A conversation with Todd and Linda Shimoda about their novel, The Fourth Treasure.

The Fourth Treasure (elegantly) links Japanese calligraphy and neuroscience. How did the concept for the book come about?

While I was studying cognitive science at Cal, in Berkeley, my wife Linda began lessons in Japanese calligraphy. She described to me how calligraphy is largely a mental exercise, and how it tries to blend the subconscious and conscious dimensions of the mind into a unified power. Cognitive science, in particular neuroscience, is also interested in these dimensions, obviously on a very different level. Still, there are similarities between the art and the science I found quite stunning and tried to capture them in the novel.

You are both a writer and full-time professor researching artificial intelligence. How do you balance the two?

Quite often, not very well. Both take the energy of full-time jobs. Plus teaching is another full-time job, except we do get long breaks during the year from the classroom. I make time in the mornings to do my writing. For some reason it's easier for me to do programming and research later in the day than writing. Different kinds of brain activity, I assume. Although the older I get the harder it is to switch from one to the other.

None of the characters in the book seem explicitly autobiographical, though the whole book is obviously infused with your learning and cultural heritage. And two of the central characters are women --19-year-old Tina and her immigrant mother. Were they difficult to create and inhabit as a writer?

I relate mostly to characters who are on the "outside," probably because I moved around a fair number of times when growing up, and have traveled to many countries. I seem to feel most in touch with myself when I'm on the outside looking in. In The Fourth Treasure, both Tina and her mother encounter those situations, so I could create those scenes with some veracity. As for writing women characters, I don't find it especially difficult because my writing focuses more on emotions that affect any individual, regardless of their gender.

You are also the author of a forthcoming book on Japanese aesthetics. Can you talk a little about this, and how it might have affected The Fourth Treasure?

I'm working on a book about 'mono no aware,' an old Japanese aesthetic term that defines a relationship between objects or events and the emotions we express when we experience them. The literal translation is "the inherent sadness of things." 'Mono no aware' is about the hidden corners of things, the deeper meanings, not the superficial reactions we might have to something that affects us. A 'mono no aware' occurrence is not sentimental or symbolic, but rather a true feeling that floats calmly throughout the mind and body. It's what we feel when we experience something that makes us exclaim "oh!" My writing is influenced by this notion tremendously; I'm always trying to achieve it, but it's very difficult to pull off.

There's a recurring riff in the book about medicinal marijuana. Are you an advocate, or a serious pothead?

I do support it, but I'm not a serious pothead. It's mostly in the book for comic relief. Plus, the marijuana angle ties some of the characters and storylines together.

Illustration and prose are bound tightly together in this novel and your first one. You're the writer, your wife the illustrator. How does that work? Does it get tense?

From Todd: Of course, it always helps to have someone to bounce ideas off. And it works even better to have Linda closely involved in the book, because she knows the story and characters well and can provide excellent feedback. Her art is very inspiring too, often taking the story in directions I couldn't have developed on my own. On the other hand, collaboration works for us because we have two very separate roles in the project. If we were both writers, I don't think we could work together that way.

From Linda: Since Todd and I first met, we've always enjoyed working together on a story, Todd would provide the words and I would create the images. In every project we try to let the words add more dimension to the images and the images go deeper and reveal things the words don't convey. It's always our hope at the completion of a project that the story would not be fully told without the images, and the images would not be fully understood without the story.

As cozy as all of this sounds, Todd and I do not like sitting down together and hammering out who will do what. We prefer to work more instinctually. Not to mention, that much looking over one another's shoulders would result in divorce, I'm sure. We don't plan things out together, preferring to scheme in our separate corners. I usually know a few of the characters (always the main character) and will serve as sounding board to what they're doing and how they're carrying out our initial vision. Once we've both finished our parts of the project, I usually read the story, get goose bumps because I start to see how the images I've been creating will weave into the story. I then place the images in the story, give the manuscript back to Todd, and it's his turn to get goose bumps.

And two questions for Linda:

Just as Todd's fiction has been mostly on Japanese themes, your work as an artist is largely in a Japanese calligraphic style. How did it develop?

I became very interested in Asian art and design at university. By the time I met Todd, my art and design work was highly influenced by its clean, stark, serene lines.

Todd was brought up in a family and lifestyle similar to mine, and I would say that we both had about the same amount of appreciation and knowledge of Japanese art and culture when we first met. It wasn't until we visited and then lived in Japan that the strong influence Japanese art and culture has on us developed into something deeper. It was as if being in Japan made all of our appreciation seem real and tangible.

A lot of the written part of The Fourth Treasure is about the history and art of Japanese calligraphy. Did you make special contributions to these parts?

Probably my biggest contribution to the written part about Japanese calligraphy was just being there in front of Todd practicing and he asking questions about what I was doing and why. There are tricks to learn too -- the best type of paper and its roughness, getting the right amount of ink on the brush, preening the brush bristles to get the stroke I want -- that I relayed to Todd.

And as Todd selected which kanji [Japanese character] to use for the journal, I would add anything I'd encountered regarding that particular kanji. I'd always been very interested how kanji was developed --I find the history behind how simple pictures developed into a written language fascinating; the permutations some of the kanji have gone through is very entertaining, and very telling in a historical sense.

This interview appears in an abridged form in the Nan A. Talese 2002 Catalog & Rights Guide.

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