Robo-pets and Other Disasters

In Conversation with Suzanne Kamata about Cinnamon Beach, published by Wyatt Mackenzie Publishing, and a brief introduction to her new novel.

Cinnamon beach by Suzanne Kamata seems to be ostensibly a normal romantic novel but there is an aspect that makes it unique. It glues all colours of humanity together. Almost all the families in her narrative are of mixed heritage or multiracial. She has stepped beyond the veneer of race and nationality to highlight that all humanity has the same needs— for love, acceptance and kindness, irrespective of colour and creed, a gentle reminder in a world that is moving towards polarisation in terms of constructs made by human laws.

Set against the backdrop of the Cinnamon Beach, the narrative shuttles through two countries that she has called home — Japan and USA. There are autobiographical elements woven into the narrative but perhaps, they halt in becoming lived experiences. The protagonist, upcoming writer, Olivia Hamada, an American married to a Japanese, has lost both her job and finds her marriage in doldrums when she visits her sister-in-law, Parisa. Parisa is a renowned fashion designer, daughter of an immigrant Indian and has lost her husband, Ted, Olivia’s elder brother. It is a poignant story with Olivia and her deaf daughter, Sophie, falling in love with a star, Devon, and his son, Dante respectively — both persons of colour. Devon’s ancestors were brought in from Africa. So how mixed are the races – Sophie is half Japanese-half American and Dante is part African-part American!

The narrative start simply and gains nuances as it progresses. There are comments and conversations that introduce twists and turns to explore attitudes and prejudices.

At a point Kamata tells us: “She’d heard, several years ago, of a revolt at a liberal college cafeteria in protest of its serving sushi. And there was that dust-up over a reality TV star using the name ‘kimono’ for her new line of shapewear. Perhaps she had been wrong to ever go to Japan in the first place. But she had done it and she had gone and written a collection of short stories heavily inspired by events in her real life, and now, here she was.” The bias against Japan that led to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are hinted at conversationally – world events that conspired more than eighty years ago. Why do such biases still exist today when we have moved forward so much technologically?

When Olivia asks Devon why he never liked to talk race or indulge in activism, he tells her, “It’s just that I would rather build bridges than burn them.”

And he explains further, “Sometimes taking a stand on issues creates more division.”

Religious observances seem to be unboxed too with Buddhist, Hindu and Christian customs intermingled. All festivals become a celebration of love and acceptance. Her world is idyllic when it comes to interactions between the lead characters. Living in a city like Singapore, that does not seem an impossibility as many are of mixed origins.

One would hope that the whole world will eventually learn that all these differences are only the colours of the rainbow, as shown in Kamata’s novel. The novel ends on a note of hope — hope for a new beginning and for love and for a multiracial relationship.

Kamata’s style is fluid. The situations and events are so much a part of the lived reality that you can almost feel and see the characters come to life. Anyone can enjoy the novel, whether as a light read or to find the nuances that explore the need for the redefinition of societal norms. With her smooth and untroubled storytelling, Kamata leaves it to the reader to decide what they want to find in her storytelling. Nothing is coerced or made incomprehensible.

With a number of novels, short stories and poetry collections under her belt, as an award-winning storyteller, Kamata guides us through her world skilfully leaving us with a feeling of having made new friends and gained deeper insight into myriad colours of humanity. In this interview, she talks about her writing, her novel and beyond.

Tell us when you started writing? And how?

I have been writing since I was a child. I loved reading, so perhaps it was natural that I would start to make up my own stories. I got a lot of encouragement from my teachers and parents, which inspired me to continue.

How many novels have you written in all? And which has been your favourite?

I have written seven, including young adult novels and one for middle grade readers. At the moment, Cinnamon Beach is my favourite, maybe because it’s shiny and new.

You do stories for children too and poetry. Tell us a bit about those.

I subscribed to a magazine called Ladybug for my children when they were young. I decided to try writing a story and submitting it to the magazine, and it was accepted. Other stories, inspired by my children, followed. For example, my son requested a baseball story. My middle grade novel, Pop Flies, Robo-pets and Other Disasters is the result of that.

What is your favourite genre to read and to write?

I prefer to read and write realistic fiction. The age level doesn’t really matter. I personally read everything from picture books to middle grade novels to adult novels.

How did Cinnamon Beach come about? How long did it take you to write the novel?

This was my pandemic book. I wrote most of it within a year, which is unusual for me. It usually takes me about four years to finish something. But I had a lot of free time during the pandemic, when I was alone in my office, and I wrote. I was kind of obsessed with what was happening in the United States, where things were much, much worse than where I live in Japan. I actually made a visit to the US at the height of COVID-19 because my father broke his hip. So, my thoughts were turned toward South Carolina, where my parents and sister-in-law live. Also, I had been thinking about writing a multicultural beach novel for some time. I enjoy reading novels set at the beach, but they usually feature only white people. My family is very diverse, so when we go to the beach together there is a very interesting mix of cultures. I wanted the book to reflect that.

What kind of research went into it?

As I mention above, I did visit South Carolina during the pandemic. I also talked about it with my sister-in-law, who is Indian American. She gave me some ideas and commented on the final draft. Other than that, I went for a lot of walks on a nearby beach here in Japan.

In Cinnamon Beach, you have woven in autobiographical elements. Tell us how much of it is from your lived experiences.

A lot of it starts with something true and then leaps into “what if”? I did lose my brother, but not during the pandemic. He died in 2019, and I attended his funeral, but what if he had died a year later, when travel restrictions were in place? Also, I did have a work experience similar to Olivia’s. I brought my story to a newspaper, but I found a new job before the story was published, and I asked that it not appear in print after all. But what if I had allowed it to be published? My daughter is deaf and she uses an app to communicate with non-Japanese users. As far as I know, she doesn’t have a secret boyfriend, but what if she did?

You have written of nepotism in a Japanese University. Is that based on your experiences, facts or is it fiction?

Olivia’s experiences at a Japanese university are based on mine. People often get jobs through connections in Japan.

Having been married to a Japanese for a number of decades, what are the cultural differences? How do you bridge them? Is that woven into your narrative?

There are so many! There are a lot of little ones, such as my husband’s expectation for homemade soup with every meal (which I find troublesome to prepare), and my expectation for some sort of celebration on my birthday (which is rarely met). And there are many greater differences. For example, I feel that people don’t take gender harassment as seriously in Japan as they do in my native country, or that they are unaware of what it means. Also, Americans are very forthcoming about mental health issues, whereas it seems more secret and shameful to talk about them in Japan. I don’t know that my husband and I have necessarily bridged our cultural differences, but I have accepted that we think differently about many things. Olivia is divorced, so she and her Japanese husband did not bridge them very well.

Are mixed marriages more common in Japan or America? Please elaborate.

Mixed marriages are much more common in the United States than in Japan. Marriages between Japanese men and Western women are quite rare. According to Diane Nagatomo’s Identity, Gender, and Teaching English in Japan, in 2013, less than 2 percent of the 21,488 marriages registered in Japan between a Japanese and foreign national were between Japanese men and American women. I doubt that those numbers have changed much.

Do such families — with Western, Japanese, Indian and black, exist outside your fiction? Please elaborate.

Certainly. The ethnic mix of the family in Cinnamon Beach is based on that of my own family. As another example, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is an Indian American married to a white man. Their daughter married a black man. Many children of my Western friends who are married to Japanese have partners who are of other cultures (neither Japanese, nor Western). I think Third Culture Kids tend to be very open to people from other cultures.

What books, stories, music impact your writing and how?

In the case of Cinnamon Beach, having read beach novels by authors such as Elin Hilderbrand, Dorothea Benton Frank, Mary Alice Monroe, Patti Callahan Henry, Kristy Woodson Harvey and Sunny Hostin made me want to write my own beach novel. I don’t know that music influences my writing, because I write in silence, but it was fun to come up with a playlist of songs that related to the book.

Having said that, I love music and I have known people in bands. The music world is fascinating to me, and I have created musician or music-adjacent characters in other books as well. The character Devon was inspired by the Black American Country and Western singer Darius Rucker. I knew him a bit in college, because he and his then-band sometimes practiced in the house next to mine.

What are your future plans? What other books can we look forward to from you soon?

Next up in a short story collection, River of Dolls and Other Stories, which will be published in November by Penguin Random House SEA. And I also have an essay collection (mostly travel narratives) in the works. Will keep you posted!

Thank you for giving us a lovely novel and your time.

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to read an excerpt from Cinnamon Beach

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon Internation

By Suzanne Kamata

When I first came to Japan from America to teach English on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program, I had no idea how popular baseball was in this country. I quickly found out, however. I was assigned to a high school in Tokushima, on the island of Shikoku to be an assistant English teacher. It was summer, and I was immediately informed that the school’s baseball team had won the regional baseball tournament. They had gone on to the National High School Baseball Summer Tournament at Koshien stadium near Osaka.

This event is on par with the Super Bowl in the United States. The games are televised, and the entire country is riveted for the duration of the tournament. Many star players go on to play professional baseball in Japan, and later maybe even in the Major League in America. Ichiro Suzuki, Yu Darvish, and Shohei Otani are just a few players who first claimed the spotlight at Koshien.

Once classes started in September, I discovered that the baseball players were immediately recognisable by their shaved heads. I often saw them practicing on the baseball diamond very early in the morning, sometimes dragging tires yoked to their shoulders as they ran. I noticed that they were respected by the teachers. Even if they fell asleep in class, the teachers didn’t try to wake them up. When they were awake, the baseball players were very polite. They had been trained to greet their elders in a loud voice, and to bow and doff their caps.

Another thing that I quickly found out was that in Japan, baseball season is basically year-round, at least up through high school. Japanese students can choose only one sport. While in the United States, coaches often cut weaker players from their teams, in Japan anyone who wants to join a team is welcome. The team becomes a community for players of different abilities. The bonds that Japanese kids form with their teammates tend to be very strong, since they spend so much time together.

My second year in Japan, I met the man who became my husband. He was a teacher, and a baseball coach. Through him, I became even more aware of what a big deal baseball was in Japan. I also acquired a lot of insider information. I started to write a novel about an American woman married to a Japanese high school baseball coach, which I called The Baseball Widow. I asked my husband many questions while I was writing the book.

We later had twins – a daughter, who is disabled, and a son, who began to play baseball in elementary school. He devoted himself to the sport throughout high school, sometimes waking up at five o’clock in the morning on weekends for out-of-town games. He never once complained. At one point, he asked me to write a baseball story. I did. I wrote the text for a children’s picture book, Playing for Papa, which was published in Spain and is now sadly out of print. I also wrote a middle grade novel, Pop Flies, Robo-pets and Other Disasters, featuring a boy in junior high school. I read the entire novel to my son, and made some changes following his advice.

In addition to baseball, Japan is famous for its robots. Gundam is a well-known robot character, who first appeared in Japanese anime in 1979. Although many science fiction stories feature robots, they are increasingly becoming a part of daily life in Japan. This is partly because Japan’s population is decreasing. There are fewer and fewer young people to do necessary work, so machines are called upon to take up the slack.

Recently, the Japanese have developed robots which can help elderly people and others in many different ways. For example, there are robots which can help farmers pick fruit, as well as humanoid robots that can chat with people and ward off loneliness. Robot pets, like Paro (which became Mon-chan in The Baseball Widow), are also used to keep elderly people and children in hospitals company. There are special cafes staffed entirely by robots, including at least one at which the robots are controlled by people with disabilities. A nearby art museum has a robot guide which takes visitors on tours of exhibits. Robots in Japan have performed weddings and funerals. During the COVID-19 epidemic, one small university even used robots as avatars in a graduation ceremony.

I am fascinated by robots. They are not always what people expect. Sometimes they are soft and fuzzy. As soon as I learned of the robo-seal, I wanted to put it into a story. However, I sometimes feel uneasy about the replacement of humans by robots. Fortunately, at the moment, family bonds remain strong in Japan, with multiple generations living together and helping each other. Like the family in my book, we were three generations, living in the same house. We don’t have a robo-seal yet, but we do have a robotic vacuum cleaner.

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International