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Jan Blensdorf, formulating her novel. Courtesy of anovelview.com
Author Jan Blendsdorf
Author Jan Blensdorf talks with APA about her time in Japan and her latest novel "My Name is Sei Shonagon."
Nayla: I understand that you lived in Japan for two years. How did you come to live there?
Jan: I have been fascinated by Japanese culture ever since I read my first haiku poem. Unfortunately, brief stop-overs on the way to other destinations always seemed to leave me looking down on Japan through cloud cover! When the opportunity to go there finally arose in my busy life I planned on not more than a year away. Somehow that stretched to two.
Nayla: Did you live in Tokyo? Did you travel to other parts of Japan?What was your experience like in Japan?
Jan: Initially I arrived in Kyoto and found that my hotel window looked right out over Nijo Castle. Seen on that first autumn morning, it was as though a brush painting had sprung to life. Later I lived in a typical Japanese-style apartment within metro-commute of central Tokyo. Shoji, tatami floors, cotton robes and local shrines all so quickly tend to become part of normal life in Japan that it is something of a shock when you return to the west and realize that they do not occupy the same role there.
Nayla: How do you think being Australian influenced your view of/experience in Japan? Specifically Tokyo?
Jan: An increasing number of people today travel extensively and work abroad for varying periods of time. Like many of them, I do not think my place of birth has much to do with my individual outlook or perspective on life, apart from the fact that in Australia people seem to have too much space to play with and in Japan they have too little.
Nayla: What drew you to Sei Shonagon, the historic figure?
Jan: The combination of Sei Shonagon, a passionate, intelligent observer of her world with one of the most intriguing periods of Japanese history proved irresistible.
Nayla: What made you want to write a Japanese novel?
Jan: I didn’t set out to write a Japanese novel. The story simply emerged out of my time in Japan and at some point needed to be written down.
Nayla: The narrator’s judgment of Tokyoites and their consumerist addiction is harsh. She also seems to be disdainful of that which is urban. Where does this negativity come from? Is the character’s perception of Tokyo similar to your perception?
Jan: Personally I consider Tokyo to be one of the most vibrant cities in the world. That said, it is also one of the most sophisticated at encouraging people to shop and become addicted to the latest fashions and the most recent developments in almost every field of life. In the book the narrator is questioning the real price people are paying in this headlong rush towards the ‘new’, in terms of their lifestyles, their time and their relationships. Japanese culture has so much about it that is intrinsically beautiful and worthwhile that it would be tragic if traditional arts and skills were to be neglected and therefore ultimately lost in the enthusiasm for the synthetic and the disposable.
Nayla: Why are all of “Sei Shonagon’s” clients male?
Jan: At the level of friendship and confidence-sharing (as well as in other ways) there are often clear divisions between male and female worlds in Japanese society. Women in general seem to have very good verbal and emotional support from their own friendship networks, whether these are home or work based. While men also have supportive friends and colleagues, I believe it is often harder for them to ‘open up’ emotionally to another person, hence the irresistible appeal to them of the intimate yet anonymous situation provided by the room above the incense shop.
Nayla: What do these men seeking “Sei Shonagon”'s help wish to achieve by meeting with her? Do they seek to make changes in their lives?
Jan: The human need to speak before the unspoken begins to destroy you from within. The equally overwhelming need for anonymity and utter discretion.
Nayla: What does it mean for “Sei Shonagon” and her uncle to don costumes and personas from the same historical period? As a child, “Sei Shonagon” is force-fed Samurai history, especially from the Heian Period. Is it a form of rebellion against her uncle for her to take on the role and characteristics of someone from that same period, but opposite in characteristics to the samurai culture?
Jan: Would you like to check the details incorporated in your question with the actual text and get back to me on this?
Nayla: (rephrased question) I'm wondering whether you are overlapping the uncle with one of the characters who appears later in the book, Mr. S?
Jan: There is no connection at all between the uncle\'s obsession with certain aspects of Japanese history and the central character\'s emergence as a story-teller known as Sei Shonagon.
Nayla: What makes Alain fall in love with “Sei Shonagon”?
Jan: I have no idea why one person falls in love with another. Let’s just put it down as one of life’s great mysteries and thank God for it.
Nayla: What kind of persona does she want her unborn son to perceive? She tells him of “Sei Shonagon,” the child in her rigid uncle’s home, and of the “Sei Shonagon” of the evenings at The Bridge of Dreams incense shop. She seems to want him to see her constructed self, her in the “Sei Shonagon” costume. Has she no sense of self other than her constructed Sei Shonagon?
Jan: It isn’t actually specified whether Sei’s child is male or female. One reason she speaks to it in her own mind is that she genuinely does not know whether it is still alive, but she wants to believe it is. Perhaps by recreating her own life story in this way she can bring hope and reality closer together. Her response in terms of visualising her past is also something that someone might do if buried by an avalanche or lost at sea: attempting to hold on to life and consciousness and sanity by recalling moments of experience and trying to extract some sense of overall meaning and purpose from it all.
Book Review of Jan Blensdorf's My Name is Sei Shonagon.
Date Posted: 2/6/2004