Hi. Hey! If you’re a Japanese person writing about Japan and you found this blog, welcome!* I’m so glad you’re here and I really hope we can connect if you’re comfortable doing so. We need MORE Japanese voices publishing in English!**

Ok, happy dance over. Basically, if you’re a Japanese person writing about Japan, I’m going to assume you know what you’re doing. In other words, I’m fully confident you can own your Japanese identity and decide how you want to represent it without any help from me. That’s not to say you’re omniscient – no one is – but I don’t think you need the step-by-step guide + rant at the core of my two previous posts, addressed to white people and nonwhite, non-Japanese people writing about Japan.

Instead, today I’ll share a couple things I’ve done and/or learned in the course of my own writing about Japan.*** This post is going to be more self-reflective than instructive, so if you’re looking for advice, please check out the Resources page to hear from writers more knowledgeable/experienced than I am.

The following information relates to my current WIP, a YA fantasy series set in contemporary Japan, with an all-Japanese cast.

Some questions I asked/am asking myself while writing:

• Why am I telling this story? Who am I writing for?****
• What aspects of Japanese culture/history/etc will I need to research?
• How will I conduct my research? What types of sources will I utilize?*****
• How does my personal background (Japanese, born and raised in US) color my perceptions of Japan?
• How much of my personal background/experiences do I want to incorporate into my writing? In what ways?
• How will I demonstrate awareness of my background (did not grow up in Japan) in my writing (about characters born/raised in Japan)?
• Who will evaluate my representations of Japan in the CP/BR process?
• How much, if any, explanation should I offer to outsiders (i.e. readers unfamiliar with Japan/Japanese) in terms of vocabulary, mentality, cultural practices, etc?
• Who in the US publishing industry is likely to be my best bet for pitching/querying, once I reach that stage? What kind of pushback should I expect as far as “whitening” my book and other concerns?
• What kinds of responses do I expect if/when my book goes out into the world?

Some things I’ve done for research thus far:

• Spoken with family and friends in Japan
• Spoken with Japanese family and friends outside of Japan
• Utilized Japanese family/friend connections to reach out to other Japanese people, inside and outside Japan
• Expanded my grasp of Japanese reading and writing –> see previous note about how a lot of Japanese books don’t get translated into English; this also applies to research materials, so I highly recommend developing some kind of Japanese reading ability
• Resurrected certain childhood memories with my mom’s help (I grew up on a steady diet of Japanese shows, songs, food, books, practices, etc, but unfortunately a lot of this dropped off when I stopped living with my parents)
• Searched for and acquired research materials, with an eye to WHO is producing WHAT and HOW they are doing it (books, articles, blogs, interviews, art, music, videos, objects, etc)
• Tried out some of the cultural practices described in my WIP –> my goal is to try each practice in person or to talk with people who have firsthand experience with it, with an exception for historical practices no longer extant
• Tentatively planned a research trip to Japan (not sure if this will be financially possible, wouldn’t be the end of the world if I don’t make it since I’ve already been many times, but it sure would be helpful)

I’ve left some stuff off both lists, but I hope it’s enough to give a general idea of how one Japanese writer goes about writing her culture. Keep in mind this is just my take on the matter. Japanese people are not a monolith. Every Japanese person who decides to write about Japan will go about the process differently. Heck, my process will change when I start researching in earnest for my next book!

If you think I’m full of it because I’m not agented or published yet, let me direct you to Lisa See, a Big Deal Author who writes about her own culture (Chinese). She conducts massive amounts of research for her books. I’m no expert on Chinese history, but nor have I ever seen any Chinese readers critique Ms. See’s representations of China, so I’m going to guess she’s doing a solid job.

Again, if you’re a Japanese person writing about Japan and you have thoughts to share, please reach out! Thanks for reading!

*I would LOVE to check out your work! DM me on Twitter! See Contact page for details.

** There are plenty of Japanese voices publishing in Japanese – sadly, a lot of them don’t get translated into English. I’m advocating specifically for English because I’m a US-based writer and my blog mainly focuses on the US publishing industry, but feel free to chime in if you’re a Japanese person writing about Japan in a language other than Japanese or English!

***If you have comments/suggestions/questions regarding what I’ve done or what you’ve done, please reach out!

****I’ll be answering this question in a separate post because I have complicated thoughts about it.

*****Will have a separate post (or several of them) on my thoughts about what research means and how I feel it should be done.