How I Got My Start

I was born in Sussex, England to a father from India and a mother from Germany. My name, Sujata, is pronounced sue-JAH-tah, and is taken from Buddhist history. Sujata was the young woman who served Buddha a bowl of rice or milk. (The food differs depending on the country where the legend is being told. Indians say rice, but Japanese go for milk, and a Japanese company called "Sujata" manufactures coffee creamer and ice cream! Japanese children usually sing an advertising jingle when they hear my name.)

When I was five, my parents emigrated to the United States. I grew up in Philadelphia, PA; Berkeley, CA; and St. Paul, MN, making enough return trips to Europe and Asia that I never completely felt American. I have trouble answering the question of where I come from, but when push comes to shove, I became a U.S. citizen in 1998. I went to college in Baltimore, graduating from the Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and launching a career as a newspaper journalist at the now-defunct Baltimore Evening Sun newspaper. I probably would have written twenty-inch-long articles about fashion and food forever had I not been courted by an attractive Navy medical officer who made an offer I couldn't refuse: marriage and the chance to live abroad at any military location for the two years obligation he had remaining. We moved to Japan in 1991.

Within the first few weeks, I learned to drive on the left, negotiated for a used car, and leased a charming Japanese-style house in a hilly seaside town called Hayama. I spent my days teaching English, studying Japanese and writing fiction. Tony finished up with the Navy and we returned to Baltimore in 1993. It took two-and-a-half more years for me to finish my manuscript; luckily I won a generous grant for unpublished writers from Malice Domestic Limited, the nonprofit group that runs a big mystery convention in the Washington, D.C. area. Shortly after the 1996 Malice Domestic convention, I signed a contract for two mystery novels with HarperCollins. The Salaryman's Wife was published on 1997, and a sequel, Zen Attitude, in 1998. The Flower Master, the third Rei Shimura novel, was published in 1999, followed by The Floating Girl (2000), The Bride's Kimono (2001), The Samurai's Daughter (2003), The Pearl Diver (2004), The Typhoon Lover (2005), and Girl in a Box (August 2006). But the accomplishments I'm most proud of are my children: Pia and Neel, both adopted from India as infants.

Where Sujata Stops and Rei Shimura Begins

I purposely chose to write about a foreigner who can almost pass for Japanese because that was my experience, and I thought it would be helpful for an amateur sleuth to be able to mask her identity when she needs to. Rei Shimura is multicultural; born in California, she has a Japanese father and an American mother. My protagonist speaks much better Japanese than I do, although I am still studying. Rei's anxious relatives Aunt Norie and Cousin Tom Shimura are composites of good friends who guided me through my time in Japan. Rei's true love is Japanese antiques, and she has a master's degree in Japanese art history. I have no decorative arts education, but I am a passionate antiques shopper. The most important similarity I share with my sleuth is confusion over ethnic identity. Rei would like to be treated like a Japanese native, but her manners aren't quite right, and she speaks her mind too freely. At the same time, she battles a longing for Western luxuries and wonders whether it would be appropriate to consider romance with a Western man, given the number of foreigners who have used and abandoned women in Japan.

While Rei strives to fit in with Japanese people, she also spends time examining the rigid hierarchy among Tokyo's gaijin, as foreigners are called. At the top of the heap are international expatriate businessmen who earn high salaries and live in luxury apartments with central heating paid for by company expense accounts. Next down are the American military, who have a cost-of-living allowance that covers American groceries and a house far from Tokyo without central heating. Below the military is Rei Shimura's class: teachers, translators and bar workers from countries such as the U.S., Canada and Australia. These gaijin usually share tiny, freezing apartments, one or two rooms with a hot-plate kitchen and a small bathroom molded out of a single piece of plastic. They have some tough times, but do not suffer the discrimination shown to workers who have traveled from countries like the Philippines, Brazil and Iran to perform jobs that are considered too hard, dirty or dangerous for the local population.

I have acquaintances in all these cultural subgroups, and I gratefully count on their expertise as I continue the Rei Shimura series. I write at my home in Baltimore, but spend about a month per year in Japan fact-checking my settings and learning more about police procedure and cultural trends. I stay with Japanese friends in the suburbs or in a modest, centrally-located hotel called Asia Centre in downtown Tokyo. In a typical day, I rush from Zen temples to antique stores and the bars of Roppongi fueled by green tea, rice cakes and the occasional vodka tonic. Now I write at my home in Minneapolis, but travel to research and fact check my books. Most recently, that travel consisted of two long
trips to Hawaii to research Shimura Trouble. I know, it's a hard job, but someone's got to do it!

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All content © 1998-2008 Sujata Massey.
The two photos on this page of Sujata wearing the black tank top were taken by Jim Burger.