An interview with the novelist Diane Hawley Nagatomo

A fiction writer who came into her own in her sixties

Diane Hawley Nagatomo. Photo courtesy of the author.

Diane Hawley Nagatomo, 68, born in the UK and raised in the US, has lived in Japan for over 40 years. She retired from her role as a professor at Tokyo’s prestigious Ochanomizu University in 2022, having published a number of academic texts. In 2023, she published her first novel, The Butterfly Café, which I reviewed here. This was followed in 2024 by Finding Naomi, and she has a third novel coming out later this year, which I’m looking forward to reading.

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Diane, thank you for making time to speak to me. Congratulations on the success of both of your novels, which I’ve read with great enjoyment, and I’m delighted to hear they’re selling well. First of all, can you tell us how you came to make the switch from writing academic texts to novels?

I think I started dabbling in writing fiction about 20 years ago when I joined an online email writer’s group in Japan started by Suzanne Kamata and a few other Japan-based writers. We exchanged some things we were working on, and I thought, Oh, this is fun. I want to write fiction. I've always been a big writer, especially as a kid. And kept a lot of diaries and wrote a lot of letters. Later, I wrote textbooks, academic papers, and academic books. So after I submitted the manuscript for my second academic book, called Identity, Gender, and Teaching English in Japan, I found a writers group in Japan called Tokyo Writers Workshop. I just was tired of writing academic stuff and wanted a change.

The first month, I went to see what it was like, and the second month, I brought in a 5,000-word piece. At that workshop, you evaluate each other’s writings, and that was really useful. I made a new community of friends and writers.

Of course, my first submissions were really dreadful. People wrote in different genres, like urban fantasy, science fiction, short stories, and poetry. I was writing women's fiction and a little bit of a romance. Some members didn't really like my pieces, but I have a thick skin, and I don’t mind negative feedback. I sometimes took their advice, and sometimes I didn’t. Basically, I just kept going.

What’s different and what’s the same about the process of writing in these two different genres?

Well, with fiction, you can just make everything up but with academic writing you need to remain factual and neutral! But there are some similarities between my academic writing and my fiction writing. My research involved interviewing people and then analysing the stories that they told. My fiction has taken some of the themes from my research, and then I just made up stories about imaginary people.

I've always been looking at people's stories and thinking about what they mean in the socio-political context of Japan. Some of the things from my research carried over into my fiction. Ronald McDonald, for example, was probably the first English teacher in Japan, and I talk about him in my research when I describe the historical background of language teaching in Japan. Because he is such an interesting figure, I bring him up again in The Butterfly Café.

I suppose the biggest difference between the two types of writing is the level of formality. When a friend of mine first read The Butterfly Café, she said, This is interesting, Diane, but you don't seem to believe in contractions, do you? And I thought, oh, yeah, because in academic writing, we don't use contractions.

What’s been the biggest surprise to you about the business of fiction writing?

Well, I think maybe the biggest surprise is that people seem to like what I've been writing so far! Maybe I have imposter syndrome! For the most part, the reviews that I've had from people I don't know have been pretty good. And people I do know have come up to me and said, “I read your book, and I really liked it.” All that makes me really happy.

One other interesting thing I’ve learned was that in the genre I'm writing in, you really shouldn't put in any bad language. It's not like a thriller, hard, or edgy. One person gave a one-star review on Goodreads, saying she couldn't continue after the first page because of all the profanity. Well, the F word did occur on the first page (and maybe a few times throughout the book), but it was in response to a serious car accident that someone had been in. I never imagined someone would have to stop reading because of that.

How would you describe your own work, and who are you writing for? You mentioned women's fiction. What does that mean for you?

Well, I think, judging from the feedback, people who are interested in Japan are my main audience. Japan seems to be a very popular tourist destination and a popular topic, and I think readers like learning something new about Japan Maybe if my stories took place in a different country, they wouldn’t be quite so popular.

I think a general definition of women's fiction is that the main character is a female protagonist, and the story evolves around that character. It's not exactly romance, although romance might be a part of it. Women's fiction contains issues that are important to women and struggles they might face. I think we could say that's the area that I'm writing in. But the readers of women’s fiction are not necessarily only women.

A lot of writers on here on Substack report very mixed experiences with the publishing industry. What’s been your experience so far, publishing your fiction?

A few years before the pandemic, I found a useful website called QueryTracker, which has a list of all the publishers and agents. When I finished my first draft, I started sending out query letters to the agents listed there. The hardest thing about that process was writing a 100-word synopsis of the book. It was hard to break down 80,000 words to just a few dozen. It was really too soon for me to start sending out my manuscript, though. The book simply wasn’t ready yet. I received one rejection after another. Usually just a form letter. I did this with the first novel I wrote (the one that's actually going to be published in September). And I did it with the second novel.

I got so many rejections with both of those books that I just gave up and started writing a third novel. And again, with my third book, I was still getting a lot of rejections. But then, I got a couple of requests to send the full manuscript. But as usual, I never heard from them again. Or I’d get a “thanks, but no thanks” response. Then I thought, OK, I'm going to give up on trying to find an agent.

So I started sending my manuscript to publishers that were also listed in Query Tracker, and I pretty much had the same kind of experience as before. But one publisher contacted me and asked for the full manuscript.” So I did. They sent it back, but they also gave a lot of feedback. The editor told me that the story seemed to start in chapter four, and the first four chapters were nothing but useless background information the reader doesn’t need. I realised she was right, so I cut out the first four chapters and spent a lot of time revising the manuscript. I resent it, but I never heard from them again.

During the pandemic, when I had all the time in the world to write things, I didn't. When I wasn’t teaching by Zoom, I just watched Netflix and read books. I didn’t write much at all. But in 2022, I thought, OK, I'm going to give this manuscript one more try. I sent it to another publisher on my list, and they asked for a full manuscript. At first, they rejected it, saying it was a “soft rejection.” They gave me some specific and valid reasons for the rejection, which were easy for me to deal with. I revised the manuscript once again, and I sent it back to that publisher. Within a week, they offered me a contract. That was how I came to Black Rose Writing, an indie publishing house which is located in Texas.

The Butterfly Café was set in Japan, and the main character for Finding Naomi is Japanese, though much of the action takes place in Nebraska. How much of an inspiration is Japan in your writing?

Oh, I would say almost all of it, because I've been living in Japan for 46 years. My entire adult life is in Japan. They say write what you know, and this is what I know. I wouldn’t say I'm an expert on Japan by any means, but this is the life I have. So of course, Japan is prominent in my books.

I think you have spent a lot of time in Nebraska. From there to Tokyo feels like quite a contrast. What do you cherish most about your memories of the state? And how does your own experience of the place appear in Finding Naomi?

I could write the Nebraska side of it because I also know that part of the world very well. That’s where my mother’s family is from. I spent my whole life going back and forth to this little tiny town of nine hundred and twenty people. There isn’t a single stoplight. I believe that if I walked down the street today (I haven't been there in nearly ten years), people would stop me and say, “Oh hi, Diane, when did you get into town? That town was the inspiration for the setting in Finding Naomi.

Well, one of the fascinating things about that book is the contrast between Tokyo and this tiny town in Nebraska. How much was that kind of a deliberate thing to have the girl from the big city finding herself in this tiny place?

I’m not sure if it was deliberate or not, but again, it was a case of “write what you know.” For years, I took my kids from central Tokyo (we lived in Shinjuku then) to rural Nebraska, and we stayed for about a month. My kids even went to school in that town a few times. My son went there one year for high school. My daughter spent a couple of periods there going to school. So my kids knew what it was like going from downtown Tokyo (which in some ways was a small neighbourhood where people also knew everyone) to this small town in the middle of nowhere with just 10 streets.

Do you have any Japanese writers that you particularly admire?

When I first came to Japan, I was really interested in Japanese literature, so I think the first person I read was Yukio Mishima—the Sea of Fertility tetralogy—which to me was mind-blowing.

And I really enjoyed Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters and Kawabata and those kinds of authors But since then, you know, I've read a lot of Japanese writers. I like Murakami, but I don't have to run out and buy his book as soon as it comes out.

Recently I've been getting some translations of Japanese books from my library, and they seem to revolve around cats and bookstores and restaurants. I actually like that!

What kind of fiction do you enjoy reading generally?

When I first came to Japan, I read anything I could get my hands on that was in English because books were expensive and rare to come by. So if someone was leaving Japan, and if they had a stack of fantasy novels, I read them, even though I don't normally like fantasy or science fiction. But I really expanded my reading repertoire back then a lot. Now, with Amazon and Kindle, you have access to a library. I like all kinds of books, though I generally don't like ones that have a lot of violence.

Generally, I read anything if it's good. For example, even though I’m not a fan of science fiction, I did read all the books in the Game of Thrones series before the TV show came out. And I also read Lord of the Rings. But I wouldn't say that's my favourite genre. In the past I read a lot of mysteries and suspense, but these days, I tend to like more “feel-good” things. Maybe the real world is hard enough. I want to have a pleasant escape from that. I would say that the majority of what I read now is women’s fiction or general literary fiction.

Tell us about the book that’s coming out later this year. For example, does it build on any of the stories you’ve told or characters you’ve created so far? And where is it set?

Again, it's women's fiction, set in Tokyo in 1985.There’s a reason for that I can't go into because that would be a big spoiler. But it’s set in my old Shinjuku neighbourhood in the back streets that I used to wander around with my kids when they were little. It was such a great place to live. It's complete fiction, and I think it’s more of a romance than the other two books I have written because the romance comes to light rather quickly. It’s not autobiographical, although it probably has more autobiographical elements in it than my previous books.

You came relatively late to novel writing. What’s your advice to other writers who may have a novel or some stories tucked away in a folder or an idea for the book that’s been with them for years?

I would say just write. Just do it. A plan in your head won’t go anywhere until you put it down on paper. But be prepared to revise and revise some more and write some more. You know the scene in the movie where the writer is typing on the typewriter and then he types “the end” and sends it off to the publisher? The manuscript is received with open arms, and the writer becomes famous overnight. Well, that's not going to happen.

It's probably not a good idea to ask your friends to read your work because they'll read the first draft, which is not going to be very good, and they’ll tell you they think it’s really good. But then, they'll never read what you ultimately publish after a hundred revisions because they think they've already read the book and they know what's going to happen.

I highly recommend finding someone who can give you some good critiques. Join a writers group. Your friends and family often will tell you what they think you want to hear, and that may not be what you need to hear. It may be brutal when somebody puts a big X across your writing because they think it’s boring. But such feedback can also make you think that maybe you did say something the reader doesn't need to know.

It’s good to dream about getting published, but it’s important to write for yourself. And to always improve your writing. One way to improve your writing is to also read a lot in the field you are interested in. Pay attention to what successful writers do in their stories. And see if you can do the same thing.

Rejections can be frustrating, but they can also make you a stronger and better writer.

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Both The Butterfly Café and Finding Naomi are available via Bookshop.org as well as at other major retailers, including Target. I hope you’ll buy and enjoy them! 😊