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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 occasionally like to 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.
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