This book was loaned to me by a friend. He put it in my hands months ago, possibly as long ago as last spring. I’ve struggled to read it as Kojima has a way with words.
Hideo Kojima is an incredibly successful games designer. He’s worked on many games including Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding. I’m not a gamer, and my friend knows this. He leant me this book because Kojima also doesn’t play games. I think he’s trying to teach me a lesson, maybe he’ll leave a comment as an explanation. This book is a compilation of some of the essays he’s written for publication. It concludes with an interview between Kojima and Gen Hoshino.
Let’s take a few moments to examine why I struggled with it. Kojima is Japanese, a culture I’m largely unfamiliar with. Yes, this has been translated, and I’m assuming it’s a good translation, but I have no way to tell. The bulk of my Japanese language can be summed up in one word sayonara, because that’s all I know. I have known Japanese people in the past and I’ve been grateful that they’ve had my language. The sentences are formed very nicely, almost too nicely as if someone is sticking completely to the rules of grammar.
Kojima is about the same age as me so I’m constantly being stopped by my thoughts about what I was doing at about that time in my life. And comparing my life with his, difficult since our cultures are so different. There is an article about man walking on the moon, I remember that happening. When I read of someone else who experienced that same day on the other side of the planet I have to stop and take thought.
Kojima and I have some similarities in our reading. He mentions his science fiction reading and then tosses out some names, yes, I’ve read many of those works too. But, it’s what he says about these works that makes me want to read some of them again. And, it’s how he phrases his praise that makes me want to read some of the books I must have missed such as Inherit the Stars by James P. Hogan.
Because he’s Japanese, Kojima must have been reading many of these science fiction greats in translation. It means he would have had less access to these books as only some of them would have been translated to Japanese. It’s much like only some books written in other languages don’t get translated to English.
One thing I do have lots of jealousy about is that Kojima visits a book shop every day. From the wording it feels as if he buys a book every day, but on a quick reread of those pages I can’t find where I saw that. He definitely puts throught into what he buys and treats every book he buys as a stepping stone to finding a treasure. He talks about going to the same book shop every day when you walk in and go to the same shelf every time. I do that. When I walk into Benn’s Books in Bentleigh I head to the same shelf every time, I start at the fantasy. That shelf is where I found my first Terry Pratchett books, I like to revisit those thoughts at that shelf. It turned out to be a really good purchase. Kojima also talks about going to different book shops to be jolted out of that complacency and to see something new.
Despite each essay being only a few pages I was struggling to get all the way through without stopping for a while. At times I’d stop just to admire the phrasing, or to reread a few lines. I found myself doing exactly that with the last few sentences of the book.
I believe that creating things is only possible through connections with other people, and works, and history, and all kinds of other things. Then, that newly created work will give someone else a push and move the world forward.
So much of this book resonated with me, but this quote is the reason I made it all the way through despite having so many issues reading it. Kojima is exactly right. I have so many ideas for books and they don’t come out of nowhere, they come from something someone said, or something I’ve read, or something I’ve watched. Sometimes I see something that illustrates why I write and this paragraph is exactly right.
This is one of the reasons I leave my bookmark in each book, even if I’ve given the book away. My bookmark is an old business card. Not my card, but one for a previous Nullus Anxietas. I don’t like waste, and as I designed the cards to have a white back to enable people to write on them, these unneeded cards are being used. I use one in each book I read, as I read I make notes of things I want to remember for the future when it comes time to write about the book. Most people will look at this card and throw it away. Some people will be as curious as I am about other people’s reading, and they’ll look at my notes and wonder why I wrote them. By the time I get to writing about the book I sometimes wonder myself. Sometimes it becomes clear when I revisit the page and sometimes it doesn’t. I just wonder if any of my notes will inspire someone else to create something entirely different. The other reason is because it’s blatant publicity of the convention, yes, that convention is over, but the url is still valid.
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