Meet Emmanuel Ruben at the Hyères book celebration which will present his new work on Japan

“This work was not planned “immediately loose its author, Emmanuel Ruben. The use of Japanexplicit reference to the travel accounts of Nicolas Bouvier (1) takes us, under the pen of the Toulon, four months in the footsteps of one of the best known characters in the land of the rising sun: Ino Tadataka, first surveyor in Japan. “The man with 40 million steps” who walks 40,000 kilometers to draw and measure the ratings of the Japanese archipelago. The adventure of a (second) life for this fisherman’s son, born in 1745, adopted by sake brewers and who, at 55, decides to stop everything to learn mathematics and astronomy in self -taught, before deciding to measure a degree of earthly latitude. What is going to work to do by walking …

Training surveyor, Emmanuel Ruben could only be fascinated by this extraordinary character – “Contemporary surveyor of Napoleon”, he wrote-met during his studies.

His bike for traveling companion

When he takes the plane for the country of the rising sun, his bike in the hold, it is to join a writing residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto, with the intention of learning more about this master of cartography to write a novel about his life. Until then, Japan was one of its memories. Childhood on tatamios first, adolescent and student readings. Among them, The Japanese chronicle from Nicolas Bouvier. Bouvier will also accompany him on this trip. Four months between November 2023 and spring 2024, with his travel companion. The author will then embark on the roads with the idea of ​​registering his wheel in the footsteps of his character in a novel. “He was sure that I was not going to do 40,000 km …”smiles the author who still travels more than 3000 to discover the mountainous landscapes, regions like Hokkaido in the snow (“I did not go by bicycle for once”, Rightly)… lives the earthquake of January 1 to more than 200 km from the epicenter of the earthquake, lets itself be caught up in the inner sea of ​​Seto Nakai, the “mare nostrum nippon”, whoe Bring back to its essential (element), rolling the interior islands at night to make a vacuum after Hiroshima… even finds zyntaria, the imaginary archipelago of his childhood, in Hakodate.

Story on Instagram

Very quickly won him the desire to tell the stages of his trip, his meetings, his learning. He chooses to do so on the only social network that links him to his author’s life: Instagram.

2,200 signs maximum. A real writing school. “” Often, when I arrived at the end of the number of authorized signs, I told myself that I still had a lot to tell. “ He also posts photos, drawings he has taken from all the places where his bike led him. “I was finally completely exceeded …” By this feeling of ecstasy that accompanied his daily life for 4 months. “I fully filled a whole notebook whose drawings that illustrate the book are from.” Like the “Kanji”, Japanese characters he learned to draw.

This travel account on Instagram has transformed into this magnificent work made up of a hundred texts, “ almost a per day “, Accompanied by superb illustrations born under his pencil line, and where the soul of Ino Tadataka hovers.

Above all, The use of Japan is not an end. It is a beginning. The novel inspired by Ino Tadataka, Emmanuel Ruben is keen to write it. “We believe that a trip ends but we soon realize that he is just beginning.”

1. The use of the worlda great classic of travel literature, by Emmanuel Ruben. Stock editions. 288 pages. 21.90 euros.