Set in 1987, this fast-paced adventure imagines New Zealand as it might have been had it come under Japanese rule in WWII.
“I tried to imagine the climate of fear that led to the construction of the gun emplacements, the threat of the ‘foreign devils’ coming all the way to New Zealand to destroy everything we held dear. It struck me that a story in which New Zealand was occupied in 1942 had intriguing possibilities. It could question what we value most as Kiwis,” says McNaughton.
The novel follows Chris Ipswitch, a young Business English teacher who works at the Wellington Language Academy, as he takes it upon himself to investigate a terrible crime done to his brother’s family. Chris’s brother is a retired, but still famous Pan-Asian sumo champion, the Night Train.
McNaughton says the time he spent living and teaching English in Japan made the evocation of a Japanese New Zealand less daunting.
“I have Emperor Hirohito dream of an incinerated Japanese city just before the attack on Pearl Harbour, which prompts him to call back the carriers, thereby stopping the US entering the war. I think ‘what if’ questions can be intriguing. I’m interested in the possibility of something as insubstantial as a dream, thought or decision profoundly altering history.”
The novel is playful in its retelling of “history”. McNaughton has John Lennon grow up, play music and die in New Zealand.
“It actually happened that John Lennon’s father almost smuggled his son onto a boat to New Zealand. I wondered what impact he would have had on our culture if he’d made it out here. To what extent would being a Kiwi enable and restrict him? These seem to me to be important questions about the nature of our society.”
A former job rewriting classics of Western literature into easy English for Korean university students taught McNaughton important basic lessons about writing fiction. He says his main aim in writing New Hokkaido was to tell a gripping story.
“Along with raising questions about colonisation, sovereignty and land ownerships, I wanted to write a novel that thrilled and delighted a reader and maybe rattled their cage as well, in the way that the novels I love affected me.”
James McNaughton grew up in Wellington and attended Victoria University of Wellington, where he received an MA in Creative Writing. Two collections of poetry followed. He has lived in Australia, Israel, Japan, South Korea, the Maldives, India, and one other country.
Details
New Hokkaido by James McNaughton
Novel, paperback $30
Advance copies 19 December 2014
General release 5 February 2015