I was in Fukuoka when the entire ending of the book fell into place. I carried my notebook with me and wrote on the road, on trains and planes and in waiting rooms. I became addicted to gel pens and bought them by the handful. I heard everything but was more or less mute myself.

When people spoke to me I had to listen intently, using my ears as I had not done since I was a child. Everywhere I tried to picture how my characters might have lived five hundred years ago. I walked in the mountains behind the arts village, through the rice fields and by the river. I visited samurai houses and looked at artefacts in museums. I often went to Hagi, the old castle town of the Choshuu clan. Slowly the world of the Otori began to evolve. Now I had several weeks alone in Japan in this idyllic place the challenge was to see if I could bring to life what had lain within my mind all that time. I like to occasionally use Japanese idioms translated literally to give the feeling that the book is not written in English.įor many years before I had steeped myself in Japanese history and literature, reading widely, watching films, studying the language. I wrote ‘My mother used to threaten to tear me limb from limb.’ Later I changed this to ‘into eight pieces’. I was writing in a notebook with a black gel pen I’d bought in Himeji. Water trickled from the pools around the artists’ residence, carp splashed and occasionally a kingfisher swooped above the pool.

I was in Akiyoshidai International Arts Village in Yamaguchi Prefecture it was a damp, humid afternoon in September. I started writing Across the Nightingale Floor with the four main characters in my head and the opening sentence in Takeo’s voice.

The Storyteller and his Three Daughters.

As yet the film has not been developed beyond the scripting stage. Since then the Tales of the Otori have been world wide best sellers appealing to millions of readers in over 36 countries.įilm rights were sold before the first book was published to Universal Studios for Kennedy/Marshall, and David Henry Hwang was assigned as script writer.

It's over ten years since the publication of the first book Across the Nightingale Floor (2002). Wine, knife, sword.’ Wine for the marriage ceremony, knife to cut our throats, sword for revenge. Wine, Knife, Sword ~ A Tale from the Eight IslandsĪ FREE Otori story by Lian Hearn, available only on this website:

Across the nightingale floor