KYOTO: Sixteen writers — half French-speaking and half Japanese — boarded a luxury train in Kyoto on Thursday, faced with the unusual task of collectively writing a novel in under 24 hours.
The authors, who include Muriel Barbery, are taking part in a project by “L’ecriture en mouvement” — “Writing in Motion” — a French association that promotes literary exchanges.
By the time the “Mizukaze” — their striking, bottle-green train in the Art Deco style — pulls into the western city of Matsue on Friday morning, they hope to have completed a 200-page story. “It’s a completely crazy project: coming together on an iconic train, where 16 voices must form a coherent and meaningful whole,” said Barbery, famous in the English-speaking world primarily for her 2006 novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog.
“We were each given the biography of a character — someone whom all the other characters knew, and who is the reason why they all ended up on the same train,” she added. It is the second time Writing in Motion has orchestrated such a project.
The first, held in Canada in 2015, also united local writers with French counterparts. The central theme and overall narrative were discussed before departure, but the plot — set aboard the “Mizukaze” itself — will take shape as the journey unfolds. The landscape outside, dotted with paddy fields and Japan’s distinctive architecture, “will inevitably find its way” into the writing, said French writer Christophe Ono-dit-Biot.
Published in Dawn, October 23rd, 2026
