Japan: Punk author Kou Machida on his offbeat samurai story

You wouldn’t expect a punk musician to write decent novels, any more than you’d expect a boxer to be good at darning. The talents prized by the former vocation — restlessness, insouciance, hard-wired disregard for authority — don’t lend themselves to the rigors of the author’s life: all those long, solitary work hours, editorial deadlines and incessant rewrites.

But maybe there are a few things one could learn from the other. “When you’re writing a book, there are ways in which you’re supposed to write it, or theories you’re supposed to adhere to,” says Kou Machida, 52-year-old punk survivor and iconoclastic author. “(Punk is about) ignoring those from the very start, and doing things based on your own individuality and sensibilities.”