 Great, yeah. So welcome everybody to our first, so I asked Japan Research Centre seminar of 2021, where this is the 42nd year of our seminar series, but this is the first time it's been virtual. But maybe that's quite a good thing actually because we've been oversubscribed for this seminar. Nick is a very popular man. So just to let you know that we are recording this seminar because a lot of people weren't able to join it because of oversubscription. And also we thought it would be nice for people to listen to it afterwards. So we're going to put it on our website afterwards. So just to let you know we're recording it. So I'm Helen McNaughton. I'm chair of the Japan Research Centre and I'm really delighted to welcome our speaker who's going to kick off the series for us this year. He's Nick Bradley. And first of all, what I should say is congratulations Nick, you've had quite a year. You've become Dr Bradley, you've graduated in your PhD, and you've also published your debut novel, which we're mainly going to talk about tonight. The Cat in the City. It's been reviewed by The Times. It's been reviewed by The Guardian. You've been on the Joe Wiley book club on radius two. But obviously tonight is the pinnacle of your career coming on the JRC seminar series and being interviewed by me. So you know it doesn't get better than that. So what we're going to do tonight is we're going to have an interview style chat between Nick and myself. And then we're going to open it up to Q&A at the end. So I'll let you know when the Q&A starts and you can start typing questions into the chat for Nick. First of all, I'm sure many of you have seen the book. It's a fantastic book cover. I bought the hardback because I just like the feel of it. And I'm just going to start by reading the blurb. Many of you have read the book and some of you may not have. So just from the blurb, in Tokyo, one of the world's largest mega cities, a stray cat is wending her way through the black, through the back alleys. And with each detour, she brushes up against the seemingly disparate lives of the city dwellers, connecting them in unexpected ways. So that's the blurb. Before we start talking about your novel, Nick, I asked you to the first question I gave to you was that I thought it'd be nice for people to understand the connection or any connection with your PhD. So you did a PhD in creative and critical writing from UAE, which was on the figure of the cat in Japanese literature. So I think you've prepared a little, a little summary of the key findings and going to explain to us about the cat in Japanese literature first. So first of all, I should say, thank you very much, Helen, for having me on as part of this research seminar series. It's such a privilege to be here. And thank you also everyone for turning up. I know there are so many other things that you could be doing. So I really do appreciate people coming to listen. So I'm going to just share a PowerPoint presentation, hopefully. Right. So I'll just go back. I won't talk too much about my PhD, because tonight is Helen wanted me to talk more about writing and about the novel. But just as a kind of brief introduction, so my name is Nick. I did my PhD in creative and critical writing at UAE. And the creative and critical writing PhD often people ask me, what is it? So it's a bit of a weird beast. So I thought I would just explain what it is first before I talk a bit more about the critical side. So part of the PhD was the novel, The Cat and the City. And then it also was accompanied by a critical thesis, which examined something thematically linked to the fiction that I wrote. So in this case, it's obvious what I was looking at. I was looking at the cats in Japanese literature. So first of all, I've also put the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation down the bottom left of the PowerPoint. I should mention that I was very kindly funded by this organization throughout the time of my PhD. So I'm very much grateful to them and their support. So the critical side of the PhD was split up into four parts. So I was looking at, in the first part, a kind of overall kind of cat history of Japan, a cat history of in Japan, in art and in literature. And then after that, I looked at three popular 20th century male authors who span the 20th century, beginning with Natsume Sosaki, then Tamizaki Jinshiro, and then ending up with Murakami as the kind of contemporary novelist. So one of the things that kind of started this off was I began writing the book before I started the PhD. But one of the reasons I started writing the book was because I started to see a kind of trend in the UK of cat books from Japan becoming popular. And that kind of intrigued me and I read a few of them and I thought, oh, that's an interesting approach to writing about a city. So I wanted to write my own one. But then I also saw, I started to see other things that where there were also cats on the covers of books where there weren't necessarily cats in the books. So this was a kind of a weird trend that was coming from Japan as a kind of export, but it was definitely something that was becoming popularized in the UK. So from my reading that I'd done a long time ago, I thought about all of the authors who I'd read, who had started this trend of cats in literature. And I thought I would just sort of deep dive into it and really look harder at the concept itself. So the reason I got that picture of the cat with the ship hat on is because cats were not originally indigenous to Japan. They were brought over with Buddhist scriptures and they were brought over to protect Buddhist scriptures from being eaten by rats and mice on board the ships. And then they were taken to different temples throughout Japan to carry on guarding the scriptures. So the cat kind of entered Japanese society at quite a high level or quite a exalted level. But then other pictures I've got down here. So down the bottom left, you can see that there was a very famous incident from Genji Monogatari, the tale of Genji, which involves a cat, a Chinese cat. So that also shows that the cats were being used as a kind of a courtly possession at that time. But that incident in Genji was illustrated a lot and that kind of popularized the depiction of cats in art. And then there was another artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who popularized the depiction of cats in art. So moving quickly on, one of the things that kind of interested me about cats in Japanese culture is something that you can even see in your smartphones today. If you load up your emoji tray, which comes from Japan originally, I'm sure a lot of people in the audience are very familiar with Japan, but I'm going to explain things as if people weren't familiar with Japan. So the word emoji comes from Japan. So air means picture and emoji means characters. So these are kind of pictorial messages that started off with Japanese flip phones and sending out emails. But one of the interesting things about emojis, if you click on the tabs on most of most smartphones, you'll find that there's a human tab, which has lots of human expressions has a lot of mythical beasts. For example, you can see there's a clown, there's space invaders as robots. But then you have a whole string of cats with a variety of human expressions. So that kind of interested me the way that the cat was the only real animal that was featured in the human emoji tray. Whereas if you go along to the animal section, you'll find the monkeys, the famous three monkeys from Nikko Shrine, you'll find them in the animal tray. But you'll also find the cat there, but it's with the only real animal that's used to depict human emotions in Japanese culture is the cat. Anyway, sorry, that was a bit of a digression. So I went out to Japan and thanks also to Santander who provided a mobility fund for me to go and research one of my authors. So again, people might be familiar with this author, but Natsume Soseki, he wrote a book called I am a Cat, which was a serialized novel. So it started out as a short story and became a big quite a big tome in the end. But Natsume Soseki, for me, he's the beginning of the modern novel and modern cat novel. So he was a really important author for me to look at. So but while I was out there, I also took opportunity to go and see a cat shrine and to pray a cat shrine that I would pass my PhD. And I'm glad that that that worked out. So with Soseki, I was looking through his his books and his diaries and I was looking at the notes he was making in his books. And I found this one interesting thing here from a book he had called imaginations in animals. And it said in a word animals can invent according to the extent that they can dissociate. And that book was so obviously Soseki studied in the UK in Britain in 1902. And he was he was a fluent English speaker and he was he was a scholar of British literature. But that line there kind of links to this. Another concept that I became interested in in writing, which was this defamiliarization. So there was a Russian critic, Victor Shlovsky, who pointed out this characteristic of in writing of defamiliarization where the writer shows the familiar as the unfamiliar. And in this case with Soseki, it's showing the familiar Japan to the Japanese, but through the eyes of a cat. So I'm moving quickly on. So then the next author I looked at was Tanizaki Junichiro, who wrote a book called A Cat Man and Two Women. And this book was interesting because the cat in this book is a Western cat. And rather than have the cat narrate the book in his book, the cat is almost like a blank slate that the human characters project their emotions on to. So I was interested in the way that he used the cat, but in a different way to Soseki. And then there was Murakami, who I'm sure everyone's familiar with here. And analyzing Murakami's work became quite difficult because he's written so many books and so many of them feature cats that I think you could write a whole PhD thesis just on Murakami and cats. So instead, what I tried to do was step back a little bit and I did more of a kind of data analysis of Murakami. And I looked at the number of times that he uses the word cat in each of his novels from 1979 all the way up to 2020. And I noticed that there was a correlation coefficient of about 0.5, which showed a gentle increase over time in the number of times that Murakami uses the word cat. What that means, I'm not sure, but the conclusion that I came to with the three different novelists who I looked at, where they use the cat in quite different ways. But each time it was an important key to their writing, in particular with Murakami. So I would say that Murakami's tying in with this concept of economics that people are talking about recently that the idea that cats are actually boosting the economic power of Japan. Anyway, right, I think I've talked a bit too much about my PhD now, so I'll be quiet. Thank you Nick, that's great. I'm quite afraid that economics might become more popular than womanomics and they can and economics actually so thanks for that so that's brilliant so normally in a JC seminar we might spend the whole hour just dissecting your research and I'm sure there are some literature specialists and in our audience who may want to ask questions but I want to turn to your novel now. I just want to raise the poem that you start in your in the epigraph of your novel there's a poem there, our neck or which you've translated blue cat. Is that significant. I assume it is you put it in the epigraph. Do you want to talk about the poem. Yeah, it was, it was, it was one of those like amazing finds. So, I actually stumbled across the poem I think when I was about 70% through writing the book, and it was actually, I think it was a Japan studies event. And I met, I can't remember his name, but he was one of the sys jack fellows at the time. And I was talking to him about my PhD. And he said, Oh, are you looking at how you are a secretary or the poet and I said, I'm not. And he said, Oh, you should he's got some great poems about cats. And as I was going through his stuff I stumbled upon this one poem. And it was, it was crazy because so many of the themes in his poem coincided with with what I'd written already. So it just seemed like the perfect epigraph. And I translated it myself because the translation I, I'd seen of it I didn't, it was good but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So I translated it myself, but that also had the added bonus of it being able, you know, I could reproduce it because I think that the poem, the Japanese poem is in public domain. So if I translated it, it was fair game. Yeah. Great. Thank you. All right, let's let's delve into your novel. I'm sure many people have read it, but it is a novel but it's a collection of short stories but very interconnected stories which become even more interconnected as you go through the novel. I mean, I loved it. I have to say I loved, I love the novel. I think it's brilliant. I couldn't put it down once I started reading it. But let's go feline first. Let's talk about the cat. It's a calico cat. I sense it's a female cat. In fact, the blurb says she. Yeah, so it's a female cat but it does read very female as well. Is there any particular significance on choosing the calico cat at all, that breed? Yes, there was. And it goes back to Natsume Soseki. So his, his cat in the Japanese is Mika Neko, which could be translated as tortoise shell, could be translated as tortoise shell and white or calico. I went with calico because I like the alliteration of calico cat. So that would be the root of it. Yeah. I've heard somewhere that calico male cats are quite rare for some reason and calico female cat, I didn't know that. So is that why the cat's female or you just wanted her to be female anyway? Yeah, that's that's true. Yeah, calico is a predominantly female. So the males are really rare. I think perhaps in the first draft of the first story I ever wrote, I think him, I think the cat might have been male. He might have switched the cat to be female to coincide with the fact that she was calico. Yeah. And also I think I had some idea originally where I wanted the gender of the cat to be ambiguous and sort of to be revealed at the end, but I think I threw that idea out the window. So I read that blurb out to everybody because it has this connotation that we're going to be going into these short stories where the cat is wending away through the city and brushing up against people. And so that was my expectation when I went into the novel. And this is by no means a criticism at all, but I found that, well, I expected the cat to be very central to the storyline. And that's true in some of the stories, but in many of the stories I found that it's actually the characters who are connected together in different ways. In some stories, you know, the cat is far less real, even at times very peripheral, sometimes not actually in the story physically on a glass, maybe on a photograph or images, sometimes a fleeting glimpse. But we do mention Bucketnickel as well. So I wanted you to just sometimes you get the senses more than one cat, although I think you want us to believe that there's just one cat in the story, but there's also these sort of ghost cats and other cats floating. So talk a little bit more about the cat, but for me, it was less central to the storyline than I expected but still still very crucial obviously. So I think that sort of came about because when I first started writing the book, my, my tutor at the time when I was doing the MA in creative writing, who then went on to become my supervisor. He suggested to me that I, that I should sometimes the cat should feature more and sometimes cat should feature less. And I thought long and hard about that bit of advice that he'd given me. And I started to think that actually what was fun about connections between short stories or these kind of linked, linked novels that where things will connect up was also what also would be fun would be for a reader to be expecting a cat to come, but to not be sure when it was going to come. So I liked the idea that sometimes the cat is a big presence in a story, but sometimes you can only hear the sound of the cat or sometimes it's just a photograph of the cat. But I thought that that that also would be a fun thing for readers, almost like a kind of where's Wally, you know, trying to find Wally. So in each story, people would be thinking, Oh, when's the cat going to come? How's the cat going to feature? Because the cat was also always going to be a linking device. So I thought that that could be fun for readers. Yeah. Yeah, I think, well, I think you've done a brilliant job then I hadn't thought of it as where's Wally, but it's a very sophisticated where's Wally, but certainly I think that's true. And then there's after a while, I was always waiting for the cat to appear. Where is it going to be in the story itself? Is it going to be depicted some, you know, in some other fleeting way so yeah you've done a great job with that. But let's go a little bit non feline let's go into the human characters, because the beauty of the novel of course is the interconnectedness of their lives. They are connected to each other through the cat sometimes but they are also connected to each other. Sometimes they are related or they know each other. Sometimes they flow past each other without actually meeting, but they're somehow connected. It's beautifully written the way you build up that interconnectedness as the stories progress. Obviously some of the characters reappear in later stories they pop in and out of each other's stories. So how did you, you've got this great build up how did you decide the sort of sequence of the stories how did you how did you decide which characters were going to be main and which we're going to be a bit more fleeting and which ones would pop up again. It's quite a big question I know but that sequence is, it's really quite important to this to the stories. Yeah. I think, I think what I did was, I think I considered each story in isolation as I wrote it. And I kind of gathered together all these short stories that I'd written and I thought, you know, this works as a short story by itself, and I would kind of put it aside, and then I'd make another one and I gradually over time. The building blocks that I constructed. That was when I started to say, you know, and perhaps to begin with I had ideas where I wanted to do this I want to do that maybe maybe those things didn't work out. But some of the some of the nice little connections started to appear as I was, as I had all the stories in front of me and as I was editing them. I also kind of, I thought you might ask this so I got this out but this is my notebook. Crazy maps connecting up all the short stories and just trying to make sure that there were at least two or three connections between every story, because that was really important to me I always wanted it to feel more like a novel than a collection of short stories. And the sequence, I think I moved things around so and I started to think about the flow of the novel and so, for example, something bad might happen at the end of this story, which send us into send us into a bit of chaos in this story. And then that story afterwards would be the story where there's a bit of redemption and so I thought, also I thought about like almost like making a mixtape I know that might sound a bit like a cliche but No, that's from my error as well. Yeah, I'm much older than you carry on. Yeah, I saw I thought about how how things would flow. And that was that was really important to me that, you know, that it did feel like a progression. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's a very complicated process I mean that mapping out and the jigsaw puzzle I mean you've that must have been very complicated to go back and revisit and link it all up but you've done, you've done a brilliant job for anybody who hasn't read it yet. You know you start out thinking they're going to be individual stories maybe with some connection to the cat but it just builds up into this crescendo of of interconnectedness which is great. So obviously the cat is is a linking component throughout the story. But for me one of the most central linking characters is Nishi Furni, who's a science fiction writer. And the story that focuses on him the most is copycat which is right in the middle of the novel. So I assume that was part of your sequencing that but for me that was a crucial middle point. He's the only character who pretty much connects all the others in various ways. He's the only one who's already deceased as well. The rest are still alive. I'm trying not to spoil too much of the plot lines and the characters for people because you know they want to read the book if they haven't done so already. Tell us a little bit about that Nishi character. He's a sci-fi fiction writer. Is he based on anybody for a real author from Japanese literature? Is he completely made up and am I right in that? I mean, it's open to interpretation of course. But is he is, is he the central linking figure alongside the cat? Yeah. He is, isn't he? Now I come to think of it. So in answer to the first part of the question, he is based on, the foundations of him are based on a real Japanese writer who I also happen to have here. So the clue is in the name, right? So his name is Nishi Furni. I chose Nishi because it kind of rhymes with Hoshi and I chose Furni because it was the opposite of Shinichi. So he's based on Hoshi Shinichi. So instead of new one, he's old two. So that was a bit exposing, giving away that. But yeah, so he is, he's like his name is based on the sci-fi writer Hoshi Shinichi. But he himself as a character is more a kind of creation of an idea of a fictional writer. I think, I don't think I set out for him to be such a keystone. I think it was more like, actually like one of the things I wanted to do with the book was make sure that each story, like that there was a different genre. Because I'm not a big fan of genre the way that we split the book shop up into different sections. I've never really understood why we do that. I mean, I understand fiction and nonfiction, but I've never really understood why we put all the crimes together, all the sci-fi together. You know, because I like to read all of it. So one of the things I wanted to do was write a book that had all of these elements. And I think I had a sci-fi story and I wrote that as it stood, but then I thought, oh, wouldn't it be great if one of the characters translated that? And actually it was, you know, so I think that's how he came about as a character. Yeah, yeah. Great. And we find out, of course, that he is quite obsessed with cats, not only in his science fiction writing, which gets revealed, but also in when he was alive, when he lived, he had cats. And one of which of his favorite cat was called Naomi, which is one of your more mysterious exotic characters in the book, the quite exotic Naomi, who, again, I don't want to spoil plots, but I'm assuming most people have read the book, but who's quite sort of an exotic character. I mean, she pops up in McDonald's, she pops up pole dancing, but she's also, you know, a bit of a ghost, a bit of a elusive. Is she real? Is she a cat herself? Do you want to talk about Naomi or shall we leave that to the imagination? So, I don't want to spoil the story, but I think I can just give away, like, a little thing about where Naomi comes from. So, her name is a reference to Tanizaki Jinichiro's book, Chijinai, which is translated as Naomi. So that was a little bit of a nod to Tanizaki because he's like one of my favorite authors, I wouldn't even say Japanese authors, he's one of my favorite authors. So, the name Naomi came from that, but I won't spoil the thread that runs through. Yeah, yeah, and I also, I always want to leave the ambiguity of the possibilities of what who Naomi might be. The imagination. Yeah, yeah. Well, she's a very good character, she's both exotic and elusive at the same time, so. When I looked at the Table of Contents initially, I saw that they were individual stories, but you have three stories where Ishikawa, the detective Ishikawa, he gets three stories. And I thought, I thought maybe he would be the central linking, you know, that when I looked at the Table of Contents, I thought he would be the linking between some of the stories. And it's less that I still stand by my sort of interpretation and others might disagree that that Nishi is the linking character along with the cat. But why did, why did the detective get three stories and is it in his own right. That's a really good question. So, the simple answer to that is because I've got a really, really good editor. She's watching Poppy. Is he on the line? Is he? She's awesome. She's the best. But basically, so Poppy read, you know, obviously. Oh, there she is. Yeah. Sorry, I said he, she. Poppy read the whole book and was really, you know, really positive about it, but her two big notes went when it came back. I'll talk about the other note later. But one of the big notes was that, because originally the detective story was the second to last story. It was the penultimate story. Okay. And so her, what she said was was really true was that it brought up too many issues to late in the book. And I was scared. I didn't want to throw out that story because I love detective stories and it would, that would have been my crime story out of the window. So instead, what I thought would be a good idea, I chopped that single story up into three and then I laced it throughout the whole book. So Poppy was completely right in what she said about about the story. But the way that I fixed it was by was wasn't by just throwing out the story, but was by thinking, well, how could I, how could I reconfigure this story. And also I think, again, it's really difficult to not give spoilers, isn't it? I think that the detective is integral to the, the ending, even though he might seem like he's tangential. I won't say any more than that. Yeah, I don't want to spoil it. Okay. Well, well done, Poppy. I think there's a lesson there for anybody who wants to write a novel. You need a great idea. You need the ability to write it, but you need a really good editor as well. So there you go. Speak to Poppy. So let's move to talk about the city, Tokyo itself. So for lack of a better word, there's sort of three main actors in the novel. There's the cat. There's all the characters. And then there's the city. And of course it's called the cat and the city. So you've lived in Japan for a long time, you clearly understand Japanese life and Tokyo city life. In many ways, this, this novel, these stories is very much a love letter to Tokyo, but at the same time Tokyo life is portrayed quite brutally. I mean, it's harsh. You know, it's unforgiving, precarious, many of the characters that are on the outside of society, discontent. I mean, I suppose there's no value in writing about happy contented characters. I mean, discontent sells more novels. But do you want to talk about the city itself as one of the key actors? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's completely true what you say, though, because I think, you know, I always wanted to be a writer ever since I was a child. And I went to Japan, I think, because I wanted to see, you know, see the world and learn things and learn a new culture and a new language. And originally I was based down in Hiroshima, and I had a lovely, amazing life in Hiroshima, but I got zero fiction out of it. Too easy. Yeah, it was. But when I was a bit older, I moved to Tokyo and it always been a dream to move there. And I do love Tokyo and I can appreciate it more now. And when I go back there, I really, I really enjoy being there. But I think the situation where I thought that I was living in in Tokyo when I was working for a Japanese company alongside, you know, fellow Japanese employees. It was such a different life to what I'd seen before and what I'd experienced before. And to be quite honest, it was tough. It was really hard. You know, the long hours, the overtime, the commuting, it was brutal. So it made me to start to think that there'd been a lot of writing about Japan where I think either people go to Japan, you know, kind of live an ex-pat life or, you know, the foreigners, the fish out of water kind of story. And I thought, actually, there's more interest and there's more in terms of drama and in terms of, you know, really, really like tough living. There's more just around, you know, around me every day in my life here. And so I wanted to kind of capture that in a book instead of this kind of this idea of adventure and exploration. I wanted to try and depict some of the things that my colleagues would say to me when they were, you know, when they were drunk and they were opening up, which is quite often the case in Japan. You know, I felt like there were so many kind of sad lives trapped in this thing and I kind of identified with it at the same time because I felt trapped too. Yeah, it felt like it felt easier to write about those things ironically than, you know, kind of perfect life or a perfect existence. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well you've captured that brilliantly and I'm sure many of us who have lived in Japan or even in Tokyo, you know, are aware of that side of life. And one of my favorite lines from which I think captures what you've just been talking about is salaryman souls smashing against existence. I think that's a great line that just captures a lot of what you've been talking about and the brutality of being a salaryman in Tokyo and working. So yeah, well done for capturing that. So it is quite, you know, Tokyo life in the city, the way it comes alive, it is quite brutal in many ways, it's quite harsh, but at the same time, there's a lot of hope in the book. I mean, we talked, I talked about, you know, we've talked about how discontented the characters are and there's a lot of unhappy lives going on, but at the same time there's a lot of hope in the book and there's resolution. And for some of the characters that's not immediate, you know, you leave some of the stories, the plot lines sort of hanging, you're not sure of the fate of some of those characters, but then some of them you later on you can glean or sometimes it's very prominent that there is some kind of resolution for their story at least for now. So for some characters there's a there's an ending or resolution for the for the reader and some that their their fates are undecided their plots are left hanging you don't revisit them. So I don't know if you want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah. So this is great I can I can fall back on on the brilliant editor again. Yeah. Originally, I wrote a final story of, you know, an ending that was called opening ceremony and it was more of a roving, like moving POV that it was I tried to base it off Madame Bovery the fairground scene. And what I was trying to do with it was I was trying to wrap up every single character in the book. And again Poppy said to me, you know, it's fine if we can go with it if you want but I think I think we can do something a bit better here like I think you know you could go up at the extra mile and and and she's she asked for a quieter story that focused in more and I'm really glad that we that we did that and I wrote I rewrote the final story. I kept the title opening ceremony because for me, it's instead of being about the Olympics, it turned into more of a story I used it in a different sense it became more about opening up and and communicating and showing people your feelings and talking. So I took the same title. But I thought, well, how can I spin that how can I take that theme. Yeah, so it. I know some some some stories feel unresolved or they kind of disappear into darkness, but I think with with that progression. And I was thinking about this earlier. And relating back to the last question is that a good character tends to want something. They tend to not not be completely content because characters and plots, so dependent on desire. And, but then at the same time a plot requires change and it requires, you know, people to undergo change into, you know, to grow as people. That was that was one of the interesting things I thought about about progression of character and how, even if there is unhappiness even if there is isolation that watching characters change for the better is a more pleasant feeling. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. I mean, always leave the reader wanting more. And, and you know, sometimes resolution and life like you say is transient you might have sort of a happy ending at this point but then something else happened there's twists and turns in life and I think you capture that that really well that there there isn't that ending which is which is brilliant. I want to go back to that brief mention of the Olympics that you did but I want to do that in a minute but I want to give you a chance to, and I think I think you've prepared something here to talk about the visuals in your book, because there are some very interesting visuals that you've incorporated in one of the stories there's some photographs, which I assume you've taken yourself for copyright purposes. And then, and then there's one story which is one of my favorite stories actually because it's really poignant, and it turns into a manga. And it's interesting you mentioned different genres because I'm not a fan of sci-fi I'm not actually a fan of manga but that became, I didn't think I was going to like that story, but that became one of my favorite stories because it's such a poignant story. It's one of the few stories to where the cat is actually living with someone for a while, which I quite liked. So, I'm going to give you a chance to show some of the visuals and talk about them a little bit more because I think they're really interesting. Yeah, I'll just I'll just fire up PowerPoint. Hopefully this, this works. I'm sure it will it did for there we go. Okay. All right, so yeah, I'm just going to talk briefly about some of the visuals in the book. Where are we, we working. Yes, we are. Okay, can everyone see you can see that. All right. Yeah, good. Okay, so, so yeah, for people who haven't, who are not familiar with the book so each chapter is a kind of self contained story. And they're kind of like short stories but but they're, they're all linked. But I'm going to just talk about three of them because they, they have sort of peculiar visual layout. So the first one, I'm going to talk about is what Helen just just mentioned the photograph so this is one of the stories called truffle axis, and it has as you can see on on the slide there's an image and then there's a kind of a message underneath so basically the the premises is that the character is taking photos and he's uploading them to a message board or Twitter or, you know, something like me channel or whatever. Because I wanted to capture that kind of that bad side of the internet, you know that kind of negative side but I also, it seemed like a great opportunity to incorporate some visuals, some photos that people could could see. So yeah, so I did take these photos myself some of them are not even in Tokyo this one is in Osaka so that's. Don't ruin them. Yeah. So yeah, and this one here I was telling Helen about this so I thought I would just because you know for people who've logged in or watching this I just thought you give you a little little Easter egg so this to me was a perfect photo for what I wanted but I was worried about the number plate. So what I did was, I Photoshopped the number plate and for those who can read Japanese. There's the characters name on the top left, and then the word for cats in the top right, and then I took the 22 to which is the 22nd of February which is the cat day in Japan because it sounds like meow meow meow which is like a cat meow meow meow. So yeah that's just a little Easter egg for for people who've joined us today. So yeah then the other thing that Helen mentioned which was the manga so for this I had a, I had a script so I, I wrote this story after I had a really good workshop by the writer Rachel Cusk. She came to you and she gave us a really great class on dialogue. So I wrote the story and central to it was a part where the characters only spoke in dialogue and that was it there wasn't there was nothing else, it was just character a character and it was back and forth, and I alternated it, and I wanted to be able to tell a story, just using dialogue, but as I wrote the story, it turned into a story about manga. So then I got this idea that, oh, it wouldn't be great to actually turn just the dialogue into manga. And so this is again going back to like my awesome editor my brilliant publishers. I think the most interesting my publishers when I met with them and when I met with Poppy, they were so encouraging about some of the weird aspects of the book that I wanted to do. And they not only said yes we like it but you could do it more if you want. And so they encouraged me to work with an illustrator so I got in contact with them. I was really lucky I posted on my Facebook. And one of my friends who I went to school with replied and said oh you should check out Mariko's work so Mariko's a British Japanese illustrator so she grew up in England but she's half Japanese. She also had a cat called Neko, which is the Japanese cat when she was growing up so that was another, another sign from above. So Mariko and I collaborated over email about a year ago maybe a bit more on making this manga. And it was it was really fun working with her but it was also quite scary at times because being a writer you usually, you become a writer because you want complete control over your work. But when you're collaborating with someone you're really giving up your work to other people. But the other thing I kind of learnt through publishing my first book was that for anyone who wants to be a writer that writing is always collaborating so as I've mentioned earlier about Poppy giving me feedback and things like that. You're never really writing the book just by yourself you know you have all these people working with you who are really helping you and you know they understand your vision and they're trying to help you get there. So you know even the lovely drawing on the front of the cover so a lady called Carmen drew that you know things like that there's so much goes into making a book. But yeah so Mariko drew this lovely manga for me and it was just perfect so I picked her out because I loved her style it was a kind of a nice cross between Japanese and British and it also had this kind of childish. I mean that in a good way. Childlike quality that the character who drew it would have. So I put Mariko's Instagram down the bottom left so I thoroughly recommend you check out her stuff she's doing like an inktober this month so she's drawn lots of pictures. So Mariko and I had never met. But just by coincidence she was in Norwich on holiday. But it was in the heights of COVID obviously. So we met up and we both signed copies of the book in Norwich so that was that was great. Yeah. Yeah so finally copycat. This was another one that was really important I'll be quick with this one though. This one that the textual layout was really important to me and again Atlantic were brilliant working with them. They understood how how kind of compulsive I am with these things. And as you can see down the bottom that they also encouraged me to. So there was an idea with the story that it was a translated story from Japanese and it was translated by one of the characters but so poppy also encouraged me to really do more with that. Which I'm really grateful to but it was also a great tool having an English speaker in the book who could actually explain some of the concepts to non Japanese speakers because. That was another thing I wanted with the book I wanted it to be completely accessible to everyone I didn't want it to cut off people who who didn't know the language or culture. Yeah. So yeah that's that part so thank you. No thank you that's great and I mean again you did a brilliant job of that because there are layers within the book the visuals are there as visuals but they are layered into the story so it becomes apparent why it turns into a manga. It becomes apparent why the photographs are in there etc so and the trends the stories within stories within stories is really apparent as well with the translations and the sci-fi fiction so it's really great it really layers throughout it. I just want to touch briefly on the Olympics because you mentioned that your last chapter is called opening ceremony and actually there's a real build up to the Olympics throughout so you know references and connections to the Olympics and dotted throughout the novel. Some of the characters are working and preparing for the Olympics themselves. It's clearly building up to Tokyo 2020. And in the last chapter is called opening ceremony but it really is not about the Olympics it's just on you know the day before and the day off when it's a totally different story and it's a resolution a key resolution story so you won't go into that. But the build up to the Olympics is portrayed fairly negatively in the story, which, you know I love the Olympics but I have no problem with anybody portraying it negatively because there is always this dark side and undervalued to the Olympics not just in Japan but everywhere so tell us a little bit about that that very slow build up to Tokyo 2020. That's the first part that also, I mean you published it this year and then Tokyo 2020 didn't happen how do you feel about that sort of postponement. I don't think it detracts from it you haven't got clear dates in there so it could be 2021 when we read it but anyway how do you feel about that. So many so many complicated emotions there. So, yeah, you're exactly right about the Olympics and I think so I know that it's depicted negatively in the book. I wasn't having a dig at Tokyo. I think it was it was more to do with the idea of the city changing. So with characters to you want you want some kind of change throughout the book. And to me the idea of the city changing because the Olympics because I, you know, I'd seen this with with Beijing and with London, you know this this idea of the city changing intrigued me and it kind of, but it also threw up lots of emotions. And so I read up a lot on on the Olympics of previous cities and and saw that there was always a trend of, of, of moving the homeless out of, out of CBD is you know cleaning up the streets, but it didn't just stop there it was also straight straight dogs and stray cats would be rounded and it just started to make me think about some of the characters who I wanted to write about anyway who were already marginalized or what didn't quite feel like they fit in or felt trapped in society. And so it made sense to kind of also follow the, the negative side effects of the Olympics and I think that kind of came from when I was living and working in Tokyo I remember. I remember once that Tokyo was going to be the 2020 Olympic City. And I remember some people weren't happy about that, particularly because of issues that they, they felt was still unresolved from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. So I kind of was interested in that in that kind of that quiet dissent or that you know that that unrest that unrestful voice in Japan because, you know, Japanese societies is very keen on harmony and you know the party line obviously was that everyone was really excited about the Tokyo Olympics. But I wanted to tap into that the voices of people who maybe weren't so happy. And, and I think one of my earliest memories of Japan was was the first night that I got off the plane, and I was staying in Shinjuku and I just remember being shocked at the number of homeless people there, but not just, not just homeless people but I remember an American friend explaining it to me at the time, but people who were living in kind of cardboard boxes, who were wearing suit who had suits hung up and, and off the shoes and everything and they were going to sleep the next day and I was saying, what's that about and he, I remember him telling me, oh, you know, it could be someone who's in between apartments, and they don't have anyone anywhere to stay so that they're sleeping rough for a bit but they'll, you know, and I got kind of interested in, in, in how homelessness in Japan was kind of swept, you know, away and it wasn't talked about wasn't commented on. Sorry, just another book to hold up I read this after I know some people might be familiar with this but Tokyo and a station by the zainichi Korean writer you Mary. So I read this after I'd written my book and, and after it come out, because people had told me that it dealt with a similar issues one of the stories in mind. And I think I didn't read it beforehand because I was worried that there'd be too many similarities but thinking about it now I'm actually quite glad that there are similarities and quite glad I picked up on something that other Japanese writers also picked up on so yeah. Have I answered all the questions. Yeah, you've answered that question about, you know, that build up to the Olympics and, and you've answered it very well that it captures the changing city I mean there are some references to the city having changed you know post bubble environment. But most of the changing of the city is through that building up to the Olympics, which is, which is great and the sort of cleansing of the city getting ready for the Olympics which highlights what we were talking about earlier the discontent the precarious nature of and the harshness of But my second question was how do you feel. I mean you published the book in 2020 and take it. 2020 hasn't happened. Is there any discontent with that or is that okay. I mean I think, I think it's fine myself but I just wanted to ask the question. Yeah, it's been, it's just been such a, such a mad year for everyone. I think you're having a good year. I mean it's been, it's been good in ways and it's been bad in ways but I just, I think this this year, I think the kind of the adrenaline's kicked in so so many strange things have happened that. I don't, I'm not, I don't feel bad that I wrote a book where the future didn't align because it's happened a lot in the past you know I went to watch Akira the cinema just last week in the last week before it closed. So that cinema is closed for good now. But in Akira you know the the Olympics is also predicted in Neo Tokyo and I think that's interesting isn't it where writers or artists depict something and then the future doesn't quite align like George Orwell's 1984. Even I was thinking about Murakami's Ichikyu Hachiyon 1Q84 where he has an alternate reality of 1984 which is the 1Q84. And I think that in itself is quite interesting isn't it because fiction is about creating this other world and sometimes it's actually, it's nicer when this world doesn't align with the fictional world. Yeah, because I think people read to escape. So, yeah, it's weird though I mean, I'm still toying with the idea because Poppy asked me if I wanted to write an afterward about the Olympics for the paperback. And I'm not sure but actually I wanted to ask you, do you think the 2021 Olympics will go ahead? What are your thoughts? Whenever I'm asked that question I give some comment and then the next day something immediately changes. I mean, at the moment I think it will go forward in some downscaled downsized version but who knows. I mean, like you say this is a really strange year, strange times, nothing is aligning so I don't know I don't want to answer the question because every time I write something on it something else happens. Right, so I've got a final because I'm conscious that our hour is nearly up and I want to open it up to the audience as well. So I've got a little bit of a personal question if I may. So there's lots of interesting characters in your book and I just wondered it's often said that writers write about what they know, or the first hand experience. Is any of you in the book, is any of the characters based even remotely on bits of you, or your character is in any of the characters, your personality or obviously you've lived in Japan. I just wondered if you were in the book a little bit. I've got a cheat answer and I've got an honest answer. I'll give you both actually. The cheat answer is that all of my characters contain me. They're all related to me. I mean, obviously I want to distance myself from some of the more peculiar. Yeah, maybe the trophalexus guy, maybe not so good to associate with them. Obviously some of them I don't agree with ethically, morally. But they all come from a place of love. I mean, I think it was Elizabeth Strout was talking about her characters and how she stopped, for her writing became easier when she stopped judging her characters. I think that's really true. I do love all of my characters, even the weird ones. There's something about them that attracted me and that's why they popped into my mind. That's the cheat answer, but the honest answer is that I definitely, and I changed her gender to distance myself from her, but Flo is the character who I relate to most. Her aspirations, like wanting to translate and wanting to create, that was me. I think back on my lunch breaks when I worked in the office in Tokyo, I would duck out and I would try and write. I would try and work on the short story or a novel. So yeah, Flo is someone who I really feel a strong connection with. You've answered my question because I was going to say, are you Flo? But I thought that would be really directing the traffic there. I'm glad you're not flaky guiding George. Flo is a much nicer character, so that's great. And my final question, which I think a lot of people will be interested perhaps to know, and maybe you don't want to give too much away. Maybe Poppy will put the breaks on here, but I believe you're writing your second novel. You started writing it, so are there any hints at all in terms of plot or direction or how far you've got? Any sort of teasers before Poppy says no, don't say anything? Yeah, okay. She's pinching very heavily. So yeah, recently I've been wondering why writers don't talk about what they're working on. And I think it's probably some kind of fear that it won't materialise, that it won't get finished or it wouldn't find readers. So I think that's why maybe writers are hesitant to talk about them. But I mean, I can just say that the thing I'm working on, it does have a Japanese element, but it's not entirely Japan. So I can say that much and I can say that I can probably just say that frogs might feature in it. Okay, so not entirely Japan and we're suddenly leaping into frogs now, very exciting. Okay, so that's a bit of a teaser for everybody I think. Yeah. Okay, so I want to open it up to people. I'm just going to have a look at the Q&A function. Yeah, so there are some stories here. Can you see them as well or not? Is it only me who can read them? If you open up the Q&A chat. Yep. So we've got a couple here from Agata. So even though the story is intersect and overlap, each one is distinctive. Which of those styles was easy for you to adopt? Did any of them, were any of them unexpected? I think you've answered the question one about literary inspiration actually. Yeah, but yeah. Yeah, if I click answer live, does that like display the question or how does it, should I? What happens there Charles? I'm not sure. I'm not sure about that one actually. Just answer as you are now. Yeah, let's leave the buttons. Don't touch any buttons, you don't know what happens. Okay, so yeah, was it easy to adopt different styles? Yeah, I think, I mean, I enjoyed it. I don't know if that answers whether it was easy or not. It was a challenge and I think writing sometimes is really good to set the self constraints to not, I think sometimes people go blank with writing because I think because of the infinite possibilities. So when faced with the white sheet, what people are really scared of is just the infinite. Like I could do anything, what should I do? So I think sometimes like giving yourself constraints, it be a voice or a little thing like, for example, in Truffle axis, I remember, so I have worked in a factory years and years ago when I worked for a Japanese company. They made you work in the factory even if you weren't, even if your job wasn't on the factory floor. So I spent a month working, making cars. And I remember that the process of doing the same thing every 90 seconds was terribly, it was mind-numbingly boring. What kind of drove me crazy on that job was you would have to sort of semi-concentrate, but then your mind would wander. So I tried to recreate that in the story by setting a timer for 90 seconds and I would write for 90 seconds. And then when the alarm went off, I would stop. And I did that over and over again to try and replicate that 90 second interval of being in a factory and working in a factory. So I don't know if that really answers the question. It was easier for me to set myself constraints and to try and work within a strict parameter than it was to just think, wow, I can do anything. Yeah, great. There's a couple of just nice comments here rather than questions. So people saying I like the manga section of the book and lovely to be here and listen to you speak about the book. But there's a question here from Paulina, who is one of our seminar speakers coming up later in the series actually. And she's saying she's thinking through the Japanese authors who wrote about cats and they're all men, all male authors. So are there any female Japanese authors who use cats to explore, envision and construct their words, their world? Sorry. And did you think about gender when you were writing up? I mean, I think you've already made yourself female and flow the character, but she's got asking a much more serious question there. Yeah, that's that's a really, really good question. I probably should have. I should have mentioned this in the in the PowerPoint I gave. So what the reason I chose the three male authors was because I read at that time, I think it was Lynn trust wrote an article in The Guardian about if a woman in in the British publishing industry associates herself with cats. That she basically is she she's put on the scrap scrapyard. And that got me thinking. Oh, isn't it isn't it interesting that in Japan, lots of very macho masculine authors are like mad on cats. I mean, Mishima Yukio too. You know, he was a cat lover, even though I think in Sailor who fell from grace from the sea to some really awful scenes with a cat. But yeah, so I was kind of intrigued by why it was considered kind of very masculine rightly to write about cats. So that was the reason I chose three men. But the interesting thing is going back to the initial cat story in Japan is that, of course, a tale of Genji was written by a woman. So that that was also kind of interesting to me the way that perhaps it was it was the in the court in Heyam period, it was it was emails who are interested in cats. But then for some reason, and cats became just this kind of thing that it was fine for men or women to like. Yeah, so I think that's that was my reason for showing them. So they worked really nicely for me because they split that they span the 20th century perfectly like beginning middle end. And I, there are lots of female writers, you know, throughout the history of the novel who write about cats. But I was kind of I was interested in these these ones who are kind of marketed as international writers, you know, who are really pushed abroad. So I don't know if that answers the question, but that that that was my thinking behind picking those three. Yeah. Great. So there's a comment here saying that Midnight Diner TV series has a fixed point in the restaurant with all these into into overlapping stories and internet connecting characters coming in and out. I love that series actually that's a really nice TV series if anybody wants to watch that, whereas yours is a story of a journey of the cat going through the city. I think that's a comment rather than a question there, but it's that's an interesting comment. And just just on that. Yeah, go ahead. I've realized that one. So I've obviously I've been trying to write for years of aborted loads of novels and short stories over time but I realized recently that I started out thinking that I might write based upon a Japanese writer female Japanese writer a book called Hankyu Densha, which is set on the, the Hankyu line in Kansai and each chapter is a station and it's about characters you get on and off the train. And I thought I might try and do something like that but in Tokyo on the Chuo line by ending up turning the train into a cat. But then the thing that was interesting to me is that I've since realized that she's the same author. Hido Aikawa, who wrote the traveling cat chronicles. So I'm kind of intrigued that we both are interested in this idea of connectivity and, and yeah, so I don't know if that answers the question but the train itself is more kind of a static moving place. Yeah, yeah. Great. So Christopher heard from kind of university asks, what are you working on now so we've kind of answered that you've given a few teasers. Does it make it harder to remember the first book when you're doing seminars and interviews like this so when you're already writing the second book. And second, he is also a novelist as well he's written also connected to Tokyo 2020 a story about the Shinkansen and a mystery and Tokyo 2020. What tips would you give to someone like me who's been self publishing, but would like to get your novels read more I believe he's working on the second one as well, like you so maybe if you could answer that question or questions. Yeah, it does. It does make me so working on this thing now I am. But even if I weren't working on this I would struggle to remember some elements of the book. I don't know why but you kind of just you forget things. And that's what makes editing very hard because you, you come back to this thing and you think oh did I write what I can't remember. So even even if I weren't writing something now I would struggle to remember. I just realized should I put a light on it's a bit dark. No you're fine. All right. Okay. Yeah, the other thing, the tip, I, I'm not sure because I don't know, I don't know anything about self publishing. I've always aimed for the traditional route. And I've never really thought about self publishing, although I know it's, it's like a huge thing now. But I think partly the reason why I like the traditional route is, I didn't want to think about a lot of the things that's the self published authors have to think about and I think they, they gain a lot more control in some respects but then they, then they, they have to how can I put it, they have to dedicate a lot of time to those things. So, I don't know, I think, I mean I think Chris should, you should be shopping around for an agent, I think. I think it might be time he's just reminded me that he's actually working on number three now so he's already published two novels. They have connections to Shinkansen mystery Tokyo 2020 as well. So if you're interested in reading more Japanese based novels Japan based novels, check out Christopher hoods novels. And then yeah maybe you should get yourself a poppy or an agent Chris. Let's, let's see how it goes but Right. Somebody asks, what's your favorite thing about the Japanese language. And do you think being fluent in Japanese has affected how you write in English that's from Julianne that question. What's my favorite thing about the Japanese language. I love so many things about Japanese. I mean obviously kanji is a big contender. I love, I love how you can, you can depict complicated ideas and concepts but in few characters that's always, that's always fascinated me I do love kanji. Um, what else. I love so many things about it. I love the fact that there's like 15 to 20 different ways of saying I that then give a different take on on who you think you are in society. Like audit, Boku, you know all of those. I also like how pronouns are dropped. Because I think it is obvious sometimes when you're when you're asking someone a question or when you're talking about yourself so there's so many elements of the Japanese language that I love. I love dialect as well. All the different dialects. I think the learning Japanese yeah it affected how I write in English completely. It made me simplify my language, my written language because when I look at things that I wrote before I moved to Japan they were too verbose they were too convoluted, and I think that moving to Japan. It taught me to be more economical with words and trying and not necessarily like a kind of flowery or Nate prose is the best and that sometimes you can you can depict extremely complex and difficult emotions but with very simple words and with very simple actions and I think that that was definitely a product of living in Japan and learning the language. Great. So sticking with language, somebody asked has your book being translated into Japanese. That's quite a question I know it's being translated into other languages at the moment so do you want to talk about that and but translating into Japanese would really be something wouldn't it. Yeah, so it's being translated into about eight languages at the moment. One of which is Chinese so there will be some Chinese characters but at the moment Japanese. I'm still waiting I'm hoping I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Yeah I would love for it to be translated into Japanese but yeah so far it's, you know, French Italian Russian I won't list them but yeah quite a few. That's amazing in itself that it's being translated into eight languages that's fantastic I mean, could you expect much more from a debut novel I'm not sure that you could. That's been a weird year. Somebody asks about the autumn leaves story. So you'll make you frequently make references between Tokyo and other smaller cities in Japan. So, I mean, again, this, I think this question is picking up on some of the points we discussed that people in Tokyo tend to be lonely in different situations or in much more complicated situations even when they're in a relationship compared to perhaps. I mean you said yourself living in Hiroshima was easier. So yeah I think that's picking up a little bit more I don't know if you want to talk about the story autumn leaves and more detail without giving away the plot but What can I say about the leaves. It's going to sound really bad but like my goal with that story was to write the worst relationship I could think of. That's why I'm glad you're not George you don't. They're pretty bad at it those two. Yeah, they are yeah. Yeah I wanted that story to be a bit of a car crash you know. Yeah. What else can I say about it. I can find the question what was the question about oh it's about you know, I think it's basically saying you know Tokyo is depicted differently to other cities. I thought you're right and that and that story you're they they go to other cities and that story but really their car crash relationship is not going to survive in any city is it but I think the awesome. Yeah the comment here is you know you're depicting Tokyo life is very different to other cities in Japan. I think it is I mean I think it's the same with with most most capitals I mean like London is very different to. Yeah. Okay, here's a very direct question in trophallaxis. Does the robot destroy the guy operating machine. That's a very direct question I mean that's going to give away a plot. Yeah, he's not going to answer that one I'm sorry, McIver. We're going to leave that one hanging. That's just going to make people want to read the book now leave that one hanging. This is the process of writing a second novel feel very different now that it's not also tied into the production of the PhD. Yeah, that's a really good. That's a really good question because I didn't realize actually that 80% of your PhD was writing the novel so I thought maybe the PhD came first and then the novel or some kind of mixing but actually. The question is how do you feel that writing a PhD impacted on that but how does how does writing a novel now that's not tied to your PhD how is that different that's a great question from Matthew. It feels it feels like I have more freedom, because I'm not constrained to a topic, but in the same strange way I've actually set myself a constraint and a topic, which I'm trying to keep to. I don't think I talked about this earlier but I found the process of writing creatively and critically at the same time, nearly impossible like I can't wake up and write creatively on the same day that I write critically. So I would block off time and do them separately always. But one of the things that was really good from the PhD was that I developed a system of working, even for writing fiction. And I don't think I'll ever produce the thesis alongside the fiction. I mean I might do it depends on how I feel but I think I'll always work as if I were doing the same thing that I were producing critical work alongside creative work. It's just that I will keep that critical work to myself rather than try and publish it. I mean we'll see. But, but yeah, so I think I'll take I'll always use this process, because it's, I mean it's straightforward isn't it it's research and then right and yeah. Yeah. Well it depends which direction your career goes in obviously. But yeah, it's a great process. Susan me hand from the diary with foundation just says, thank you for an amazingly phenomenal discussion one of my very favorite covert season events. Thank you Susan that's why that's why we love you. Thank you. Right. So soldier from the Japan Foundation says loving the seminar you talk a lot about the various hardships of Japanese life, like Hikikomori and the work life balance. Were any of those positions particularly difficult to articulate for you. That's a, that's a really good question. Yeah, go Mike. I don't know if they were difficult. I think because that's come up earlier isn't it was it difficult to do such and such. I don't think it was difficult but it was a constraint again it was it was thinking well who am I who is this voice who is this person. And I think. Yeah, it's. It's a difficult question that that is. I think because I think the Hikikomori I mean obviously I'm not a Hikikomori but at times in my life, particularly when I was living in Japan. I didn't want to go out. You know I'd have days where I just wouldn't want to leave the house it wasn't I was ill or anything but that I just couldn't deal with the outside world and that feeling I think we've all had it. And I think you kind of get to the root of most emotions because you felt something similar or akin to that. I mean that the reason that Hikikomori in the toko story came about I think because I met early on in my time in Japan and met a school refusal a boy who had stopped going to school. And then I think this was the nice thing about the academic community in Japan studies I could go to lots of different talks on different subjects and learn lots of interesting things but I remember someone giving a presentation on how pretty much all Hikikomori were for toko it's a progression and learning that makes you think well you know there's a connection between these things already. Yeah, yeah, no it's a great question. It's not to downplay the very serious issue of Hikikomori but I think maybe covert will turn us all into a little bit of Hikikomori because there's a reluctance some days to go out I must admit living in London I'm not missing the commute into downtown London I'm missing sometimes the social aspect but actually lecturing lecturing from home has its challenges and its negativities but actually being able to not lecture in your pajamas but just being able to not commute and not go out particularly in this winter's approaching maybe we will all have a little bit of that emerging but not to downplay a very serious issue in Japan of course of Hikikomori. Emi Korsan asks does Nick have a cat? Did you grow up with cats? Lots of great authors owned cats and a manga artist and she said her cat helped her a lot with creativity and after her cat passed away she started writing memoirs in manga. So we know you do have at least one cat I'm very disappointed that the cat hasn't appeared behind you in the Zoom chat but would you like to answer that question? Yes I do have a cat she's called Pansy and she's a tuxedo cat and yeah of course if you want her to come in and say hi she won't. Yeah cats don't do that yeah. Owen asks how did you find a publisher willing to take such risks with the first novel regarding structure, manga, etc. Was the novel simply in a more usual form when they accepted it? I think you've talked a little bit about that that they helped you create that but they were also open to ideas as well. So how did you find your publisher? How did you find the wonderful poppy and Atlantic books as well? Well this is where I talk about how I'm really lucky to have an amazing agent so that's Ed, Ed Wilson. Oh Ed sorry I didn't mention Ed as well. Yeah Ed Wilson. So and this is going back to Chris's question about self publishing versus the traditional route. You see it wasn't me who picked Atlantic it was Ed so Ed knew because he's a literary agent and he works with lots of publishers and he knows lots of editors. He has a rough idea of which publishers would be interested and which editors would be interested. And also another thing about the traditional route is that those things you don't have to you don't have to think about you know I didn't have to think about like oh I have to submit to this publisher. You do going if for people who do want to write and are interested in getting agents. One bit of advice that I would say is the way that you can figure out which agent you would like to submit to would be to think well which books have I enjoyed in the past 5-10 years. And then go to the acknowledgments in the back and you'll see their name and find the books that that agent represents the writers that agent represents. And that will help you in the first step I think of finding the right agent who will then do the rest of. Yeah so I know that's not answering the original question but I think it's yeah that's that's how you get to that stage. I think that's a good top tip there. Rosie asks out of all the Japanese cat novels that you've read and studied which one would you recommend the most or which cat was your favorite that's a really good question. Great question. Definitely. Tainazaki's a cat a man and two women. Yeah, he's the he's the man. Okay, a cat a man and two women go and read that one next Rosie I think you're going to like that. What advice would you give to anyone who wants to set a novel in a city. Quite a broad question but it's a really good question. It's to think about it from all angles. This was something that Charles Ford in my, my supervisor for my PhD told me he said you have to think about the city from all angles and also this was something he said but was something I always wanted to wanted to do so. I was, so years ago I was a Chaucerian I was a, I was an academic. Well, no I did an MA, but it was in medieval English literature so I'm a massive fan of Chaucer. And one of the things that Chaucer does is he looks at a cross section of society. And that was one thing that I really wanted to do to with this book so it's to think about the city geographically and physically from all directions to think about it top down, you know from bottom up, but also to think about the people who you're running into in the city and perhaps you know what social circles they move in. And that kind of thing so to try and write a city I think you have to think about everything and it's really, really difficult I think writing about a city. That's one of the things I, one of the reasons why I wanted a novel in stories was because I think that that lends itself better to writing about a city with lots of different voices and lots of different people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I think you do a great job of that because there are some moments where you feel like you are above the city looking down on it on a map of the city, a sort of a live map. And that's where you're just experiencing the city through the lives of the people and then people reflecting on the city more broadly so I think you do a really good job of coming at it from different angles plus you get the flavor of the city. I mean one thing I didn't mention is like any good Japanese author or anybody writing about Japan you do mention food. You bring up lots of little bits of food and it made me quite hungry reading some of the stories, particularly when they go to the economy ackee restaurant. And they're picking up Onigiri from the lawson's all the time it makes me want some Onigiri. So yeah you do a good job of bringing food out which is very important in Japan of course. Tim asks, are the Japanese generally a nation of cat lovers. That's a good question. That's a really good question. I remember reading. I've read a paper on this about. It was an academic paper about Japanese citizens opinions of cats in a certain neighborhood in Tokyo and it was really interesting because there were people who weren't fans of cats. There are people who really don't like cats in Japan. I don't know it's a difficult one because I go back and forth with this I was, I think I had to I got asked similar kinds of questions by a Japanese journalist who emailed me asking about Britain and cat novels. Because I think the UK has this image of being a dog loving country. And sure, you know there are tons of dogs everywhere I mean there's more space there are more parks you know. And at the same time I'm kind of intrigued by the the recent trend of Japanese cat books, you know, and who's reading these if British people are dog people and don't like cats you know what's going on there I mean it's a difficult question to ask as an answer because I think, you know, I think dogs and cats are popular in most countries. It's tough to it's tough to it's tough to make kind of generalizations about you know are they are they all cat people really anyway yeah. I think that's it that is a difficult question to answer. I was in a Japan society session earlier today on a completely different topic Kathy Matsuri was talking about womenomics and she made the point and I assume her data is correct. There are now more cats and dogs registered pets just cats and dogs in Japan then there are children under the age of 15. So, so lots of people have pets in Japan but whether they're swinging towards cats or dogs I don't know I didn't have that data. But definitely pets are popular. Filippo my so as colleague asks out of curiosity who is your Italian publisher that's being translated into Italian. Okay. This is really bad I should know I think it's Nord. Okay, the top of my head Casa editories Nord so or something like that it's. Yeah, I'd have to look it up. Okay, so maybe Filippo can I can forward that question on and put you in touch with Filippo about that, and just so that we can clarify that great. And somebody asks, can you talk a little bit more about the editing process of the book so you've talked about it a bit like with the detective story for example but what will you say what would you say are the major changes if any to the book during the editing process. Those, the ones I've talked about are the two main changes. One of the things that Atlantic said, or Poppy said when I met with them was that they didn't, they didn't think the book needed much changing so I was like it's fine. I don't have to do anything anymore. But even with that, even with the idea that there wasn't much left to do. I still ended up having to, to, to, yeah, to split that story into three, and to rewrite a new final chapter. So, if that gives any indication of the kind of like overall structural changes, but then I suppose like editing. It's a long process and you, you know, lots changes, a lot of things change and you kind of lose track of it. It's difficult to say. I don't think we changed it that much. But yeah, I mean that's tough to, the structural changes, the major ones were those two. Great. Olivia has put in capital letters exclamation mark show the cat I think she wants your cat to appear. But like we said cats do not cats are not dogs they don't come when they're called. So I'm not sure we're going to have your cat. I assume that's what she's referring to there. Carolyn says thanks for a super engaging and interesting event. She has to admit that she hasn't got around to reading the book yet. So hopefully this has got her excited to read it and she says she's excited for you can't write to read it. She saw that David Mitchell read and commented on the novel. So how does it feel for you Nick to get the response and attention that you're getting. Also, are you interested in an academic career or more interested in writing novels. So I think she's asking are you going to give up your day job are you going to become an author and a novelist and how does it feel to have someone like David Mitchell commenting. It's again it goes back to 2020 being just the weirdest year. It's just something I never ever expected happening. Yeah, I right now I'm trying not to think about the book because I'm trying to focus on book on the second book. But I'm shocked. Yeah, I'm touched, you know overwhelmed at how things have panned out it's been. Yeah, it's been lovely. I mean, I'm so you know people sending me cat photos. I mean I should have guessed that that would happen. I'm just going to ask the final two questions that are in the chat already so because I wanted to wrap it up about 630 because it's a long time for you to be talking and concentrating so I'm just going to ask the final two questions. Philip says has Nick watched any of the Japanese film adaptions of cat novels, and would he want a film. I guess he's asking would you like your novel to become a film or an anime or anything like that I think that's the question. I haven't watched any of the adaptations at all actually. I mean, I should really because I, you know, I'm sure the hardcore right focusing on the writing only in the novels themselves. Yeah, well the other thing that I was a bit worried about with with the thesis was that there was a whole area that I just knew I couldn't go down like like Ghibli cats and Ghibli and things like that so I kind of and also being in in a literature and I my main focus was literature so um yeah but but saying that they I mean this is just a side note but films and and I'd say, you know the work of of Correada is really is really important to me. I think I might have even had one of the characters watch one of his films because I love his stuff so much. Another person who I really love is Satoshi Kahn, like Paprika, that's an amazing depiction of Tokyo, and he's he's got an anime about three homeless people called Tokyo Godfathers. I'm not as Helen was saying earlier like I'm not mad on manga and anime. I do like some but I'm not I'm not a buff. So, but yeah, I think films are really important. And yeah, I mean, yeah, we'll see we'll see about the cat and the city TV or film. Now watch this space you never know what will happen. Great question. And the last question is a great question as well. So what had you learned at the point of finishing your novel that you didn't know at the start. That's a great question I don't know that could be taken as a question about the novel it could be taken as a question about you as a writer so what have you learned that you didn't know at the start. Great. What have I learned. I think, well, I'll just sort of cheat and talk about that one generally but like I think with, I don't think it's a cheat. I'll cheat into that one. I think with writing any if you finish a first draft of a novel. I think people worry and say like oh you know I want to get this published or whatever. And they see that as being the achievement you know the publication is being the achievement. But this, this wasn't the first novel I've written it wasn't the first long thing I've written. It was the first thing that I've tried to publish, because I didn't feel like the other things were good enough. That being said, even, I think, you know, even though I did write 130,000 word novel and they just do nothing with it. I think writing the novel and showing yourself that you can do it is something is a great thing to learn, like knowing that it's possible to do it. I would say that that's one thing like everyone would kind of learn by writing a novel that is possible if you if you just put your head down and just do the work and commit yourself. It's possible so I think that's one thing that everyone learns from writing a novel. Yeah, yeah, that's that's a really difficult question. Yeah, that's a great answer. Yeah, that's good. Okay, well, I mean, I'm just so grateful to you Nick that you agreed to come and kick off our seminar series I think it's been a brilliant start. It's been it's just been really fun talking to you. I mean I'm hope hopefully for people who have read the novel that was really interesting to get to think about the novel in more detail to get answers to questions thank you to all the people who posed questions. Those of you who haven't read the novel yet hopefully that will inspire you to read it. Christmas is around the corner. It's always a good idea to give somebody a nice gift. I recommend the paper, the paperback and hardback version but it's also available in Kindle isn't it. I sound like I sound like your agent now. I really want to thank you Nick for coming along and talking to us about the novel. I wish you every success. I mean you've already had so much success already but I wish you every success going forward with this novel, maybe a future film and for your second novel as well and wherever your career takes you but it's been brilliant discussing with you so thanks so much. Thanks very much for having me on Helen it was it was a pleasure to be here and yeah I'm really grateful to so as for for inviting me it was. And thanks to everyone who listened in as well. Yeah there were some great questions and we'll put the recording up so if you know of anybody who couldn't get into the event or missed out on a ticket then we'll tweet that it's going to go up as well. No sign of Nick's cat going to make an appearance not in the room Nick. No. Okay thank you everybody for a fantastic session and thank you Nick again.