ryoko sekiguchi

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interview

by MARK ALIZART and OLIVIER ZAHM

style by BARBARA ANTHOFER

 

Having lived in France and written in French for many years, Japanese author Ryoko Sekiguchi brings her distinctive artistic perspective to this issue, offering sensitive insights into contemporary Japan.

 

OLIVIER ZAHM — Why did you leave Japan to become a writer?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — From my first stay in France at 18, when I was still a university student learning French, I wanted to live in France. My friends were more interested in the United States, not the Old Continent. During that first trip, I was struck by how much freedom people allowed themselves in France. I couldn’t believe it — I kept thinking, “There are no rules here.” It opened my eyes. And also, it’s a bit strange to say this today, but I saw people from all different backgrounds, the gay and lesbian culture, sexual minorities, which you see much less in Tokyo. In Japan, in the late ’90s, these were still largely hidden. There weren’t many foreigners, except for the Korean and Chinese communities, who were forced to live discreetly. France was a culture shock.

MARK ALIZART — In your book Ce n’est pas un hasard (It’s Not a Coincidence), you use strong words: you wrote that you wanted to become an immigrant to “experience alienation, uprooting.”

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — There’s what you can imagine and what you must experience to understand what it means to be a foreigner. By staying in Japan, I would have always had a place as a privileged Japanese woman. My brother learned Chinese. He moved to China, married a Chinese woman, and now splits his time between Tokyo and Taiwan. Like me, he didn’t trust the Japanese state. We thought we should spread the risk in case something happened in Japan.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, what about the situation for women in Japan today?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — It’s still problematic. Women are a minority, underrepresented at every level of power.

OLIVIER ZAHM — When visiting Japan, one gets the impression that everything is depoliticized, as if the state were either minimal or discreet, and there’s a sort of generalized discipline, a natural respect for order. You don’t see any authority, so it’s hard to imagine what form the state takes, to know if it’s democratic or not. Yet, we know you can be jailed for five years for possessing a small amount of drugs. Is this highly policed Japanese society hiding an authoritarian regime?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — There’s such an incredible amount of self-censorship that there’s no need for censorship or authoritarian control.

MARK ALIZART — In your book Nagori (Remains of the Waves), you mention that the Japanese government today tends to “nostalgize” everything, creating a culture around tradition — haikus, seasons, Japanese cuisine — to serve as a screen for self-censorship and to suppress political dissent.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, that’s also why I’ve kept my Japanese nationality after all these years outside Japan. If I became a French national, I’d face problems every time I entered Japan. I’d be seen as suspicious,
a renegade.

MARK ALIZART — You highlight another contradiction in Ce n’est pas un hasard: Japan presents itself as a beautiful country that respects nature and values healthy food, but it’s highly polluted. For example, Japan is one of the biggest consumers of single-use plastics in the world.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Exactly! Japan reveres nature as a supreme value while at the same time destroying it.

OLIVIER ZAHM — In my view, it’s the same everywhere. Japan, like all industrialized countries, has handed over power to large corporations. They’re the ones dictating their criminal pollution standards to governments and public services. But in Japan, it’s essential to save face and preserve the image of a culture that revolves around nature.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Which is also true. When you travel, you see the beauty of the landscapes everywhere — the sea, the forests, the mountains.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Let’s talk about the Hiroshima–Fukushima connection. Did the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 awaken the “Hiroshima Syndrome,” a mortal fear of nuclear energy? Can a catastrophe be forgotten? How do the Japanese remember the bomb?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — We are educated on peace. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are taught to children in school. It’s not taboo at all. The problem is that the bomb was used to absolve Japan of its atrocities and violence in China and the Pacific Ocean. It served as an excuse for the Japanese to shift from being aggressors to victims.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Japan paid a high price with the bomb and accepted surrender. Did that sacrifice really absolve the country of responsibility?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, we became victims in turn. It’s not about forgetting  the bomb; it’s about forgetting what we did in China. We are the only country to have been atomized and the only country to have constitutionally forbidden war or the use of force as a means of resolving international conflicts. Our antinuclear weapons stance remains the official position, but it’s somewhat of a facade. Our forgetting of Hiroshima coincided with the construction of nuclear power plants and the acceptance of a peaceful vision of nuclear energy.

OLIVIER ZAHM — On an archipelago that never stops shaking from earthquakes, the presence of nuclear power plants is unsettling. Have you become so used to catastrophe that it’s just another risk, and it doesn’t really matter?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I think we’re always afraid of the next earthquake. Aren’t you afraid when you travel to Japan?

OLIVIER ZAHM — No, but the French should be worried about their 56 active reactors and 18 nuclear power plants, basically one per region. The day one fails, half of France will be saying goodbye to the other half.

MARK ALIZART — I always think about it when I’m in Japan. I spoke to someone who told me, “Never learn Japanese because then you’ll realize that all the little signs you find so charming on houses and streets are constantly saying, ‘Beware!’”

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Those precautionary safety messages can seem amusing until you experience a real earthquake. From childhood, we’re taught to live with that risk. Once a year in schools, there’s this truck that looks like a house and simulates an earthquake while you’re inside. We laugh as kids, but in reality, you never get used to it.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Returning to politics, Japan surrendered and accepted demilitarization under American control and protection. In the end, Japan abandoned its military and political hegemony. Has the country definitively aligned itself with America?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, and I think this official pacifism is accompanied by a sort of general disengagement from responsibility. We live in a seemingly nonpolitical society because we tell ourselves that, ultimately, we’re not the ones deciding. We didn’t make postwar history, so it’s no longer our problem.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Maybe it’s not such a bad position for the future — to no longer take on any geopolitical responsibility. Capitulate all the way!

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — You’re being ironic!

MARK ALIZART — In Ce n’est pas un hasard, you mention that as a child watching Godzilla, you didn’t realize it was an allegory for catastrophe. Mangas always feature atomic or radioactive elements. Radioactivity and destruction are deeply embedded in Japanese culture — even in Hayao Miyazaki’s anime. I experienced a minor earthquake in Japan. I lay on the ground and felt the earth tremble. It made me think of that scene in My Neighbor Totoro when the little girl is lying on Totoro, who’s sleeping and snoring, like a metaphor for an earthquake. Or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a postapocalyptic fantasy for
children!

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, it’s clearly a dystopia. From Hiroshima to Fukushima, Japan has never left the atomic age. Neither has the rest of the world: we’re still in the atomic era, although we tend to forget it.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Beyond the nuclear threat, both civilian and military, we live in a world that continues to destroy its species, resources, oceans, and cultures, while rearming and remilitarizing. Has Japan normalized this contemporary dystopia through its fatalistic mindset?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, Japan has become fatalistic. And like everywhere else, we’ve grown less and less sensitive. We know the world is in decline, that it will keep getting worse, and that there will be more and more disasters — starting with natural disasters that turn into human catastrophes. That, to me, is the real danger. Every writer, every artist, is working to alert and resensitize you. Of course, it comes from a sincere intention, but I wonder whether it produces the opposite effect: more indifference.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Let’s reverse that idea: perhaps this apparent indifference or insensitivity hides a strength. Our culture of constant alarmism no longer has any effect, so could there be a hidden resilience in this apparent indifference of the Japanese, leading to a different attitude toward catastrophe? You mention in Ce n’est pas un hasard that we are always between two disasters but rarely learn from the previous one. Does Japan, with its Shintoist view of nature as a superior force, oppose the idea of dominating nature and instead advocate living in harmony with it, including accepting the next catastrophe?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Maybe there’s something inspiring in the Japanese mindset, but for me, it’s dangerous for humanity. We shouldn’t get used to the worst. We shouldn’t get used to living with the threat of catastrophes. We must continue to denounce failures. After the earthquake on the Noto Peninsula on January 1, 2024, the government took an extremely long time to respond. It was tragic, yet there wasn’t much coverage, as if the March 11, 2011, tsunami and Fukushima disaster — this tremendous shock — and all the rescue efforts, volunteers, and humanitarian acts overshadowed smaller catastrophes.

MARK ALIZART — Yet, Japan continues to fascinate people, particularly the French. How do you understand this love for Japan?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — What bothers me is the image of Japan as enigmatic to visitors. In reality, Japan isn’t any more mysterious than any other foreign country. But I think Japan seems so mysterious because the French want it to remain that way, so it can reflect their own desires. It’s a country where people project their fantasies. That’s not a criticism. It’s good to have a country that serves as a mirror for one’s desires.

MARK ALIZART — What you’re saying reminds me of the preface to Empire of Signs, in which Roland Barthes writes that Japan is not just another country; it’s absolute otherness, otherness in its purest form. It’s best not to try to understand it: just let yourself be carried by what you don’t understand. What do you think of that?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I have no criticism of Empire of Signs, which brilliantly illustrates our relationship with otherness. It simply positions Japan as a country we’ve decided is impossible to fully grasp.

OLIVIER ZAHM — I admit I quite like the opacity of Japan, which is more our desire for otherness than theirs, especially in an era where everything is globalized, and city streets and landscapes increasingly resemble each other worldwide.

MARK ALIZART — For me, it remains a form of exoticism, a modern-day orientalism.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes, but in a reversed form: instead of interpreting Japan in an excessive or colonialist way, as we do with other countries, we refuse to understand it, seeing it only as a mirror, a surface of empty signs, a secret language. It’s more spectral or simulationist than orientalist.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — What’s fascinating is how Japan and the Japanese themselves absorb these incomprehensible images of their country as an eternal mystery and fantasy. They internalize and even overplay them at times. This is where the “Japanese exception” lies. If Japan is perceived as a land of mystery, it’s because the Japanese have accepted this image and maintained the fantasy.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, there’s complicity on your part.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes. For example, in Japan, we often overplay the difference between tradition and modernity, likely under the foreign gaze.

MARK ALIZART — It’s funny because I often watch NHK [Japan’s national public broadcasting organization], and apart from the news, the programs are always the same: Japanese cuisine, Kabuki, landscapes, Shintoism, ikebana… It’s quite curious programming. It feels like a policy of self-exoticism.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, and it remains highly traditionalist. Japan realized too late that the West was also interested in mangas, Japanese films, and J-pop. We’re always a bit behind Western desires.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Japan is just beginning to highlight contemporary Japanese art with the Tokyo International Art Fair. And while Japanese fashion comes to Paris, Japan doesn’t try to attract Western fashion.

MARK ALIZART — We’ve talked about Empire of Signs, which has greatly contributed to France’s fascination with Japan. There’s also In the Realm of the Senses by Nagisa O¯shima. Given that you write about the senses — tastes and smells — would you say Japan is more about signs or senses?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — That’s easy: Japan is the reconciliation of senses and signs — for example, the seasons.

OLIVIER ZAHM — And ghosts?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Ghosts, perhaps, as the boundary between senses and signs.

MARK ALIZART — And if Japan were just one word?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I would say “attachment.” Until Japan opened to the world, the word “love” didn’t exist. But there was the word “attachment.” It defines how Japanese people relate not only to each other but also to nature, animals, and landscapes. It’s not love but attention — even to objects. For instance, when a Japanese person says a cup has a soul, it’s not Buddhism — it’s attachment.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Perhaps your idea of attachment also overlaps with the meticulousness and perfectionism that defines Japan. You told me about your friend who moved to the Japanese countryside to make the perfect Sardinian cheese after visiting the island, dedicating his entire life and ecosystem to this obsession.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — It’s true. We’re definitely obsessive.

OLIVIER ZAHM — In every field, you can find someone in Japan who takes things to the extreme. For example, if you want a professional Peugeot racing bike from the ’70s, you’ll probably find someone who makes them even more beautifully than back then.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, it’s an attachment to a technique or to a chosen object that goes very deep. This might be a real source of inspiration for the world. It can be seen as a tendency toward obsessiveness or perfectionism. There’s a reason why we have the word otaku in Japan, meaning a geek or someone who is obsessive about video games and the virtual. But more than obsession or the pursuit of perfection, for us Japanese, there is no end…

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, Japan is about the endless quest?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I think it’s an endless path, with the idea that if we continue, if we persist, there might be an opening. For example, every time this bike fanatic makes a bike, no matter how beautiful it is, it opens the possibility of doing better.

OLIVIER ZAHM — The quest  never ends?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — It doesn’t end with perfection. You shouldn’t become a master, a soulless professional. You need to leave room for a flaw, a crack, a vulnerability. It’s more beautiful, more moving. Perfection doesn’t allow for evolution.

MARK ALIZART — So, you’re saying we can’t form an attachment if something is perfect?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes. We can’t move people if we settle into our technique or style.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, this constant pursuit, this obsession with improvement, shouldn’t lead to sterile perfection. It must remain an expression of individuality.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I think that artists or craftspeople never want to believe in the possibility of perfection because otherwise their relationship with their object ends. It’s like human relationships: in a couple, for example, when everything is perfect, routine sets in. It’s over. But we always want to believe there’s room for evolution and discovery. So, the endless repetition of the same gestures, the same practices over 30 years by a craftsperson, is never boring or torturous.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Let’s talk about cooking, which you love. What role does cooking play in Japanese culture and daily life?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — In Japan, cooking is entertainment. That’s why we constantly seek out new things from abroad, new elements to have fun with. For example, those Italian milk buns filled with cream, maritozzi: we’ll turn them into a trend. We’ll multiply the flavors, invent creams in all colors, and then decorate them with rabbits or cats. It’s not necessarily that Japan is more open to foreign cuisine — we just enjoy playing with food. We’ll multiply the variations, branches, and possibilities.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Like with bento boxes, where the little compartments are freely composed for lunch.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, or with tamago kake gohan, a raw egg over a bowl of rice. That’s about purity, a kind of morning “soul food.” It’s very simple to make, but it’s a system, a base structure that can be endlessly varied. It all depends on the type of rice, its temperature, and the sauce, which can vary, too. Every time, it’s different. Sushi is the same — a variation on a simple system: rice with something
on top.

MARK ALIZART — A simple system with infinite variations — Roland Barthes would have liked that definition of Japanese cuisine. He even said in his section on food: “Japanese food is minimally cooked.”

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — It’s true that Japanese cuisine remains pure, but not for purity or essence’s sake — it’s about not complicating things to allow for free multiplication and combination. The pleasure lies in this diversity. There’s also a playfulness, a humor that may escape you because you focus on the essence or the ritual. That’s why pizza is excellent in Japan, and our pizza-makers win awards and even surpass Italians in competitions. The simplicity of the pizza allows for infinite possibilities. Japanese people love being offered a system of possibilities!

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes, Japanese people don’t just reproduce — they diversify and reinvent from the initial system.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I would even say that if there’s no potential for metamorphosis or multiple possibilities, we’re not interested.

OLIVIER ZAHM — It’s perhaps a way for Japanese people to express their ego more discreetly through their attachment to a passion. There’s a sense that their egos fades behind their art or craft, unlike Western creators.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes and no. For example, you can go to a knife workshop, where the knives cut perfectly well, just like those from other shops. But for the craftsperson, each knife is unique. He doesn’t need to say, “I made this.” He has nothing to prove. The object speaks for itself. It’s up to you to see his craft in the form of the object. When facing the object, you’re facing the presence of his art. If you don’t see it, that’s your problem, not his.

OLIVIER ZAHM — So, Japan isn’t really a culture of ego-effacement?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Only on the surface.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Is it the same process for you as a writer?

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — Yes, I’m Japanese in the sense that I’m a product of this system of branching out and producing variations, which never stops. I’m starting to spend more and more time in Italy, and a piece of my heart is in Lebanon. It may seem like I’m just multiplying countries and languages, but, in fact, this movement proves I’m Japanese.

MARK ALIZART — You’ve never written about fashion, which is a significant world in Japan.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — That’s true. Fashion is fantastically important in Japan. Moreover, the fashion world is tinged with the threat of catastrophe.

OLIVIER ZAHM — Yes, many fashion designers in Japan embrace darkness, the shadowy side of things. At Comme des Garçons, for example, there’s an almost metaphysical element in Rei Kawakubo’s clothing, a relationship with death that is fully embraced in the ephemeral nature of fashion — something the French tend to mask behind a certain lightness.

RYOKO SEKIGUCHI — I would say that in Japanese fashion, there’s a love or acceptance of vulnerability. Because fashion is sensitive to human fragility. You can’t be indifferent to it.

END