Masashi Matsuie's Long Road To Becoming A Writer

In 1979, Masashi Matsuie was given an honorary mention for a literary newcomer award for a short story.

- Walter Sim

TOKYO — That same year, Haruki Murakami, the tour de force in Japanese literature, got his big break when he clinched a different newcomer award and released his debut Hear The Wind Sing.

The duo have been friends for decades. But as Murakami became a global household name, Matsuie took a long detour before his first novel was published in 2012, when he was 54.

“I really respect Murakami who, when I was young, made me realise that I couldn’t make it as a novelist,” Matsuie says with a laugh, admitting that his lack of life experience and inability to pluck inspiration from thin air held him back as a young writer.

Bespectacled and smartly dressed, the easy-going Matsuie, who is married and has an adult daughter, was speaking to The Sunday Times over matcha on a rainy morning in a teahouse near Tokyo Station, having just returned from a work engagement in Kyoto.

His debut full-length novel, Kazan No Fumoto De — which landed him the top Yomiuri Prize for Literature — was recently released in English as The Summer House. Heavily inspired by Japanese architecture and set primarily in the 1980s, the story follows rookie architect Toru Sakanishi, who lands a dream apprenticeship to work with star architect Shunsuke Murai.

Matsuie, who turns 67 in December, says of his circuitous route to becoming a writer: “Murakami quickly followed his debut with Pinball, 1973, a year later. I read those two books and thought, ‘I cannot do this.’