I am enormously grateful to everyone at Chisenji Temple, Niigata, Japan; but I am especially thankful for the kindness, wisdom, and patience of Hiromichi Tamura.
I must offer very special thanks to the local residents of Echizenhama, Japan, past and present, for allowing me access to a number of traditional Japanese homes there – at the time of my research all abandoned and in a vulnerable but beautiful state, and permitting me to make my notes and sketches, and also to photograph these private dwellings. Truly, I crawled and walked and peered so deeply, and everyone I encountered was tremendously patient and accepting. My deep thanks also to my dear friend and artist, Hiroki Godengi, in facilitating this and in sharing his knowledge.
I would also like to thank Kanayo Sugiyama, Kioko Tamura, and Setsuko Taguchi, for sharing, over many years by now, their boundless knowledge of Japanese traditions, culture and nature. I thank Entomologist Dr Ben Price, Curator of Odonata and Small Orders, Life Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London for all the fascinating detail on the anatomy, and life, and indeed, death of the cicada. I thank Professor of Literature Roger Webster for our invaluable conversations on defamiliarization in literature; architect and academic Joerg Rainer Noennig for our ongoing dialogue on space and place, on process, on the need to make and unmake, to mark the paper and remove, delete, erase, and sometimes mark afresh; and the desire, the requirement and the drive, at other times, to leave the space just bare; Professor of Evolutionary Genetics Mark G. Thomas for too many things to mention; and author Imogen Robertson ‘on cello’. I am indebted also to the authors Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson for their own writing and interviews on the writing process.
Thank you to Gwen Davies, editor at New Welsh Review magazine for publishing an early version of the opening to the novel.
My grateful thanks to Bryony Hall at the Society of Authors for contract advice.
To my publisher at Seren, Mick Felton, and all the Seren team, thank you so much for all your enthusiasm and the care you have taken in bringing out My Falling Down House; and to my editor, Penny Thomas, I say, thank you for ‘seeing’, and for plunging your hands deep into the soil…
Huge thanks, of course to all the friends who have supported me emotionally along the way, for you are many, but I ought to mention: June Zhao, Sasha Damjanovski, Lynne Dragovich, Ian Kelly, Glenda Norquay and Roger Webster.
With regard to the cover, a great deal of love and thought went into this by everyone at Seren. Finally, the wonderful figurative painter Carl Randall stepped in and very generously permitted us to use his work. Thank you so very much, Carl. Takeo could not have a finer coat. Carl Randall’s work is frequently exhibited worldwide, and can be viewed online at www.carlrandall.com.
And finally, this book was inspired in part by a young man I once knew simply as Takeo, a man I met in London; and another, older man, that I knew as Mr Tanaka, in Gejo, Niigata, Japan. If ever either of you read this, I give you my thanks, and have celebrated you both in the use of your names.