Notebook Outside the Window: After Interview No. 61, There Was No No. 62
A column by independent researcher Karin Kokonoe. On why the interviews for her next book, on the Nine-Day Fog, have stalled at number 61.
I wrote once that my notebooks numbered 214. A few more have piled up since, but I can't bring myself to recount them. I've grown fond of that number, 214.
The interviews for my next book, as previously reported, have stalled at 61. The 61st was Kazuko Sakota, the Kyumu Family Association's caretaker, who has been waiting for her husband for 23 years. After the interview, she said to me, "Ms. Kokonoe, you've already decided who number 62 is, haven't you?" I had. I admitted, honestly, that I hadn't been able to write it down.
I have a feeling that meeting number 62 will make this book feel "complete." The story of the Nine-Day Fog is not a story that should ever be complete. I don't want to fill in the number 12 with anyone's words. Part of why the academy shuns me, I think, is exactly this stance — I'm a researcher who wants to treat "we don't know" as the finding, and the academy is a gathering of people who want "we do know" to be the finding.
Sakota-san called last week. "Ms. Kokonoe, I don't want this written only by someone who's bad at waiting." I still haven't gone to meet number 62. I'm afraid that if I do, I'll end up putting "meaning" onto their story. I don't think I yet have the skill to listen without doing that.
Today, too, I stacked my 214 (or maybe 215) notebooks on the desk and did not go to see number 62. This column, written to explain why I didn't, is the only thing I produced this week. I told the newsroom the reporting was progressing. That's not entirely a lie.
