Mayumi Yamamoto

What was your favorite book as a child?

Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton. I immersed myself in his world when I was a schoolgirl. Of his short stories, “Lobo, the King of Currumpaw,” is considered the most popular one, and I was not an exception among his readers. Lobo touched my heart deeply. I still remember that I covered myself with a futon — a Japanese quilt — on bed and whimpered, but couldn’t recollect why, since I had forgotten the details of the story. So, I read it again to answer this question, and was awed by Lobo’s sorrow because that is so similar to mine when I lost Tenten, my beloved cat. Lobo laments the death of his mate, and the story describes how terrible his grief was. My grief is expressed in my piece, “Last Conversation with My Daughter,” published with the photo of Tenten in Spillwords, January 19, 2024: Last Conversation with My Daughter by Mayumi Yamamoto at Spillwords.com

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

I wanted to enjoy the freedom to use my imagination. Being an anthropologist, I used to write academic papers until I retired. Some of them are categorized under ethnography, presented as narratives of someone’s voice that I collected in participant observation. It was a joy, honour, and pleasure to write down others’ voices along with the process of verification and analysis as a researcher, but it wasn’t exactly fun. Obviously, as a social scientist, I had to be careful and discreet enough while recording their experiences, and should not be crossing borders in every meaning. (I avoided mentioning certain details to keep my research within ethical boundaries.) Now, I put down my own experience on paper without restraint, unconstrained by academic style, and delight in searching dictionaries and other literary works for the proper word to express what I imagine. And that is truly fun!

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

The Fukushima nuclear power plants disaster of March 11, 2011. I lived in Tokyo at that time, and self-evacuated to Kyoto with Tenten. I penned a small nonfiction piece about how my life changed with that catastrophe in “House of Tenten” (The Space Ink, December 31, 2022): Story of a cat (thespace.ink)

Suddenly and unexpectedly, I returned to one of my hometowns after three decades. Soon, it turned out that the homeland was most comfortable to spend my retired life in.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

Both yes and no. When I read and write while sitting on a chair, I do. There is always a kind of sound around me in the daytime since I live in the centre of an urban area, and music, I believe, goes together with urbanity, adding seasonal flavours, like the scent of flowers, to my circumstance. But I write at midnight, too, when the city has silenced itself. That’s because ideas often cross my mind with eyes closed, and then I start writing a draft. So, I keep pen and paper on my bedside table.