The Kabuki Book follows a wandering shrine maiden and a disciplined swordsman on their journey to Kyō through conversations about art, violence, faith, desire, social rank, and personal freedom. What inspired you to tell this story?

The spark for the book was the juxtaposition of Miyamoto Musashi and Izumo no Okuni. You have this legendary, disciplined swordsman looking for quietude after a lifetime of violence, paired with a wandering shrine maiden creating a wild, transgressive new art form. I wanted to explore the friction between the official history written by the rulers and the fragile, lived history of people on the margins. At its heart, the book is about the search for personal freedom in a rigid society. The birth of kabuki wasn’t just a theatrical curiosity; it was a defiant act of survival that still connects to modern struggles against erasure.

How did you balance historical research with imaginative storytelling when writing about a figure as culturally significant as Okuni?

The two main characters required opposite approaches. For Niten (Miyamoto Musashi), we have an abundance of dates, facts, and records; the challenge was to respect that structure without letting it stiffen the story. Okuni, by contrast, left very few historical markers. The records of her life are sparse and filtered through the eyes of the authorities who eventually banned women from the stage.

I used the physical details of early Edo-period social hierarchies and the reality of Kyoto’s riverbed outcasts (hinin) and sex workers as a skeleton. Where the archives were silent, I let imagination and folklore step in. Instead of inventing a standard fantasy, I introduced a layer based on Shinto’s foundational creation myths. Okuni’s artistry is fueled by a literal divine life force, turning her creativity into a high-stakes struggle against a paranoid regime. This let me honor her cultural legacy while keeping her human, grounded, and active.

How do mythology and storytelling help us understand truths that history alone sometimes cannot?

Official history is a record of decrees, structures, and winners; it tells us what was permitted to survive on paper. It rarely captures the inner lives of the people who had to navigate those structures. Storytelling allows us to explore that emotional resonance and interiority.

Through Shinto animism and shapeshifting spirits, we can access the psychological reality of resisting a rigid state. Official archives might reduce a rebel artist to a criminal footnote, but myth elevates their struggles to a universal scale. When we frame Okuni’s battle against the regime’s restrictions as part of a larger clash of gods, we aren’t escaping reality; we are highlighting the true weight of her choices. Storytelling translates the systemic violence of caste and gender into mythic symbols, showing that a transgressive act of creation in 1600 still echoes today.

What do you hope readers unfamiliar with kabuki or Japanese history will take away from the novel?

You do not need to know the history of Edo-period Kyoto or the origins of kabuki to connect with this story. At its heart, the book is about the universal struggle to keep your voice and integrity when an oppressive system wants to quiet you.

I hope to move readers away from the clean, romanticized myths of the samurai class and down into the visceral, muddy reality of the time. By humanizing a legend like Miyamoto Musashi and focusing on the outcasts and sex workers who actually built kabuki, we see how the most enduring cultural movements are born from the margins. Ultimately, I want readers to walk away with a sense of defiant triumph. A fist in the air for those who refuse to be erased.

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