Writers | Writings

Matt Comeskey

Matt Comeskey lives in Wellington, New Zealand. He contributed a short story The Love Hotel to the collection "Forty Stories of Japan". He said that he had more stories like that from his time in Japan. It was just a matter of dusting them off and sprucing them up. Here is an extract from The Love Hotel:

On a warm July night, my lovely companion (she was my fellow investigator to be henceforth referred to in her own strange words as ‘the noisy squirrel’) and I chanced on one such brightly-lit building near the highway. Glancing in my rear-view mirror to make sure no one was following us, Iturned offand we coasted down the narrow street towards the ruboo hoteroo called Happy Dream, filled with nervous anticipation.            
As we circled the building looking for a parking spot, I noticed the first of many odd things. Most cars had large metal sheets with pink and yellow stripes resting against their front grills. Secret Squirrel to my left informed me that these coverings were for customers anxious to hide their registration plates. I figured that suspicious wives or husbands who happened to be drivingin the vicinity would certainly be prevented from recognising their family cars’number platesby the metal sheets; however upon thinking about this for a few seconds I decided that they would surelyrecognise the car far more quickly and a glancebehind the metal mask would of course confirm their suspicions. It was the first of many super-discreetdevices I was to encounter that evening.            

From 2001-2004, Matt Comeskey taught English at a high school in
Japan. His teaching proved memorable to his students:
"Matto, I don't know English, but I could feel your being very hard";
"It was so-so. But it was great. I want more";
"I was not like a little English, but I like English little now."

Matt now works as an educational publisher in Wellington and is
Married to Junko. The couple have a young son, Yoshiki.

Masuho Fujita

Masuho Fujita was born in 1924 in Fukuoka City on the island of Kyushu, but she and her family soon moved to Tokyo, where she has lived ever since. In 1942 she went to Nara Women’s Higher Normal School, where she studied Japanese literature. Immediately after the Second World War, she went to live with her family in Tokyo, and started work there as a high school teacher.

After teaching Japanese literature for two years she enrolled in Tokyo University (Todai) where she majored in Japanese Literature, specialising in the Edo Period. She graduated in 1951 and then while teaching nightschool classes she started a post-graduate course.

She married in 1960, and has a son and a daughter. In 1986 she retired from teaching and started to study English in earnest. Since 1993 she has lived in Yokohama with her daughter’s family.

She hopes that many young Japanese students of English can read "Glimpses of Old Tokyo" and learn something from her memories of eighty years ago.