Yatagarasu Series
Volume 5:
Princess Tamayori
Author: Abe Chisato
Dialogue Between Abe Chisato and Ogiwara Noriko - Speaking About One’s Own Work
(The following is a transcript of a conversation introducing books recommended to readers for “Yomoyama Talk About Books” in the magazine CREA.)
Abe: I’m delighted to be speaking with Miss Ogiwara today! It doesn’t feel quite real to me. I’ll never forget the day in fifth grade when I fled to the library after a fight, sniffling and on the verge of tears. A teacher who knew I loved books said, ‘If you read this, you’ll feel better,’ and handed me Miss Ogiwara’s Dragon Sword and Wind Child. It was truly fascinating. The Magatama Trilogy that followed—The Swan Palace and Lady of the Pale Rose— are perfect works that build elegantly on one another. I couldn’t put them down.
Ogiwara: You were a kid and got through that huge book? [laughter] I thank you for the compliment.
Abe: At the time, I was just an elementary school kid who was obsessed with the Harry Potter series. I came across Dragon Sword and Wind Child, and it hit me like a slap in the face. Like, there can be fantasy stories like this set in Japan? I only found out later that it was based on the Kojiki.
Ogiwara: Dragon Sword and Wind Child was my first novel, and it was indeed a challenge: could I write something with Japanese themes that still felt like Western fantasy? So I decided to write a boy-meets-girl story in an ancient-style world, and I tried to move away from the Kojiki as much as possible—but the Kojiki came closer to me instead. I live in Japan and am Japanese; I felt like there was an underground river running under my feet, guiding my way without my conscious knowledge. Perhaps that was for the best. If I had tried to tackle the Kojiki head-on as a subject, I might have suffered a total defeat.
Abe: I read the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki after reading the trilogy and realized, “Oh, so this was the source material,” but the trilogy doesn’t lose anything by the comparison. That’s because of the strength of the work itself, but also because it isn’t just a copy of what’s written in the Kojiki. It’s quite the reinterpretation.
Ogiwara: Exactly, you mustn’t ever copy. Old stories are a resource you can tap into in order to understand the Japanese cultural mind, but that doesn’t give any individual the right to plagiarize.
Abe: For me, I feel like if I’m going to write something, I want it to be a story that poses questions to reality. To put it harshly, I believe a story is only worth its salt if it leaves a scar on the reader’s heart.
Ogiwara: I see what you mean. Fantasy has patterns, so you can make something that looks like a story just by following them, but following just the patterns will get you a lifeless story that has no basis in reality at all. You really do need to leave a mark. When I read The Chronicles of Narnia as an elementary school student, I couldn’t write a book report on it, though I tried mightily. Later, I realized that a fantasy you can easily write a report on isn’t very good.
Abe: What do you mean by that?
Ogiwara: I think it’s a failure if the theme comes out too bluntly. War chronicles or fables are one thing, but novels are quite another. Novels should be populated by characters that feel like actual people. Readers should care about what happens to them.
Abe: You’re right; that’s why characters are so important. In Dragon Sword and Wind Child, I adore Prince Tsukishiro. He’s so cool, but he’s far from perfect.
Ogiwara: In the Yatagarasu series, I like Yukiya best for his twisted-in-knots personality [laughter]. The series also has a unique setting in Yamauchi. I think that the setting informs the characters beautifully.
Abe: To have you say that, Miss Ogiwara! I’m so moved.
Ogiwara: The latest volume, Princess Tamayori, revealed that Yamauchi is connected to the real world, right?
Abe: Yes. I think people who’ve been reading all along were surprised that human society suddenly appeared, but before I wrap various things up in the new work I’m publishing in 2017, I had to convey that. Next year, part one of the Yatagarasu series will end, and the year after next, part two will begin, so the story will still continue. How do you decide where to end a story?
Ogiwara: I don’t, really. If I can write the beginning, the ending should already be there, too, but it’s not there immediately. I keep writing and thinking, “I don’t know what will happen,” and when I write the last line I always think, “Oh, I actually did know.”
Abe: I firm up the plot really rigidly in advance, but I also keep rewriting over and over again until I can’t stand reworking it anymore. Sometimes the ending does hit me out of nowhere, though—like, “Found it, this is it.” It kind of resembles excavation work, don’t you think?
Ogiwara: Sure. It’s only when you can see what’s underneath that you feel like there was meaning in writing it. Miss Abe, did you originally like Japanese mythology and the classics?
Abe: Yes! I haven’t read much Japanese literature from the Meiji period onward. I’ve liked the classics since I was small and read things like The Pillow Book. Dragon Sword and Wind Child has scenes that could be plucked from the Heian period’s imperial court in them.
Ogiwara: That’s right! The people of the Palace of Light had this kind of city-boy, city-girl vibe. The past is surprisingly modern sometimes. [laughter]
Abe: I also like mystery novels and sci-fi. The novel I chose today, Passage (by Connie Willis, translated by Nozomi Ōmori, Hayakawa Bunko), is classified as sci-fi, but you can’t quite say that’s all it is. It’s a story about a near-death experience, but it doesn’t delve into religion, and it builds an original world. Interesting people—like a girl with heart disease and an old man who spins tall tales about his wartime experiences—are placed organically throughout. In the end, it feels like all the threads become one. The setting is a hospital that feels like an old mansion that’s been renovated, and when you read to the end, you understand why that setting had to be it. The sinking of the Titanic is also a big theme, but it’s used in a very distinctive way. I read it a few years ago, and it’s a book that’s stayed with me ever since.
Ogiwara: That sounds very interesting. For my recommended book, since birds appear in your works, I chose The Raven Textbook (by Hajime Matsubara, Kodansha Bunko). Someone told me about it after I started reading the Yatagarasu series, and it was just so fascinating.
Abe: I have it, too. I bought it when the hardcover edition came out.
Ogiwara: Of course! It’s really informative, isn’t it? It includes raven ecology and a cultural history, and it even discusses mythological yatagarasu.
Abe: The writing is good, and it’s humorous. I bought bird-related books before that, too, but The Raven Textbook made me think that if I had this one book for research, that might be enough. Have you always liked reading about birds?
Ogiwara: Oh, I just like birds, period. I’ve never had a dog or a cat, but I have experience raising a chick until it became a chicken.
Abe: You often write about dogs as well. In Etude Spring Storm, there is a god who takes the form of Papillion, a small dog.
Ogiwara: Yeah, I like dogs too. I wrote that because I wanted to read a story where a dog transforms into a human boy.
Abe: Oh, that was just adorable. At the end of the second story, Crescent Moon Bolero, I was so emotionally invested that I cried. I’m waiting eagerly for the sequel!
Text edited by Asayo Takii (excerpted from CREA January 2017 issue)
Translator's Notes
Ogiwara Noriko debuted in 1988 with the novel Dragon Sword and Wind Child. She won the 22nd Japan Association of Writers for Children Newcomer Award for the same work and won the 41st Sankei Children’s Publishing Culture Award for This Is the Key to the Kingdom. Her works include the Magatama Trilogy, The Good Witch of the West, and the RDG Red Data Girl series.
The Kojiki, “Records of Ancient Matters” or “An Account of Ancient Matters,” is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts dating as far back as 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, ancient Japanese gods, and the Japanese imperial line.
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