Today, I’d like to welcome guest author Susan Spann. I think you’ll enjoy her guest post since we’ve been talking about Japanese books including The Cat Who Saved Books. Spann’s post is a perfect follow-up.
Susan Spann is the award-winning, bestselling author of FIRES OF EDO and seven other books in the Hiro Hattori mystery series, as well as CLIMB: Leaving Safe and Finding Strength on 100 Summits in Japan. She lives and writes in Tokyo, and is always looking for her next adventure; she shares stories and photographs from Japan at www.susanspann.com.
Thank you, Susan.
One Good Book Inspires Another
My newest Hiro Hattori mystery, Fires of Edo, not only brings my ninja detective “home” to the Japanese city I now call home, but also pays homage to the first and most enduring loves of my life: bookshops and books.
Japanese people are avid readers, and have been reading printed books since at least the eighth century. The earliest books were copied by hand, by nobles or professional scribes, and often contained poetry or religious sutras.
Then, in the early 11th century (around 1010), a noblewoman named Murasaki Shikibu put brush to paper and wrote Genji Monogatari—The Tale of Genji—which is widely considered to be the world’s first novel. The 54-chapter tale follows the tumultuous life (and numerous love affairs) of a nobleman named Genji, and not only created a market for fiction in Japan, but was so well-written that it remains popular to this day, both as a work of fiction and because Murasaki wrote in such detail that the book serves as a time capsule for the culture and mores of Japan’s tenth-century Imperial Court.
The match one female writer lit quickly became a firestorm; The Tale of Genji was widely copied—both literally and by other writers, who penned novels of their own. In the decades and centuries that followed, light fiction, graphic novels (manga, in Japanese), and full-length novels appeared, and making and selling books became a major industry in Japan.
Until the early 17th century, most books were made and sold in Kyoto, which was then the capital of Japan as well as home to the Imperial Court. However, the appetite for books was well-established all across Japan, and even before the 17th century a fledgling book-making industry had begun to grow in a little coastal town called Edo, which sat on the eastern edge of the Kantō plain.
As Edo grew, its community of book-makers, printers, and booksellers did too; by the early 1700s, the city had official guilds for two different kinds of booksellers (one for scholarly books, and one for popular fiction) as well as for the men and women who printed and bound the books themselves. These artisans tended to gather in certain areas, one of which—called Jimbōchō (or Jinbōchō)—remains a center of used bookstores and publishing houses to this day.
I paid my first visit to Jimbōchō in 2017; I was in Japan researching a different novel, and thought I was merely making a casual side trip to a site of personal interest. However, my lifelong love of books and my fascination with the ancient tomes on display in Jimbōchō and at the Edo-Tokyo Museum inspired me to learn more about the history of books and book-making in Japan.
When I learned that booksellers did exist in Edo (now called Tokyo) during the time my characters lived and traveled, I knew I wanted to write a mystery set in the “bookish world” of Edo’s fledgling book industry. I also realized the list of crimes explored in my novels hadn’t yet included murder-by-arson…and given the flammable nature of books and printing supplies, as well as the fact that Edo played a pioneering role in the history of firefighting in Japan, I quickly realized I’d found the setting for Hiro and Father Mateo’s next adventure.
I like to think Lady Murasaki would be pleased to know the flame she lit still burns—and that the fictitious booksellers whose shops I’ve torched in Fires of Edo will forgive me for fanning the flames a little bit higher.
Thank you, Susan.
Here’s the description of Susan Spann’s Fires of Edo.
Edo, February 1566: when a samurai’s corpse is discovered in the ruins of a burned-out bookshop, master ninja Hiro Hattori and Jesuit Father Mateo must determine whether the shopkeeper and his young apprentice are innocent victims or assassins in disguise. The investigation quickly reveals dangerous ties to Hiro’s past, which threaten not only Edo’s fledgling booksellers’ guild, but the very survival of Hiro’s ninja clan. With an arsonist on the loose, and a murderer stalking the narrow streets, Hiro and Father Mateo must save the guild—and themselves—from a conflagration that could destroy them all.
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