Books: Magician of Language: Hisashi Inoue

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A white 1983 Mercedes 230E embellishes the stucco house is one of the most imposing in the driveway. The burgeoning Tokyo suburb of Ichikawa. More than 100,000 books line the walls of the library. Two male secretaries are at work in the study. Yet Hisashi Inoue is not happy. "It's terrible to be a bestselling writer," he complains. One of the terrors is familiar to any Westerner: the Japanese version of the IRS. The novelist has sold 12 million copies of his 56 books, making him one of the most successful writers in the world today. Nonetheless, he says, "about 85% of my income is taken out for taxes. I see money passing through in front of me."

There is quite a bit of money to pass: his estimated income last year was $542,000. The other terrors include the temptations of easy but sleazy money. "Some people offer as much as a million yen ($4,200) for an hour-long lecture. You can even get away with a talk about what you did yesterday. I refuse any such request. To me it is corruption."

To stay incorrodible, the lean, chain smoking writer has turned himself into a fiction factory. This month he will write the equivalent of 150 printed pages, working simultaneously on four serialized novels.

Inoue, who first established himself as a TV script and gag writer, combines the fecundity of Isaac Asimov, the antic regionalism of Erskine Caldwell and the solemn dedication of Inoue Proust. A lapsed Catholic, Inoue works in a monkish annex that he calls "the cockpit," next to his vast and growing collection of books. Except for dinner breaks with his wife of 21 years, he shuns company. "The world of imagination is my reality," he says. "I haven't left this house in a month." He refuses to attend parties, to undertake book tours or appear on TV interview shows; he is content to let his works sell themselves. They do. His most celebrated book, Kirikirijin (People of Kirikiri), is an 834-page comic novel about an imaginary hill town in northern Japan that secedes from the rest of the nation. More than 850,000 copies have been sold in two years.

Such outsize narratives have provoked accusations of overproduction. Counters Inoue: "I don't like bonsaiism—the idea that every Literary work has to be exactly like a neatly shaped miniature tree. I think it is perfectly all right for some trees to grow big and wild."

Inoue's forest of comedy, fantasy, biography and satire remains untranslated in the West, largely because of his incessant wordplay. But the writer whom Japan's critics have called the "magician of language" plans five novels that will convey universal meanings and ideas. Says he: "I would like to make my ways of expression so transparent that anyone in the world can understand what I'm saying."

What is Hisashi Inoue saying? "What drives me to writing is my love toward human beings, including myself. My basic message is 'Hang in there, fellows. You are doing great.' "