\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI<\/span> don\u2019t feel particularly unhappy about my work being used to train AI,\u201d says Japanese novelist Rie Qudan. \u201cEven if it is copied, I feel confident there\u2019s a part of me that will remain, which nobody can copy.\u201d<\/p>\n The 34-year old author is talking to\u00a0me via Zoom from her home near Tokyo, ahead of the publication of the\u00a0English-language translation of her fourth novel, Sympathy Tower Tokyo.<\/em> The book attracted controversy in Japan when it won a prestigious prize, despite being partly written by\u00a0ChatGPT.<\/p>\n The author speaks conversational English, but her translator, Jesse Kirkwood, is also on the line, interpreting questions and answers when needed. At the heart of Sympathy Tower Tokyo is a Japanese architect, Sara Machina, who has been commissioned to build a new tower to house convicted criminals. It will be a representation of what one character \u2013 not without irony \u2013 calls \u201cthe extraordinary broadmindedness of the Japanese people\u201d, in that the tower will house offenders in compassionate comfort.<\/p>\n In the novel, Sara, herself a victim of violent crime, wonders if this sympathetic approach to criminals is appropriate. Does this sympathy reflect Japanese society in reality?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s definitely prevalent,\u201d says Qudan. One of the triggers for writing the novel, she adds, was the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022. \u201cThe person who shot him became the centre of a\u00a0lot of attention in Japan \u2013 and his background elicited a lot of sympathy from people. He had grown up in a heavily religious household, and been deprived of freedom. That idea had been in my head for a long time, and when I came to write the novel, it came out again as part of the process.\u201d<\/p>\n The question of public attitudes towards criminals runs through the story, in serious and satirical ways. Potential residents of the tower must take a \u201cSympathy Test\u201d to determine if\u00a0they are deserving of compassion (\u201cHave your parents ever acted violently towards you? \u2013 Yes \/ No \/ Don\u2019t know\u201d) \u2026 and the ultimate decision will be made by AI.<\/p>\n Changes of language over the last few decades are affecting how people act or view things<\/p>\n Sympathy Tower Tokyo won the Akutagawa prize in 2024 for new or rising authors when it was first published. She was \u201cdelighted\u201d, she\u00a0says, but also \u201cliberated, because once you make your debut as a writer, there\u2019s a constant pressure to win this\u00a0prize\u201d. In 2022, she had been nominated for her book Schoolgirl, but didn\u2019t win. \u201cI felt I\u2019d let people down by not winning the prize, and that was something I didn\u2019t want to repeat. You know, with that prize it stays with you your whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n But the book also grabbed attention because Qudan said that part of it \u2013 5% was the figure given, though she now says that was only an approximation \u2013 was written using artificial intelligence. This, she tells me, comprised parts of the novel which are presented as a character\u2019s exchange with ChatGPT. But Qudan also \u201cgained a lot of inspiration\u201d for the novel through \u201cexchanges with AI and from\u00a0the realisation that it can reflect\u00a0human thought processes in interesting ways\u201d. Qudan\u2019s use of AI, in other words, seeks not to deceive the reader but to help us to see its effects.<\/p>\n One character feels pity for the chatbot, \u201ccondemned to an empty life\u00a0of endlessly spewing out the language it was told to spew, without ever understanding what this cut-and-paste patchwork of other people\u2019s words meant\u201d.<\/p>\n Does Qudan fear that AI will supplant human writers? \u201cMaybe a\u00a0future will come when that happens, but right now there\u2019s no way an AI can\u00a0write a novel that\u2019s better than a\u00a0human author.\u201d Among Japanese readers, Sympathy Tower Tokyo \u201cdid\u00a0get attention for using AI. But more than that, it was a focus on the\u00a0language itself which really generated discussion; how the changes of language over the last few decades are affecting how people act or view things.\u201d<\/p>\n And this feeds into the key issue at the heart of Qudan\u2019s book. Sympathy Tower Tokyo is really all about language, which in the book is not just how we express ourselves, but how we reveal ourselves. \u201cWords determine our reality,\u201d says one character.<\/p>\n By using katakana, a lot of negative associations can be replaced by neutral one. It doesn\u2019t trigger people in the same way<\/p>\n In the novel, a key debate is around the growth of katakana in Japan \u2013 that is, the script used to write foreign-derived words. Words rendered in katakana (as opposed to hiragana script and kanji characters, which are used to write traditional Japanese words) resemble transliterations of English \u2013 \u201cnegurekuto\u201d for neglect, \u201cf\u014drin w\u0101k\u0101zu\u201d for foreign workers \u2013 and to Japanese ears they are \u201cmilder, more euphemistic\u201d than traditional kanji words, and can avoid \u201cdiscriminatory turns of phrase\u201d. The\u00a0character Sara thinks \u201cJapanese people are trying to abandon their own language\u201d. Her boyfriend wants\u00a0to \u201cstop this wretched proliferation of katakana\u201d.<\/p>\n But stopping it is not easy, and probably not possible. Qudan explains that while older generations sometimes choose katakana over kanji, or vice versa, for younger generations like her \u2013 Qudan was born in 1990 \u2013 katakana \u201chas become a standard which is not questioned\u201d.<\/p>\n This is not merely an academic or cultural detail, but an urgent issue for Japan\u2019s politics today. In Japanese elections last month, the far-right party Sanseito surged in support, winning 14 seats in the upper house of parliament, where it had previously held only one. The party campaigns on a slogan that translates as \u201cJapanese people first\u201d, echoing Donald Trump and Maga\u2019s \u201cAmerica first\u201d. Its success has raised fears of an anti-foreigner backlash. Is diversity valued in Japan?<\/p>\n \u201cUnfortunately,\u201d Qudan says, \u201cthe reality is that not all Japanese people welcome diversity. Twelve years ago, I had a foreign, non-Japanese boyfriend, and I introduced him to my parents. My mother was extremely unhappy. She panicked. It might have been the biggest shock in my entire life to see my own mother react in this way. I\u2019d never thought of her as someone who discriminated against foreigners.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are people all around you who you would never think hold those views, who actually do hold those views. A lot of Japanese people, on the surface, they know how to act in a way that makes them seem [welcoming of diversity]. And this discrepancy between what people think on the inside and what they say is a very distinctive feature.\u201d<\/p>\n This brings us back to language, and\u00a0how it can both conceal and reveal. In its \u201cJapanese people first\u201d slogan, Qudan explains, the Sanseito party uses the katakana word for \u201cfirst\u201d, rather than the traditional Japanese kanji word. \u201cBy using the katakana equivalent,\u201d Qudan says, \u201ca lot of the negative associations can be replaced by neutral ones. It doesn\u2019t trigger people in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n It creates, in other words, a sort of plausible deniability? \u201cYes, yes. They know exactly what they\u2019re doing. And that\u2019s why this use of katakana requires our attention,\u201d Qudan concludes. \u201cWhen someone uses katakana, we should ask: what are they trying to hide?\u201d<\/p>\n Sympathy Tower Tokyo by Rie Qudan is published on 21 August (Penguin Books, \u00a310.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI don\u2019t feel particularly unhappy about my work being used to train AI,\u201d says Japanese novelist Rie Qudan. \u201cEven if it is copied, I feel confident there\u2019s a part of me that will remain, which nobody can copy.\u201d The 34-year old author is talking to\u00a0me via Zoom from her home near Tokyo, ahead of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1556,1001,2214,9910,9909,9908,1126],"class_list":{"0":"post-16582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-author","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-chatgpt","11":"tag-prizewinning","12":"tag-qudan","13":"tag-rie","14":"tag-write"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}