In her first novel to be published in English, the counterculture icon Izumi Suzuki draws from her real-life experiences to craft a musical, vulnerable portrait of nonconformism during a tumultuous era in Japan. From passion to nihilism, dreaminess to self-destruction, Set My Heart on Fire is unafraid of contradiction in its approach to the self, inscribing mind and body in all of its varying desire and directions. As our final Book Club selection for November, Suzuki proves to be a particularly resonant writer for contemporary readers in her audacious pursuit of pleasure and mutability in identity, all told in a vivid voice conjured by translator Helen O’Horan. In this interview, O’Horan speaks to us about how Suzuki channels a sense of disconnection, her knack for performativity, and the centrism of human relationships in her literary work.
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Bella Creel (BC): How did you initially discover Izumi Suzuki’s work, and what drew you to her writing?
Helen O’Horan (HOH): I first worked on a short story for Suzuki’s collection, Terminal Boredom, just before the pandemic. I joined the project relatively late; by then, the reports had been written and the research done, so I want to credit the other translators and the publisher. That’s how I first learned about her work.
After that story, I really got into her writing—the timing was significant too. During the pandemic, I found myself feeling increasingly disconnected from my mind and body. My work as a translator wasn’t disrupted much since most of my clients are outside the United Kingdom, and it’s all online, but I started feeling like my mind and body were splitting apart.
That sense of disconnect reminded me of Suzuki’s writing—she often describes her body as something separate from her mind. Her work resonated with me at that moment, though of course, that’s just my interpretation.
BC: That’s really interesting. I love your comment about the disconnect between the body and mind—I felt that too reading Hit Parade of Tears and parts of Terminal Boredom. Her stories have such an uncanny quality that makes you feel detached from everyday life. I think the translations capture that beautifully.
Your previous translations of Suzuki’s work were short science-fiction stories—full of weirdness and that sense of separation. But Set My Heart on Fire is a novel and more autobiographical. It still has those elements of disconnect and surrealism, but how was translating the novel different from her short stories?
HOH: The first big difference was the length. With short stories, you can spend a few focused weeks on them, but a novel is different—you have to work on it alongside other projects, so it seeps into your daily life. That felt fitting since this novel is more realist and closer to everyday life. It sort of ate away at me gradually rather than consuming me all at once.
As for the distinction between her science fiction and realist work, I think it’s more of a marketing divide. Even in this novel, she describes people’s skin as green, for example. There’s more overlap than the genres suggest.
That said, Set My Heart on Fire feels unique because it’s her last piece of work and much more autobiographical. Honestly, I don’t think it’s her most natural mode. Suzuki is at her best when she writes with the mantle of fiction, where readers expect something fantastical. She enjoyed artificiality—like musicians who performed in deliberately fake, exaggerated ways or bands that only did covers. Translating this novel, I could sense her struggling a little. She wrote it shortly before her death, and it feels like an attempt to put everything down, to give an account of herself. That’s very different from how she approached writing during the rest of her life. Overall, it was a very particular experience, both to translate and to read.
BC: Was there a specific reason you chose to translate this novel over her other work? She has such a broad repertoire—what made this the one to tackle next?
HOH: Part of it came from the publisher. Suzuki wrote three long-form novels—one early in her career, one a few years later, and this one. I think Verso was keen to publish a novel because long-form tends to have more weight in the Anglophone market. The editor also wanted to try something realist, and Set My Heart on Fire is the most realist of the three.
Another factor is that we’ve intentionally avoided including much context about Suzuki’s life in these editions. For instance, the band Green Glass in this novel is a pseudonym for a real band called The Golden Cups, but we don’t mention that anywhere in the book. It’s a subtle way to reveal more about her life through her fiction.
She was also a bit of a figure in her lifetime, and she was written about a lot. There’s the risk that Suzuki’s life story could be overshadowed by her relationships with famous men or tabloid narratives. This novel lets readers glimpse her life on her own terms.
Finally, some of it was just practical—we had more copies of this book, and there were stipulations from the rights holders in Japan about the publication order. So it was a mix of factors.
BC: You point out that Suzuki was “a bit of a figure” and written about quite a lot. With these books now in English, readers are more and more drawn to her life, her writing, and her personality—trying to figure her out. She has been described at different points as “countercultural,” an “it girl,” and “ahead of her time.”
There’s a line in Set My Heart on Fire that stood out to me: “It must be tough when you become a character in your own legend.” That made me think about how she was seen at the time and how we’re reading her now. I’m curious—how would you describe Suzuki as an author, since you’re so familiar with her work?
HOH: I think her art included her life; especially post-Tokyo (she grew up in Shizuoka and moved to Tokyo when she was nineteen or twenty), she really became the author of her own life.
The line you mentioned refers to a character in the novel—a musician who experienced sudden, unwanted fame. But in Suzuki’s case, the attention she received was never unwanted. She made herself into a character, crafting her own personas through outrageous acts, wild fashion, and deliberate performances. She often described herself as “living in drag,” constantly performing a character. Being a countercultural figure or an “it girl” wasn’t accidental; it was part of her artistry.
BC: That’s so interesting to think about, especially since we can’t ask her now.
HOH: Exactly. I find it funny—though rare—when people say, “Oh, these men were so cruel to her!” It’s the opposite. If anything, you should feel sorry for the men!
BC: The way she writes about herself in the novel is fascinating. It’s distanced from her real life—autobiographically influenced but with a sense of indifference toward the people she writes about. That comes through repeatedly, whether it’s with her friends or the men she loves and sleeps with. She doesn’t shy away from that.
There’s this indifference, but at the same time, it’s paralleled by a sense of passion—this balance of not caring and caring way too much. I’m curious how you managed to bring that tone across in translation because stylistically, the voice came through really well.
HOH: This novel especially had the potential to be quite a historical, academic analysis-type translation because there are so many references—bands, famous figures, and historical facts. We kept those elements, but that’s not really my style. I also get the impression that’s not Verso’s approach to fiction either. Their nonfiction is very clear and fact-based, but the fiction is almost like the anima to the animus of the nonfiction. I wanted the translation to feel more emotionally driven, and that’s what I prioritized.
I mean, I’m a twenty-first-century kid, right? My engagement with this era is mostly through arts and literature, not lived experience. So for me, it’s about affect and emotion—trying to get into her headspace a little bit. Again, this is my interpretation, and other translators might approach it differently.
You mentioned that she seems cold and indifferent—even insensitive to the way she talks about the people around her. But I also think she didn’t expect anything from anyone else. She never expected anyone to look after her or to adhere to social niceties. Usually, when we encounter someone cold or indifferent, we associate that with some dysfunction of empathy, but I don’t think that’s the case with Suzuki. Her empathy machine was fully functional; it just wasn’t connected to social norms or structures. She could care deeply about someone sitting next to her on the street, but not about someone halfway across the world that she’s supposedly in love with.
I don’t know if I’m explaining this well—there’s this disconnect where everything’s functioning, just not in the way we usually expect. It took me a while to tap into that, but once I did, it helped me translate her voice. I wanted to set things up so I could get into her head, almost like a method translation. I’m not saying I pretended to be Suzuki for a few years, but I definitely had one toe in her mind throughout the process.
BC: It did come through really well. I was so impressed because stylistically, a lot of the syntax is short and observational; she states the facts. But underneath, you can feel what’s leading her to notice those things.
HOH: Yeah, something interesting about Suzuki’s writing—and Japanese fiction in general—is the lack of speaker tags. You don’t always know who’s talking, and you have to figure it out based on their speech style, which is a bit more explicit in Japanese but still tricky. There were times I’d consult the team of six of us who worked on these translations, and no one would know who was speaking. With Suzuki, though, it didn’t feel like it mattered. The words are just there, and it doesn’t really matter which body they’re coming out of. It’s amorphous.
Her style also uses these short sentences, almost like she’s saying, “You don’t need to know anything else,” but then she keeps adding bits and pieces. Translating that literally can sound adolescent in English—like, “She came in. To the room.” There’s a risk of it sounding stylistically immature. I worried about that a bit, but I hope it didn’t come across as rubbish.
BC: No rubbish that I found! To go back a bit, earlier, you mentioned the historical backdrop—the music and cultural shifts—and I’m really interested in that. Suzuki was writing in the 1970s, when Japan was experiencing urbanization, a slowing economy after the postwar boom, and various human rights movements. How do you think that historical backdrop influenced her writing?
HOH: Around 1968, there were big student protests in France and Europe, and similar things happened in Japan—though the politics were a little different. I’m no expert on this, so if you want more information, you should definitely consult an encyclopedia or something. But what feels more relevant to Suzuki’s work is the shift in American cultural presence.
Until the early seventies, the United States military had a highly concentrated presence around its bases in Japan. These areas were like little colonies—you’d go into the bars, and there’d be American jukeboxes and culture everywhere. By the late seventies and into the eighties, that influence became less concentrated and more diffused throughout the country. Suzuki was obsessed with the sixties—a time when local bands often played covers of American hits, and those Japanese covers would sometimes become more popular than the originals. That cultural moment really shaped her.
Politically, Suzuki often said she hated “serious people”—people who talked about politics. She seemed to react against the overt political movements of the time. I don’t think she believed that kind of passion was the same as the more primal, raw humanity she was interested in—passion tied to sex, violence, and Freudian psychology. That’s what she was after.
That said, she lived a very non-normative life, and some people would consider her an activist just by existing as she did. But I think she was more focused on human relationships than political movements.
BC: Music is such a huge presence in the novel—everywhere from the chapter titles to the scenes themselves. I’m interested in whether you think music—especially psychedelic rock and jazz—has any symbolic role. Joel embodies this performative, sixties rock star image, while her husband, the free jazz musician, seems to represent a music that regards itself as more spontaneous and authentic. What do you think that tension symbolizes?
HOH: That’s a great observation. Suzuki hated jazz. She couldn’t stand going to her husband’s concerts or being around jazz people. I think it’s because jazz, particularly free jazz, carries this pretense of being direct and authentic—of being pure expression. Suzuki didn’t buy that.
She preferred rock, blues, and pop—very tropey, overtly performative music. I think that resonated with her because it mirrors how she lived her life: performance as a way to connect with people. Many of the songs she loved were covers—there was no pretense of authorship, just a stage for musicians to access something raw and real.
Reading Suzuki’s writing completely changed how I listen to music—especially live performances. She writes pages and pages describing what it feels like to listen to a song: how the sounds move, how voices interact. Music, for her, was a way to get close to something real, to that raw humanity she was always searching for.
BC: A lot of the chapters are actually titled after songs, and I think all of those were included in the translation. One thing that stood out to me is the title of the novel, which originally referenced The Doors’ “Light My Fire.” I quite liked the decision to change it to Set My Heart on Fire, but I’m curious—what led you to that choice?
HOH: I did go back and forth about it. The full Japanese title is a riff on “Light My Fire,” right? Translated literally, it’s “Set My Heart on Fire!”—with an exclamation point—and then a subtitle, “Now Who’s Going to Put It Out?” It’s funny and kind of playful. But there’s less leeway with Anglophone publishers for titles that use both an exclamation point and a question mark. To be fair, Verso might have done it—they have a title by Vigdis Hjorth with an exclamation point—but it’s just harder.
First of all, I thought there was no way we’d be able to use that title directly. Secondly, it felt like a shame to dampen the “Suzuki-ness” of it by going with something as recognizable as “Light My Fire.” Most readers aren’t going to know much about Suzuki or that era in Japan, but they will recognize “Light My Fire.” And the second you see that title, Come on baby, light my fire starts playing in your head—it just overshadows everything. That went against what we wanted for the book.
As I mentioned before, we wanted it to come from Suzuki, rather than her being absorbed into an already established narrative. Plus, there are some puns in the text that play on the title. There’s a scene, for instance, where a character lights a cigarette called “Hope” and says, “Oh look, I set my hope on fire.” I thought it was cool to keep that. And ultimately, Set My Heart on Fire just sounds badass.
We could have said Set Your Heart on Fire or Set Our Hearts on Fire—there are so many variations. Title translation is a whole other topic, though. It’s almost like poetry. I also went back and forth on whether to translate the chapter titles. As you said, they’re all song titles, and some are Japanese versions of English songs. But those aren’t always literal translations—they can be quite different. In the end, we decided it was better to include the reference for readers.
BC: I really appreciated that choice. I got a new playlist out of it.
HOH: I’m glad!
BC: I came across a previous interview where you remarked that Suzuki “doesn’t really identify with the idea of essentially being a woman.” I think that’s fascinating, but I also feel like gender—and its social and material realities—plays a significant role in her work. Could you expand on how Suzuki writes about gender?
HOH: That interview is going to haunt me forever! The article went straight to press without a fact check, and I was slightly misquoted. I wasn’t saying that Suzuki didn’t identify as a woman—it was more of a suggestion, a possibility.
I want to clarify: this is my interpretation, looking at her work from the twenty-first century and through an Anglophone lens. Concepts of gender are very different now than they were in 1970s Japan. Suzuki was writing before Judith Butler, for example, so discussions of gender performativity weren’t part of the cultural conversation. So when people say she was “ahead of her time,” that’s what I think of.
Suzuki actually wrote an essay about realizing as a teenager that she wasn’t going to grow up to be a man. I wanted to reread it before today, but I’m in Japan right now and don’t have access to my library. In the essay, she describes this dissonance: growing up immersed in gender-neutral stories and education, and then suddenly having womanhood pushed onto her. Her body was responding to that as well.
We don’t know much about her life before she moved to Tokyo, but it seems like that realization marked a major split for her. She often described herself as feeling like a drag queen—performing womanhood in an exaggerated way. Her female characters are extreme, and she leans into stereotypical roles. For instance, she’d host a man, sit him down, and say, “Let me cook for you.” It’s almost a parody of the perfect housewife.
But I don’t think she suffered for it. She used these performances as a tool to access the world. By embodying roles that were immediately recognizable, she could reach something deeper—desire, violence—because the people around her let their guard down. It’s almost like a spell she cast.
To me, the closest we can get to calling her work feminist is in how she viewed her body. She saw it as a resource to be exploited, just like any other asset. She had the right to use it as she pleased. Suzuki was lucky—or unlucky—enough to have a conventionally attractive body, and she used it to connect with the world. It doesn’t seem like she was very attached to her body; it was just a tool to get things done.
It’s a difficult question. People ask about this all the time, and I’d love to translate more of her essays, where she writes extensively about femininity and womanhood. They’re a bit dated, which makes them harder to publish, but they’re fascinating—especially coming from someone like Suzuki. If there are any publishers watching this, get in touch!
BC: Absolutely. I thought about this a lot when I read Hit Parade of Tears a couple of years ago. Many people call it a feminist work, but feminism in Japan at the time was complicated. Western feminism was being brought in, but it didn’t always align with the reality of women’s lives in Japan. There was resistance—like, this doesn’t speak to us.
HOH: Yeah, exactly.
BC: Finally, do you have any upcoming projects we should look out for?
HOH: In terms of Suzuki, Set My Heart on Fire was her last major work, so we’re actually going to work backwards now—next, I want to translate her first long-form novel, written in her early twenties. It’s fantastical, set in 1970s Yokohama, and centers on a narrator with sixteen siblings. It’s a sordid family fable, full of archetypes, hallucinations, and a kind of witchy matriarch.
There might also be another volume of her sci-fi short stories coming out, but that depends on contracts.
Outside of Suzuki, I’m working on a TV show about a vampire who lives in a bathhouse. And next year, I hope to translate more from Tsutsui Yasutaka—he’s known for Paprika, which Kon Satoshi adapted into an animated film. His work is closer than Suzuki’s to “classic” sci-fi but still very focused on psychology.
Helen O’Horan is a linguist based in London. She currently works as a Japanese-English translator, splitting her time between literary projects & TV/film. She has previously worked with patents & research in linguistics & natural language processing, & maintains an interest in how people interact with technology through language & design. She also likes to draw & cycle. hlnhrn.net.
Bella Creel is a blog editor at Asymptote. bellacreel.carrd.co.
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