Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? The Kimono Tattoo. My first title was Killer in the Fold. The “fold” was to suggest the “seam” or the underside of the fabric described in the story. But, what would this title convey to readers?
I thought about calling it The Tani Talisman, based on an important object that appears throughout the story. But again, what would that mean to readers, other than nice alliteration?
For a while I simply referred to my manuscript in progress as: Kimono Murder Mystery
That seemed a bit bland.
I didn’t want to over sensationalize and worried that images of kimono and tattoos would scream “exotic,” which in a way is what I’m trying to write against. In the end though, I thought The Kimono Tattoohad an enticing quality, and that’s why I stuck with it.
The Kimono Tattoo is my first novel and I did not have a lot of experience with creative writing before this. I’m an academic with expertise in modern Japanese literature. I had to train myself, as I wrote, not to write so much exposition. I just love all these little details and historical tidbits. And it IS interesting, but, it impedes the progress of the plot and slows the story down too much. It had to go!
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I began writing in October 2012. I finished the first draft in 2015. I finished the second draft in 2017. The following year I began to seek representation. I received my first full manuscript response in June of 2018, within weeks of submitting my query letter. I got the rejection in August. And so it went for a year. I found it difficult to work on queries during the “school year” while I’m teaching, so I started up again in 2019—sending to one agent after another—I received a lot of requests for full but ultimately, no contract.
Finally, in early 2020, as the pandemic began to make its presence known, I decided to aim for a publisher. I sent letters around to a number of presses and was so fortunate to capture the interest on Brother Mockingbird Publishing. At the time my manuscript was over 117,000 words. At one point, when I first began seeking representation, it was over 124,000 words. Melissa Carrigee of Brother Mockingbird asked me to trim it down to 100,000. I had already cut it substantially on my own and didn’t think I could do more. So, I hired an editor, Johnnie Bernhard, and asked her to help me make the cuts. She got the manuscript down to 99K or so.
The leaner manuscript was so much better. Fortunately, Brother Mockingbird thought so, too, and I received a contract.
Later, I edited it further. The final tweak to the book was in April 2021! And now it’s printed. So, I think we’re done!
https://www.brothermockingbird.net/
https://johnniebernhardauthor.com/
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I began writing in a cabin in the northeastern mountains of Tennessee (October 2012).
I did most of the bulk of writing—the plotting, and the developing—in Kyoto (summer 2013) in an apartment that looked out over Daimonji Mountain near the Philosopher’s Path (which is featured in the novel). I would return to Kyoto every other summer (2015 and 2017) to continue writing and revising. Each time I ended up in a different apartment, but each was always within walking distance of the Philosopher’s Path. Writing on a laptop made it easy to move across the mountains and oceans to work on my project. I attach photos of some of these places.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I found that I could only write when I was not in the midst of an academic semester. This meant my writing took place almost exclusively in the summer months. I wrote during the heat of the day. I think the heat informed my story. A typical day would be: wake up around 5:00 am and head out to the Philosopher’s Path for a run. I liked to run early, before the day grew too hot but also before the footpaths grew too crowded with tourists.
While I ran, I would go through the scene I’d been working on. Before long the characters began conversing in my head. I actually managed to get a lot of plot development done this way. Dialogue would come to me as I ran. And the dialogue frequently carried the story in new directions.
Back in my apartment I would quickly jot down the ideas that had come to me during my run. Then, I’d shower, eat breakfast, fuss around over this or that and usually, right around lunch time, I’d begin writing. But by then it was time for lunch. So, I did not make much progress until after lunch. That was when I was the most productive—writing down all that I’d been carrying around in my head that morning. I would goad myself on with the promise of a glass of sake or a beer at the end of the day. On some nights, when I took a long soaking bath, I would also find myself entering into my plot and working through (or reworking) scenes.
I am a slow writer. But when I am writing I am constantly with my characters. They tag along when I go grocery shopping, when I meet a friend for a coffee, when I visited a temple. Always.
I did all my writing on my laptop and usually did not track changes when I edited. Since I did not have a printer when I traveled, I did not usually print until I was back in the States. Here’s an image of a couple of pages I printed and then scribbled on. On the top page I’m trying to keep track of Ruth’s age! The small notebook is one I would carry with me as I walked around Kyoto. If an idea came to me, I would jot it down.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer. The Nanzen Temple grounds were nearly empty as I cut across them. There was a man feeding pigeons by Sanmon gate. People love Kyoto because of its rich history. Almost any point in the city will yield a story about an event that happened there in the eighth century and a later event in the eleventh century and so on. History wraps the city in layers. The waves of history undulate and overlap, it seemed, allowing us to go backwards in time even as we went forward. And my history was there, too, my stories also settling into the sediment. Whenever I saw the great Sanmon at Nanzen Temple, I remembered the way my little brother and I used to play there on occasion. We would wrap our arms around the pillars of the gate and try to touch each others’ hands. Our arms were too short, but each year we seemed to get closer and closer
The pillars were lighter in color near the base, from all the hands that patted and rubbed the wood in passing. My brother’s handprints were there. And mine, too, pressed into the history of the temple, becoming part of the story (pp.104-105).
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? The highest points of emotion enter the story when the narrator, Ruth, is remembering her little brother. He is her touchstone to her family and to her identity. As an American child growing up in Japan, Ruth was always “different.” She understood herself as being part of the fabric of Japan. But others did not see her that way. Tall, red-headed, she did not belong. When she traveled to the United States, her parents’ home, she felt even more alienated. Her brother shares Ruth’s experiences. As children, they spoke to one another in Japanese. She considers that her mother tongue, but now that her brother is missing, Ruth feels bereft and untethered.
The Kimono Tattoo is a mystery. But it is also a story about the way we chart our identities. And our identities are layered. [As the tag line for the book has it: Silk unravels. A tattoo is forever. Layer by layer the truth is revealed.] Ruth understands, when she sees the massive pillars at Nanzen Temple, that Kyoto is her home. She belongs there. Her memories of playing there with her little brother root her in that space that has seen so much history—both beautiful and dreadful.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Comparing the earlier and final versions of the section above, the most obvious edit was the removal of the historical detail about the Sanmon Gate at Nanzen Temple.
If it were visible, you could peel it away like geological sediment. The Sanmon Gate was built in the seventeenth century to honor the soldiers who died in the siege of Osaka. It was also believed to have housed the folk-hero and thief Ishikawa Goemon—before he was caught and boiled alive for his offenses—but since Goemon died before the gate was constructed, that would have been unlikely. I’d also heard the gate served as model for the Rashômon—long since destroyed—when Kurosawa Akira designed the set for his famous movie.
Rebecca Copeland is a writer of fiction and literary criticism and a translator of Japanese literature. Her stories travel between Japan and the American South and touch on questions of identity, belonging, and self-discovery. The Kimono Tattoo, her debut work, takes readers on a journey into Kyoto’s intricate world of kimono design, and into a mystery that interweaves family dynamics, loss, and reconciliation.
Her academic writings have focused almost exclusively on modern Japanese women writers, their battles against conservative literary expectations, and their wonderful, at times subversive creativity. She has translated the works of writer Uno Chiyo and novelist Kirino Natsuo. Her translation of Kirino’s The Goddess Chronicle won the PEN Translates Award, English PEN in 2013 and The Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, 2014-2015.
Copeland was born the fourth daughter to missionary parents in a Japan still recovering from the aftermath of war. Shortly after her birth, the family relocated to Wake Forest, North Carolina, where she spent glorious childhood days running carefree through the quiet town and listening to her older sisters relay their stories about Japan. As a junior in college, Copeland had the opportunity to spend a year in Japan, where she studied traditional dance, learned to wear a kimono, and traveled, making ridiculous mistakes in the Japanese language. Afterwards she earned a PhD in Japanese literature at Columbia University, and she is now a professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
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