David Zoppetti has achieved what was once thought by many Japanese to be humanly impossible.
Not only did he write a novella in Japanese, but he also wrote with sufficient flair to win the fiercely contested Subaru Prize for Literature. That best-seller, Ichigensan (The newcomer), first published in 1997, was nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and made into a movie, and has now been translated into English.
A media storm descended on rookie novelist Zoppetti after the Subaru Prize was announced; sales were robust and money poured in, as did film offers.
“Things went almost too well,” he reflects.
Still, there is no doubt that any luck involved was combined with innate skill and an extraordinary amount of work.
Zoppetti, now 50, became fascinated by written Japanese at high school in his native Switzerland, and then studied the language intensely at the University of Geneva. Still hungry to “study Japanese in Japanese”, he moved to Japan in 1986, obtaining a degree in Japanese literature from Doshisha University in Kyoto.
By that time, Zoppetti says, he was “fed up with the society and mentality of Kyoto.” He planned to find a teaching job in Switzerland, but fate intervened in the form of a newspaper ad. TV Asahi in Tokyo was advertising a position for which he seemed perfectly credentialed. Despite severe misgivings about working for a Japanese company, he took the rigorous Asahi TV test, with about 100 others, and found himself with a promise of employment. Doubts persisted until the job started, but then vanished in a hurry.
“It turned out to be quite fascinating,” he recalls. “I spent two years in the international department, travelling all over the world and co-producing amazing, huge-scale documentaries, then five years at the extremely popular News Station, Asahi’s evening news and documentary programme.”
It was during this period that the urge to pen fiction took hold, and Ichigensan was begun. Set in a Kyoto university, it is the story of a love that blossoms as a foreign student there reads literary passages to a blind woman who yearns for more than the limited selection available in Braille.
“It’s romantic, sensual, sexual, and funny,” says Zoppetti. When the prize was announced, media attention focused on the style of writing as well as on ekkyo bungaku (border-crossing literature).
“It was totally different from the style of most Japanese writers at the time – more traditional, and witty,” Zoppetti says of the first point.
On the second, there was a resurgence of discussion triggered in 1992 by American Hideo Levy, the first Westerner to write a novel entirely in Japanese. Since then the number of foreigners recognised as writing fiction in Japanese has increased to more than a dozen, from nations as diverse as China, Canada and Iran.
Strongly influencing the final texture of Ichigensan was the fact that Zoppetti had a 600-page manuscript and no avenue to publication. He decided to enter it for the Subaru Prize “in the naïve hope that someone on the jury would say something that I could use to persuade a publisher.” The problem – a competition rule limiting manuscripts to 300 pages – was a blessing in disguise. The paring process tightened the story and seemed to add a hidden dimension.
“Now I do the same thing with every novel,” Zoppetti says.
His second novel Alegrias, which he says he prefers to Ichigensan, is the tale of a Japanese ballerina in Toronto, and her confrontation with cosmopolitan culture shock.
“One of my big themes is identity and searching for oneself,” says Zoppetti, with a nod to his own mixed background, including American, Ukranian, Italian and Swiss-German ancestors. The theme extends to the larger picture as well.
“Having lived here for 25 years, I see Japan going through one identity crisis after another,” he says. A third book, a travelogue, won the Japanese Essayists Club Prize.
Then came the more ambitious two-volume Inochi no Kaze (The breath of life), dealing with loss, grief and finding consolation in the beauty of nature. This year will see the launch of Fuhou-Aisaika (Illegal spouse, loving husband), which is “heartwarming and funny … I hope,” about a Sardinian man who marries an Osakan woman.
At present, though, with the publishing industry struggling, his main income is from his company, Cosmo World, which produces documentaries for Japanese TV. It also imports and promotes the legendary Swiss “Green Fairy” absinthe.
The English-language translation of the acclaimed Ichigensan is available through Amazon.com, and Zopetti is keen to get the word out even now. After all, his luck with timing ran out when the translation first appeared almost immediately before the tragedy of March.
“It was impossible to do any promotion at that time,” he recalls.
At this stage, Zoppetti has no plans to translate his own books, or to write in any European language.
“I express myself better now in Japanese than in French or English,” he explains.
His current novel – set in 1959 when Japan was rocked by student riots, as well as among the Lake Nojiri missionary community – is once more a tale of love between two university students, but one whose premise the author says presents an entirely new challenge. The young couple, for example, follow up their lovemaking with searching discussions on love and the Bible.
“I promise you a very dramatic ending,” says Zoppetti, who has in his private writer’s lair a row of little post-it notes showing ideas for future novels.