As a fan of Shibumi, Kojima opened Satori, the prequel written by Don Winslow, with unease. The first two pages —a maple leaf and the recollection of killing a father-figure— dispelled his doubts; he described the prose as so visual that an opera-house assassination scene played in his mind with image and sound, like a storyboard ready to be filmed.
When Kojima was still a student who paid almost exclusive attention to Western novels, Shibumi, written by the American Trevanian, introduced him to the ancient Japanese concept of shibumi. He did not aspire merely to be a man with that suave, detached elegance, but to master it completely.
When Kojima reread Shibumi in 2006 as part of his research for Metal Gear Solid 4, he was startled by parallels with ideas he had already used: a combat discipline similar to CQC, the heightened threat perception he learned in scout/tracking training, and the merciful murder of a parental figure, which he related to Big Boss and The Boss. His reappraisal led him to recommend the novel to the development team.
Kojima finished reading William Hussey’s “Killing Jericho.” He said he totally agreed with Akiyuki Sengai’s recommendation for fans of classic mystery and that the book was really good. He described the story as being based on the history of Britain’s Traveller community and travelling fairs and told in the first person by a former police officer who has fallen on hard times; he said it initially feels like an old-fashioned hard-boiled detective story but balances serial-killer elements, clever mystery solving, and Deaver-like twists. He said the ending would surprise readers and that he was looking forward to reading more of the series.
Kojima finished reading Eric Heisserer’s “Simultaneous” during the flight. He explained that the novel begins with reincarnation and past-life regression before becoming intertwined with a series of murders, and identified its distinctive concept of “simultaneous lives,” in which multiple people in the same generation share a single soul. He said the novel is driven less by its lore or world-building than by its cinematic, Nolan-esque narrative momentum, and also feels cinematic because the threat of an unknown serial killer is confronted by an investigator, a counselor, and an ordinary patient rather than by a vast government conspiracy or institution.
The day before Sakyo Komatsu’s death, Kojima saw Japan Sinks on a special display in a bookstore and bought it; he felt a sense of fate because an earthquake had forced the public to rediscover the author. Seeking to understand what Komatsu might have felt about Tohoku, Kojima reacquired several of Komatsu’s works, and an adult rereading of Virus superimposed a scene of skeletons in Tokyo Bay with 3/11 in his mind and moved him to tears.