The writer and journalist Enrique Planas published “Bond Girls”, a novel that intertwines James Bond with the manga and the father-son relationship. (Leslie Sears)
The closest that Enrique Planas has come to Japan is Taiwan, but that has not separated him from Japanese culture in his literature. Now, after Kimokawaii, the writer and cultural journalist has published Bond Girls, a novel about Japanese culture, anime and espionage, as well as a tribute to the world of James Bond and his own father, who was an influence on him.
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Infobae Peru spoke with “one of the 25 best kept secrets in Latin American literature” at the Guadalajara International Book Fair, about his sixth novel that places the reader in the Asian country at the end of the 20th century, focusing on Takao Saito, the famous mangaka who died in September 2021.
—Kimokawaii and Bond Girls is quite related to the manga, what is your relationship with this one?
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I’m not a voracious manga reader. What’s more, sometimes I feel a bit of an impostor when I am together with people who know a lot and could recite a hundred titles that I have no idea about, but when I wrote KimoKawaii, recognizing all my limitations, I placed myself in a certain time to be clear about the limits. Manga is an ocean, I don’t think anyone has the ability to approach it and exhaust the subject.
For me, the manga communicates with childhood memories; with the animes that I watched as a child. And in the end, writing a novel, if there is any information about manga or anime, it is not because one is an expert, but because the novel asks for it.
The cover of “Bond Girls” by Enrique Planas. (Planet)
—Bond Girls is the vision of a character who is dedicated to the trade of manga.
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-That’s how it is. He is a disciplined guy with schedules who does his manga, who has problems with his wife and son, that is, he is a father with all the limitations and with all the obsessions that all artists can have.
—Takao Saito, who appears in this novel, was a very famous manga artist.
—Yes, he passed away in 2021. He was actually an artist who adapted the first James Bond series and drew a historical manga series like Golgo 13. I was doing research on this topic for Bond Girls and this person like Takao Saito came up. Everything has been a sum of coincidences and connections.
—Bond Girls is also a tribute to the father, even you dedicate it to your father.
—I always wanted to write a novel about my father. I had proposed it a long time ago. My father is not a character in a novel, he is a gray man, middle class, like many of our parents. In addition, there was an effervescence of the genre: everyone was writing novels about the father, it made me think about stopping that project.
However, I remember that in a column in El Comercio I wrote a brief chronicle about James Bond, on the occasion of the premiere of a film, and the repercussions that this had on my relationship with my father. Like all children of separated parents, I had a very complicated relationship with him, and the 007 agent movies were the only meeting space in which we agreed, something we both enjoyed. I can’t tell you that we got along badly, but we didn’t understand each other.
I thought that the James Bond movies could be the key to a project where I don’t talk about my father, but talk about father-son relationships.
The Japanese mangaka Takao Saito, creator of Golgo 13, is one more character in “Bond Girls”. (Saito Production)
—Actually, James Bond is a macho character, as is Japanese (and Peruvian) society.
—Always, since we were little, we were told that Sean Connery was a great James Bond, but we didn’t really see who he was; the character was a monster. That is the wonderful thing about literature that suggests it to you with much more power; the power that letters have.
The wonderful thing about James Bond is that each one responds to its time and how the codes of masculinity are being transformed, and also the role of women in these films. Because at the beginning they are non-infantilized girls, although little by little they become fighting partners.
—Enrique, you are far from the recurring themes that are written about in Peruvian literature such as autofiction or terrorism. You have written two books about Japan, and I suppose you must have more material for another novel.
—Something that characterizes my work is that I have not wanted to portray myself directly with the topics you mention. However, in my first novel, Orquídeas del paraíso, which refers to the rubber era, I also address the issue of Fujimorism and the precariousness of power.
2023-07-24 23:08:18
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