Something followed Shōko Kawasaki home from her Sunday afternoon walk on the levee path. She knew he was following. Ignoring all reason, she even beckoned him inside. She had no idea he might stay, though, and no inkling he was about to upend her entire life.
An American novelist in Tokyo, M. Harmon Wilkinson infuses his books with all the richness of Japan, intriguing but rarely fully fathomable. He moved there in 1998 as a business school professor and started writing ten years later. His first novel, Under Shōko’s Bed, appeared in 2021. His novels have deep psychological roots and explore what can happen when the daily adventure of life for a foreigner in Japan spins out of control.
Under Shōko’s Bed is a deeply personal but unconventional love story that deals with issues of mental health that have challenged Harmon himself. His next novel, Neyuki, a mystery/thriller, was begun as a primal scream against the dysfunction of his first Japanese university, but was finally completed after finding a new position where he still works.
Harmon is married, with three grown children and six grandchildren, all of whom now live in America. “They’re too far away,” he laments, “but so will be Japan someday. I will forever be pulled both east and west.”
Harmon has published his first novel and is polishing his second. He has completed and is revising eight more, and others are bouncing around in his head, so expect much more in the months and years to come.
