My Wife's First Publication

My wife's first book, entitled Essays on Each Season*, was recently published by Nihon Kyobunsha. It is a collection of the essays she wrote for the Japanese White Dove magazine over a six-year period. Each essay was about five pages long, which is relatively short, but, with all 42 combined, it makes for quite a bit of reading. I, too, had my first book published some four years ago, and I can tell you from experience that writing a book and publishing it for the general public, requires a certain amount of courage and is even a little embarrassing. I would, therefore, like to ask for your warm support and encouragement on this, my wife's first venture.

I personally have had the opportunity to publish three books thus far, and, in each case, I reached the deadline date, still not satisfied with the end product and reluctantly had to approve the final copy with corrections. Thinking about it, though, there probably isn't a writer who exists that is truly satisfied with his or her final manuscript. It seems that there's been a recent increase in people writing their "memoirs", and I think that, in some ways, my three books have all been just my "memoirs." In other words, they were accountings of my inner thoughts at the time. Since we are all never the same for any prolonged period of time, conquering one book and going on to the next is good. And, "the next book" leads to the next book and the next. In this way, if the author matures and develops with each new publication, the readers will excuse the small mistakes. A problem arises, though, when the book that follows isn't quite as good as the one preceding it. We'd like to try our best, though, to "avoid" that problem.

Included in my wife's book, there are five sketches of mine as well as five photos that I took. Four of those sketches are posted on this website, under the "On Drawing" link. They, however, pale in comparison to the magnificent drawing on the front cover of cherry blossoms in full bloom, done by master artist, Tadashi Asoma. Although mine are all embarrassingly poor, I trust that you will understand that it all comes from a loving husband trying to support and encourage his wife.

(*Not yet available in English)

- MT