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I think when we shot 'Tokyo Drift' I was a little too young to really understand what made Han who he is, and then I got older, and you start to make a little bit of money, and you realize that money will never buy you happiness.

Family tends to be one of the recurring themes in my fiction.

As I grew up, I was continually to suffer hardships in different realms of life - in my family, in my relationship to Japanese society and in my way of living at large in the latter half of the twentieth century.

I come personally from a broken family, divorced very early in my childhood, a family with its own share of troubles, so I think that was very influential in both me believing that someday I would consistently devote myself to my own family that I created, but I think it also really affects my view of the world.

I studied Japanese language and culture in college and graduate school, and afterward went to work in Tokyo, where I met a young man whose father was a famous businessman and whose mother was a geisha. He and I never discussed his parentage, which was an open secret, but it fascinated me.

A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.

To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.

Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections.

What I believe in touches many aspects of religious and spiritual thought. Mainly I'm influenced and inspired by the eastern yogi's aspect of mysticism, Which is, I think, the future.

I discovered philosophy in my youth when I read 'wildly,' and thus I was exposed to the world of ideas.