Skip to main content
NEWS EVENT SPECIAL SERIES

From Musician to Novelist. The Surprising Reason Seinan Sato Started Writing Mysteries

2023.8.17

#BOOK

A circle of friends connected by gootouchi! The “FIST BUMP” corner of the radio program “GRAND MARQUEE” features people who live and enjoy Tokyo in a relay format.

On July 20, mystery writer Seinan Sato appeared on the program, introduced by novelist Mio Nukaga. We asked her about how she came to Tokyo to become a musician but failed and how she started writing novels, which she said she had never read before, and about her latest work “Zanzan” (Afterglow).

He will only live to be 27.

Takano (MC): Mr. Nukaga introduced Mr. Sato as “a caring older brother in the publishing industry. You yourself tweeted on Twitter that you “might be a bit aware of it.

Sato: That’s right. I tend to get involved in things that I shouldn’t get involved in.

Takano: If I enter the publishing industry, I would like to be taken care of.

Celeina (MC): Mr. Sato, you were a musician before you became a novelist.

Takano: That’s a great profile.

Sato: But I wasn’t making a decent living, so I was working part-time all the time. My hometown is Nagasaki, but I came to Tokyo to enter a music school. I entered the guitar department of MI JAPAN in Shibuya, and after graduation I played in a band.

Takano: What kind of music were you playing at the time?

Sato: I really loved loud music, but I wanted to sell well, so I played music that was in the vein of J-POP, like Miss Chill and Spitz (laughs).

Takano: That’s good, it’s very explicit (laughs).

Celeina: You are a businessman.

Takano: I was going to be a musician, and now I’m a writer.

Celeina: What made you decide to write a novel?

Sato: Before I moved to Tokyo, I thought I would only live to be about 27 years old.

Takano: Is that like Kurt Cobain, by any chance?

Sato: That’s right (laughs). Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix died at the age of 27, so I thought that I would be successful in music and live only until I was 27 years old.

But when I actually came to Tokyo, I found that I was not as successful as I thought I would be, and it seemed as if my life would go on. I had not thought about the future at all, and I began to feel as if I was in trouble. My band activities were not going well. I had no more time to do anything else, so I started buying novels at the book-off store and reading them. I had never read a novel before.

Takano: So that’s how it all started.

Sato: That’s right. I read them and found them interesting.

Celeina: I read it as a form of entertainment, and I was hooked.

Sato: Yes. It was like escaping from reality. Everything was going wrong and I had no money, so I bought a novel for 100 yen at a book-off store and read it.

Becoming a writer for the prize money

Takano: But being a musician or a novelist is a narrow path for both. Now that you are active as a novelist, it is amazing, isn’t it? Did you originally start out trying to write mysteries?

Sato: At first, I didn’t even know about those genre divisions at all. It wasn’t until I learned that the prize money for new mystery writers is extremely high that I decided to become a professional.

Celeina: You are a businessman after all (laughs).

Sato: In the pure literature prizes, even if you win a very famous prize, it’s only about 1 million yen. But for mystery newcomer awards, the “This Mystery is Amazing! Grand Prize, for which I debuted, is 12 million yen, and the Edogawa Rampo Award is 10 million yen (5 million yen from 2022).

Takano: I was wondering if you get that much for the “This Mystery is Amazing! Grand Prize?

Sato: That’s right. So when I was about to beat the deadline, I kept chanting in my head, “12 million, 12 million ……” as I wrote (laughs).

Takano: Then (in 2009), you won the Grand Prize of the 9th “This Mystery is Amazing! Grand Prize (in 2009).

Sato: It was an Excellence Award, so I didn’t get the 12 million in the end.

Takano: But it is a very brilliant achievement.

Celeina: How long did it take you to make your debut as a novelist after you started writing novels?

Sato: Personally, it was tough, but it took me about five years, so I think I’m doing well.

Takano: I heard that Sao Ichikawa of “Hunchback” also made his debut after 20 years of writing. But 5 years is also pretty tough, isn’t it?

Celeina: How did you keep your motivation at that time? You mentioned money earlier.

Sato: Money (laughs). But you were doing music until then, and then you decided to become a novelist because music was not going to work out.

Takano: I have the image of a person who is not good at anything, or rather, I have the image of someone who has difficulty in both areas.

Sato: I was almost 30 years old and had failed at music, so I was motivated to achieve results no matter what.

RECOMMEND

NiEW’S PLAYLIST

NiEW recommends alternative music🆕

NiEW Best Music is a playlist featuring artists leading the music scene and offering alternative styles in our rapidly evolving society. Hailing from Tokyo, the NiEW editorial team proudly curates outstanding music that transcends size, genre, and nationality.

EVENTS