Behind The Book With Munehito Moro 

Recently I did a Q&A with Munehito Moro and finished reading his recent release Talking Cure yesterday! I’m so delighted to be doing this Behind The Book with Munehito discussing the book. 

Q: In our Q&A we were discussing where your ideas for both Talking Cure & Empire Of Blood came from. You wrote When I was about 20, I experienced a severe bout of depression with a sleep disorder. It forced me to leave college for a few years. Although I recovered and completed my BA at another university, where I focused on acquiring English skills, the depression has come back a few times since then, with debilitating effects. Liz Wayne, the protagonist of Talking Cure, has similar medical conditions. So, is it fair to say that Liz is the female version of you? 

A: Liz and I share a lot of traits: chronic depression and a background in the conversational English business (“eikaiwa”), for example. However, I feel hesitant to call her the “female” version of myself. Liz is an American woman, whereas I am a Japanese man. Rather, Liz’s identity symbolizes the creative risk I wanted to take. I understand the struggles she has endured through depression, and the kind of work she is assigned to in her eikaiwa school (like Liz, I was a teacher in the industry once). She even enjoys the same Japanese anime movies I like (Spirited Away, Ghost in the Shell, etc.). Still, there remains so much about her that eludes my (male Japanese) comprehension. That knowledge gap made the writing process of this book so unpredictable, thrilling, and addictive. 

Q: I read and finished the entire book in a day because it was that good! It was entertaining and comical at points. Which scenes were your favorites to create & why?

A: I had great pleasure in writing the scenes of eikaiwa lessons. In them, I wanted to capture where the American and Japanese cultures collide. In one, a Japanese teenager shows Liz a clip of a comedian on YouTube. Liz doesn’t get it, as the style of Japanese humor differs so much that it is unintelligible to an American woman new to the country. Though I cannot say I “enjoyed” writing it, another scene I want to mention is Liz’s late-night encounter with a Japanese flasher in Tokyo. I had heard actual tales of such sexual indecencies committed by Japanese men against foreign women. Those horror stories demanded that I incorporate that element of Japanese society, so the book would remain evenly critical and fair to both America and Japan. 

Q: With how the book ended, which was rather comical, I could see a sequel happening & I would love to read more of Liz’s adventures. If you were to write a sequel to Talking Cure, what shenanigans do you see Liz getting caught up in? 

A: (Spoiler warnings!) The conclusion of the story shows Liz murdering a dictator, which simultaneously cures her of depression. I can imagine Liz, along with her Japanese and Korean female students, organizing an army of depressed women. She recruits them, trains them, and sends them on missions to assassinate tyrannical, evil men around the globe. If the murder saved Liz, those depressed assassins might rescue the entire world from mental illnesses!