By Tim Large
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Aug. 5, 2000
If novelist Jiro Akagawa were a smoker, he could just about light his cigarettes on the tip of his pen. As it is, smoke all but rises from the paper when he writes. Publishers will tell their grandchildren about his legendary speed. They'll call him the fastest inkslinger in the East. They'll say there was a time he could churn out a blockbuster story in a single night.
Japan's most famous mystery writer lives up to the hyperbole. More possessed than prolific, 52-year-old Akagawa puts slow coaches like Agatha Christie to shame. Christie wrote almost 70 novels in 56 years; Akagawa has published more than 400 since 1976, averaging about 17 books annually. Total sales to date exceed 270 million copies, which works out to roughly two Akagawa novels for every man, woman and child in Japan.
Not bad for a former desk jockey at the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, where Akagawa shuffled papers until he was 30. These days, his name is to be found hovering at the top of the nation's highest taxpayers list -- a polite way of saying he is filthy rich.
At first sight, the Tokyo-based writer hardly seems the part. Turning up for a recent interview in a blue plaid jacket, he looked more like a used-car salesman than Japan's hottest-selling storyteller. The impression is misleading: Akagawa is too unassuming and modest to be any sort of salesman. He comes across as a brilliant, if slightly awkward, teddy bear. He has publishers -- about 10 firms toiling simultaneously on different books -- to blow his horn for him.
Akagawa, who always works in the dead of night, is not the sort of man who suffers writer's block. He attributes his phenomenal speed to the sheer number of projects always on the go. At last count, he was juggling about 15 series, which account for around a third of his total output. Many books begin life as serials in magazines. Then there are the novels that stand on their own, spanning subgenres as diverse as humor mystery and horror.
Understandably, perhaps, the author talks more like a hack journalist than a man of letters. "There's no real secret," he said. "There are deadlines. It can't be helped."
Most novelists submit their fiction by post, fax or e-mail. Not Akagawa. After scribbling the night away, often filling as many as 80 pages of 400-character manuscript paper with his distinctively tiny script, he stuffs his work in an envelope, races downstairs, and slots it in his own postbox. In the morning, while Akagawa is sleeping, editors come by personally to pick it up.
Frequently, they find themselves rifling through a pile of envelopes addressed to other publishers. Sometimes, they bump into competitors while photocopying manuscripts at the local convenience store, asking each other jokingly, "How many pages has he given you today?"
"I don't have the luxury of being able to finish things off in order, so I have to write however many (projects) I'm working on all at once...When things get heavy, I'll be writing about five simultaneously," the author explained.
He went on to describe a typical day. Nonsmoking, teetotaling Akagawa usually gets up at about 3 p.m., emerging bleary-eyed into the daylight to run errands or meet with editors. He always eats out at restaurants, and frequently indulges his love of classical music and theater by taking in a show. Returning home by about 9 p.m., he slips into a hot bath, then maybe watches a little video. Work begins around midnight, and continues as late as 10 a.m.
With a schedule like that, it is perhaps surprising to learn that Japan's most prolific novelist is a married man. After all, being Jiro Akagawa is a full-time job -- something his wife evidently accepts.
"For years, the two of us have forged our own lifestyle patterns completely separately. We don't meddle too much in each other's lives," he said.
Akagawa never expected to become a professional author, let alone the mystery-writer equivalent of a tommy gun, spitting out novels rat-a-tat-tat. He first started scrawling stories when he was 15. "I wrote them for myself -- wouldn't let anyone else read them. I just liked writing," he said.
After graduating from high school, he found an editing job at the office of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers, which allowed him to continue scribbling on the side. Until he was 28, these jottings remained for private viewing only.
All that changed in 1976, when Akagawa entered a story called "Yurei Ressha" (Ghost Train) for the prestigious All Yomimono detective fiction award. He won top honors in the newcomers category. Two years later, he published the first of his wildly successful "Mikeneko Holmes" novels, a mystery series featuring a tortoiseshell cat for a detective. It was time to quit his day job.
From then on, the best-sellers came thick and fast. After "Mikeneko Holmes," Akagawa dreamed up series after series, including the popular "Sanshimai Tanteidan" and "Mazakon Keiji." These are novels you can polish off in two or three hours. They are heavy on dialog, light on big words. Most readers tend to be in their teens or 20s, though not exclusively.
Akagawa soon had speed-writing down to an exact science. He conducted experiments to find the optimum pen type (thickish felt-tipped nibs are best, preferably 0.8mm). He developed a preference for a certain kind of manuscript paper. Although a skilled touch typist, he never uses a word processor.
"It takes quite a long time to convert text to kanji characters," he said. "It breaks the flow of sentences. Writing conversation, if you don't have rhythm, you get bogged down. You can't do that on a word processor."
He added that he never knows what he is going to write until he is sitting in front of a blank page, the clock ticking toward deadline. For Akagawa, first drafts are essentially final drafts. Editors confirm that they rarely change a syllable.
Which makes Akagawa's 400-plus novels all the more amazing. Here is a man who writes best-seller after best-seller in the time it takes most of us to fill out our tax returns. He is not Tolstoy, to be sure. Part of the attraction lies in the easy-to-read factor. But his stories are rich in psychology and characterization. They spring from a bottomless pit of ideas and a relentless drive toward innovation.
Akagawa is not a formula writer. He rarely repeats the same trick twice, and cannot abide stereotypes. Even the bad guys are surprisingly subtle, stepping out of the cookie-cutter molds that dominate so much of detective fiction.
"The people who commit the crimes always have their own circumstances and reasons for doing it...Their crimes have a very human flavor. I want to write in such a way that readers think maybe they'd do the same thing if they were in the characters' positions," he said.
Incredibly, only one of Akagawa's novels, Sanshimai Tanteidan (Three Sisters Investigate), has been translated into English-- although his fiction is hot property in Chinese, Korean and French. According to one editor, other English translations will likely follow soon.
Akagawa admits he is slowing down as he grows older. The mind is still willing, but the body could do with a little more R&R.
"Basically, the hardest thing is lack of sleep -- that kind of physical problem. When I became a writer at 28, I had so much energy. The first 10 years, I worked my butt off," he said, adding that nowadays, he occasionally finds himself nodding off while writing.
But the reward outweighs the neck aches and back pains. Many of Akagawa's readers are growing older with him. Nothing makes him happier, he said, than to hear of parents who enjoyed his books when they were teenagers sharing the novels with their own children.
Copyright 2000 Yomiuri Shimbun