Pingmag has a nice interview with Sumie Kawakami online. Sumie, as you all know, is the author of Goodbye Madame Butterfly and this interview illuminates some of the efforts she went through to put the book together.

Ping: Your stories are intensely personal. How did you get all the women to open up to you?

Sumie: The ones in the book are just a fraction of what I’ve collected: One woman, after reading my manuscript, said “I can’t accept this” and kept denying what I had written; some kept asking for revisions over and over; others, hearing that the book will be published in English, ran their Japanese stories through translation software to read it in English. Getting your own story published is a big deal even if it’s under a fake name. I feel that negotiating little details in the story with the women took much longer than the interview itself. The book also includes stories that barely passed the women’s approval and some stories have been dramatically edited due to technical constraints. In that respect, what ended up in the book is the pure essence.

I believe that at the heart of human existence is the desire to be heard and to be understood. And if the story is as intensely personal as one’s sex life or love life, the desire to share one’s story may be even stronger.

It's also available in Japanese too.