What was the inspiration for Grotesque?
A real crime. A woman, a graduate of elite schools, made it into an elite company. Something inside of her broke and, even as she worked in that corporation, she became the cheapest kind of streetwalker and was murdered. I wondered what was behind that. There is no reliable narrator in Grotesque. You can’t latch onto anybody’s story. Did you have one truth in mind while writing? I wanted to make something along the lines of [Kurosawa’s] Rashomon, where you never know who’s telling the truth. Each of the central characters has their own truth. I aimed for a collective consciousness. I don’t think novels are written to portray the truth. They portray something that hovers near the truth. You depict the underbelly of Japanese society. Is the Japanese public aware of these seamy, fringe lifestyles? Many young people are right on the cusp of that world. For a while, it was very popular for young teenage girls to go out on dates with middle-aged men for money. I don’t think it’s as far away
