As a writer, I'm more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.

I don't really like to work with literary allusions very much. I never want to be in a position where I'm saying, "You've got to read a lot of other stuff" or "You've got to have had a good education in literature to fully appreciate what I'm doing."

I don't have a deep link with England like, say, Jonathan Coe or Hanif Kureishi might demonstrate. For me it is like a mythical place.

I want my words to survive translation.

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, thats 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me.

Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory.

If you go to Tokyo, I think it becomes very obvious that there's this almost seamless mixture of popular culture and Japanese traditional culture.