote unquote "unhappy knowledge" that permeates her life and her books, she wants all her novels to end with a glimmer of hope. I love the phrase "unhappy knowledge," and I think that really fits with the novel and also with Wuthering Heights, too.

KIM: Yeah. And at the end of the novel Taro compares the new Japan to "champagne bubbles; hollow, barely there at all," he says, which is very "Great Gatsby” to me as well, the champagne comparison. And yet there's Yusuke and the narrator, Minae, enchanted by Fumiko's story. I feel like that's the glimmer of hope, basically. They're so enchanted by this old story and the drama of it. 

LAVANYA: I agree that the characters of Minae, herself, as well as um, Yusuke, they sort of do point to there being some hope because, you know, you have these people who are sort of appreciative of the good things about old Japan. 

AMY: The whole book, really, it's just permeated with this, um… the fog of the moors, the, um…

KIM: Oh, there's actually a ghost. 

AMY: It's haunted… 

KIM: Old houses…

AMY: You're not on the moors, you're in a forest in Japan, but you still have that beauty mixed with gloom. Um, and I love that there are photographs. We haven't talked about that this, there's photographs running throughout the book that all sort of speak to that sensation, you know, the kind of crumbling…

KIM: Yeah. Is that something typical or not? Do you know, Lavanya? Like to incorporate imagery with a novel ? 

LAVANYA: I'm almost done with another one of the novels and she has no photographs. Um, I think she likes to play with form and language, so I think that was her way of doing it. Because the “I novel” part of it where she begins is sort of a fictionalized version of the real life, but then with the actual “true novel,” she sort of pretends that it's real. And it works really well to lend sort of a credibility that you actually begin believing this story. And I start googling the places.

KIM: Right? 

AMY: Same. I was like, did this really happen? 

KIM: Yeah. It's like 19th century novels at the beginning when they're like, Oh yeah, someone told me this story. And like she brings that back. 

AMY: They purport it to be true. Yes. 

KIM: Oh, we were gonna mention, um, there is talk of an upcoming Japanese language TV series adaptation of this novel. 

AMY: Yeah, it's gonna be adapted. I mean, I think it's great because it's such a sweeping epic. I hope that comes to fruition and that we get it here.

KIM: And we get to see it, yeah, absolutely. 

LAVANYA: So yeah, Mizumura is one of these writers, I mean, once you read her you want to keep being pulled back into her world. And so, um, there was a novel that came out after this, which was Inheritance From Mother. If you like Mizumura's style, you'll love this novel. I almost feel like she took part of the I novel from A True Novel and zoomed in on it. Because it's basically the relationship between the main character and her mother, and you see echoes of that in A True Novel as well because there seem to be a lot of dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships. And so that aspect is sort of zoomed in on, in Inheritance From Mother. And she has, again, it's a very engaging style where she goes back and forth to the past to sort of build the story in layers. And I was so intrigued that I started wondering, you know, is this a reflection of her relationship with her mother in real life? And I haven't read An I Novel, uh, her second novel; it's been on my list and I need to get to it, but I haven't read it yet. So I was very curious, so I started googling her about her mother, if there was anything there. And I, I sort of got something really interesting because apparently her mother wrote her own autobiography and Mizumura actually helped her edit it. So I was like, “Oh, okay, that, that sounds nice.”

KIM: Yeah,

AMY: Well that can make or break any relationship right there, working on a project like that. So that's interesting, though, what you said too about in A True Novel, the mother-daughter relationships are all kind of fraught. Yeah, that's a good point. 

KIM: Yeah I just wanna go back to your original story of how you found this and decided... I think it's so great that you really were looking for something different and you took a chance to put this in your subscription. I just think that's so cool.

LAVANYA: Yeah. Um, that was one of my favorite boxes. It was actually called “Love in Three Formats.” It had A True Novel, but it also had Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red and, uh, Javier Marias's A Heart So White. So it was like three formats of love.

KIM: I love Javier Marias! That's so cool that that was in there. I love A Heart So White! 

AMY: So, yeah, this idea of Boxwalla is great for book lovers. Are you still doing any new ones coming out?

LAVANYA: Yeah, so we have, uh, the regular bimonthly subscription where we focus primarily on translated literature, but also English. But as English is one of the languages in the world rather than the only language, which is something that sort of ties into, Mizumura's own sentiment about how she finds it problematic that, you know, English is sort of taking over the world as sort of the primary language of, uh, intellectual, discourse. So one of the books that we are gonna be showcasing in the April box is called The Diary of an Invasion [by Andrey Kurkov.] It's basically this Ukrainian writer who is talking about sort of his thoughts about the war. And it's very interesting because in the beginning he starts with, Oh, we have Covid here, too. It's like they're dealing with all the small, and big problems that the rest of the world is dealing with in addition to this, you know, war. So he's a great writer. And then there's another writer, a Bulgarian writer Gospodinov, his Time Shelter, that we are showcasing whom we think, if the Nobel Prize is awarded to an Eastern European writer this year or next year, he's probably going to win it. Um, so we have that ongoing series, which happens every two months. And we also have this series with Alexander Chee, which focuses, um, specifically on American fiction and sort of the diversity within that space, also.

KIM: Great. That's exciting.

AMY: Yeah, so a lot of our listeners are people that have read everything, so this is perfect for somebody like our listeners who are always looking for something really outside the box. 

LAVANYA: Yeah, I should send you guys some of our book boxes. I think you'll enjoy them.

KIM: We would love that. 

AMY: Yeah, we would love 

KIM: That. sounds great. We want to thank you so much for introducing us to this novel; we're never going to forget it. And for coming on this show. We loved having you.

LAVANYA: Thank you so much, and again, thank you so much for taking that leap of faith and committing to reading an 800 page novel. 

AMY: We loved it. 

KIM: I enjoyed every minute. That's all for today's episode. Visit lostladiesoflit.com for more information and show notes, and be sure to give us a five-star review if you loved this episode. It's a great way for listeners to learn about the show.

AMY: And if you have other questions or want to discuss this episode further, hop onto our Lost Ladies of Lit Facebook Forum where we have interesting conversations going with other listeners and former guests. It's really a fun place to be; we'd love for you to join.

KIM: Our theme song was written and performed by Jennie Malone, and our logo was designed by Harriet Grant. Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by Kim Askew and Amy Helmes.