 
Lian Hearn is a pseudonym. Born in England and currently living in
Australia, the author attended Oxford University, has studied Japanese and
has a lifelong interest in Japan.
A message from Lian Hearn - the writing of Across the Nightingale Floor
I started writing Across the Nightingale Floor with the four main characters in my head and
the opening sentence in Takeo’s voice. I was in Akiyoshidai International Arts Village in
Yamaguchi Prefecture; it was a damp, humid afternoon in September. The light was pale and
opalescent. Water trickled from the pools around the artists’ residence, carp splashed and
occasionally a kingfisher swooped above the pool. I was writing in a notebook with a black
gel pen I’d bought in Himeji. I wrote ‘My mother used to threaten to tear me limb from limb.’
Later I changed this to ‘into eight pieces’. I like to occasionally use Japanese idioms translated
literally to give the feeling that the book is not written in English.
For many years before I had steeped myself in Japanese history and literature, reading
widely, watching films, studying the language. Now I had several weeks alone in Japan in
this idyllic place; the challenge was to see if I could bring to life what had lain within
my mind all that time.
Slowly the world of the Otori began to evolve. I often went to Hagi, the old castle town of the
Choshuu clan. I visited samurai houses and looked at artefacts in museums. I walked in the
mountains behind the arts village, through the rice fields and by the river. Everywhere I tried
to picture how my characters might have lived five hundred years ago. When people spoke to me I
had to listen intently, using my ears as I had not done since I was a child. I heard everything
but was more or less mute myself. So Takeo became.
I became addicted to gel pens and bought them by the handful. I carried my notebook with me and
wrote on the road, on trains and planes and in waiting rooms. I was in Fukuoka when the entire
ending of the book fell into place. I could hardly contain my excitement and emotion, yet actually
to write it was painfully difficult.
In Japanese art and literature I am fascinated by the use of silence and asymmetry. I like the
concept of ma: the space between that enables perception to occur. I wanted to see if I could
use silence in writing. So the style is spare, elliptical and suggestive. What is not said is as
important as what is stated.
I am interested in feudalism. Whenever democracy and the rule of law break down human societies
seem to revert to feudalism. I wanted to write a ‘fantasy’ set in a feudal society, but I wanted
to write about real people whose emotions are all the more intense for being restrained by the codes
of their society. There are no traditional villains in my story though there are antagonists. Iida
Sadamu and Otori Shigeru are from the same class and background. Iida has been corrupted by power,
whereas Shigeru is compassionate by nature but essentially they are the same. One is not a monster,
the other not a super-hero. My characters seek power, they are flawed and they make mistakes, but
they love life and grasp everything it has to offer.
I had intended to write only one book but long before the first book was finished it became obvious
to me that the story I had been given would not be contained by it. It seemed to fall naturally into
three parts but was written without a break as one overarching story. I wrote it all out longhand in
four large notebooks between September 1999 and April 2001. From June 2001 to March 2002 I rewrote
onto the computer. In the second half of this period Across the Nightingale Floor, which I finished
in September 2001, was going through the editorial process: hardly a sentence was changed in any of
its editions.
|
 |
