In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan's writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples, some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

I'm a writer. I don't support any war. That's my principle.

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.

..finally he was just another ant, working and working until he died without meaning.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.

I have read all my novels that were translated into English. Reading my novels is enjoyable because I forget almost all the content in them.