Sujata Massey talks about The Kizuna Coast

Agatha and Macavity Award winner Sujata Massey’s latest novel is “The Kizuna Coast.”  In this interview, the author of the Rei Shimura mysteries discussed “The Kizuna Coast” and how a natural disaster influenced the book.

“Writing The Kizuna Coast was a way to recognize a significant change in the real world and my fictional environment,” said Massey. “My ten Rei Shimura mysteries previous to this one paint Japan as a very successful, secure world. When the tsunami hit Japan in 2011, Japan faced its greatest hardship since World War II. The book was a way of recording this milestone.”

In 2011, an undersea earthquake of magnitude 9.0 shook the Pacific coast of Tohuku, Japan. The earthquake, and subsequent tsunami, resulted in nearly 16,000 deaths, more than 6,000 injured, and almost 2,600 missing persons. The earthquake is often referred to as the Great Japan Earthquake.

“The tsunami felt near to me,” Massey said. “Even though I was in the US. I’d previously lived in and near the port town of Yokosuka, two hundred miles from the disaster. I read a lot of news stories and saw video footage of the wave sweeping over seawalls and capturing houses and vehicles. More than fifteen thousand people died from drowning and radiation poisoning. Many people were missing and never found, so a search for a missing girl became the starting point of my story.”

Sujata Massey feels sheʻs an unlikely person to write mysteries set in Japan. Her ethnic background is Indian and German, not Japanese. Nevertheless, Massey is the author of eleven mysteries set in Japan and the United States. She said, “This series is narrated by a young Japanese-American woman who loves both of her countries and travels frequently on Japanese antiques business. The Rei books paint a homey picture of Japan, reflecting the happy experience I had living there for two years as an English teacher and creative writer.”

[contestad code=#Kizuna startdate=2015-07-12 enddate=2015-07-19]Sujata Massey moved to Japan in 1991 when she married a US Navy doctor who was stationed there. Drawing on her knowledge of the language and culture, Massey felt she needed to know more than just what the news showed when she incorporated the earthquake into “The Kizuna Coast.”

“I needed to know about things that cameras never captured. I was at a disadvantage living in the United States and didnʻt start my book until months after the immediate rescue work began. I relied on conversations with Japanese volunteers who were continuing to work in Tohoku every weekend they could. I also received valuable information about the military and police involvement in rescue work from longtime contacts in the military. I feel like the book was a team effort, just as the rescue and rebuilding of Japan has been.”

Sujata Massey has also written about other parts of the world. She said, “I’ve explored the history of my father’s hometown [in India] in ‘The Sleeping Dictionary.’ Germany will make it into my fiction sometime, too.”

For now, Massey is happy to write about a land that surprised her when she moved to be with her husband. “I imagined it as a world of skyscrapers and bullet trains, but found so much more: narrow streets with tea houses and temples, and family artisans who have been making tofu and kimonos with the same care for hundreds of years. And most of all I found the people were kind enough to teach me their language and cultural lessons that became such a part of me that I was able to create a mystery series.”

Learn more about Sujata Massey on her website at sujatamassey.com.