Accumulated over the decades, the bulk of fan mail sent to Henry Miller (1891-1980) contains a surprising number of letters from Japan. Reaching the peak of his popularity in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s, Miller’s Japanese readers began sending fan mail in both English and Japanese to the American author. In more than one instance, Miller replied and even began an extensive correspondence with the admirer.

The purpose of this presentation is to examine two types of Miller’s fan mail to answer the following question: what defines a typical fan mail from that which sparks the beginning of a correspondence? By looking at the Japanese fan letters in the archival materials at the University of California, Los Angeles, from both one-time writers and those that developed into regular correspondents, I will expand on the critical discussion surrounding fan mail by considering what may have been Miller’s motives in responding to particular letters arriving from a country to which he was strongly attracted. As a foremost scholar on fandom, Mark Duffett has discerned that in some cases fans wrote and either distanced themselves from the icon, or “identified with their heroes by expressing shared individualism and rebelliousness” (Understanding Fandom, Bloomsbury 2013, p. 51). Japanese fans share the common trend of desiring to engage with a celebrity, yet Miller’s literary themes of individualism and rebellion against society appear as a key theme in the fan letters from his Japanese readers.