This is Planet Earth calling 　 　　　　　　　　　　　　By KIMIE ITAKURA 　 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Asahi Evening News 　 As a teenager more than 30 years ago, Katsusuke Miyauchi wanted to see the world by himself and to become a novelist with global vision. The ambitious boy hit the road soon after graduating from high school in Kyushu. 　 Having traveled over most of Japan, Miyauchi went to the United States for the first time in 1967 and has since visited more than 50 countries. 　 His latest work, "Boku wa Shiso-cho ni Naritai" (I want to become an archaeopteryx), is the fruit of his quest to write some "world literature" of universal appeal. 　 Set in contemporary America, the two-volume (1,800 yen each) novel published by Shueisha features people of different generations and ethnocultural backgrounds. Its elaborate plot not only entertains but prompts serious reflection on the fate of humanity and planet Earth. 　 "I was first inspired to write this novel in my mid-twenties, while living in New York as an illegal foreign worker," said the 53-year-old novelist. 　 "I had little money and nobody to depend on, and people kept asking me, `What are you?,' as back then Japanese were not so common over there. I eventually made it a rule to answer, `I belong to the human race, a category of Primates.'" 　 Feeling lonely and alienated, Miyauchi happened to learn in a book called "We Are Not Alone" about an American scientist who had been trying to contact extraterrestrials with huge parabolic antennae. "Knowing about him invigorated me and helped me develop a more detached, comprehensive view." 　 His latest novel portrays an aging American scientist named Isaac Newman, who has never given up his 40-year-old dream of getting in contact with extraterrestrials. Other colorful characters include an astronaut of mixed Afro-American and Irish parentage, a group of Native Americans fighting a desperate war for independence, Japanese-Americans of different generations and Indian guerrillas from Central America. 　 The central figure is Jiro Arima, a 22-year-old Japanese reputed to have had telekinetic power in his early teens. Emerging from adolescence, Jiro has seemingly lost most of his supernatural power but remains a scientific curiosity, as his brain is found to emit strong electric and alpha waves when he tries to activate his telekinesis. 　 Newman believes Jiro could act as a medium in an attempt to communicate with intelligent life forms in outer space. He invites the Japanese boy to his trailer home in the Arizona desert, nearby his astronomical observatory covered in parabolic antennae. 　 Jiro ends up wandering alone in the desert, where he gets to know a group of radical Native Americans fighting the federal government. Living with them, he falls in love with a Native American girl, who is later killed by one of her comrades. Jiro then becomes involved in the Native Americans' scheme to join forces with native Indian guerrillas in Central America. 　 Jiro finds himself absorbing the joys, hopes and fears of the people he encounters, as if his mind had become a spiritual container. 　 The novel ends with Jiro helping with Newman's experiment and trying to open his mental "container" to transmit the voices of those spirits into outer space. His mind keeps expanding and catching other voices on the Earth, until finally it is like a radio transmitting a powerful congregation of human voices, hopeful of eliciting a response from the surrounding universe. 　Awaken the young 　 Born in 1944 in Harbin, a city in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, Miyauchi grew up in Kagoshima Prefecture. "From childhood, I harbored an ambition to travel the world to feel how big this planet is," he said. 　 "Spinning my globe around, I kept dreaming of a world journey. You can get the feeling of an island's size by walking round it. I wanted to do the same with the Earth. 　 "Along with that wish, I quite naturally became determined to be a novelist," he said. 　 He had begun an earlier draft of the novel that became "Boku wa Shiso-cho ni Naritai" during his days in New York, but had failed to finish it. 　 Aged 27, he returned to Japan, and after taking various odd jobs, finally made his debut as a novelist at the age of 35. He never abandoned his dream of a work of "world literature," however, and moved to New York again in 1983 to resume his project. 　 During the following five years, he energetically sought experience and information for the pending novel, and gained the friendship of Sioux Native Americans who had belonged to the American Indian Movement (AIM). In February 1973, some 200 AIM members, led by Russell Means and Dennis Banks, had seized the reservation hamlet of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, site of an 1890 massacre by U.S. troops of more than 200 Sioux men, women and children, declaring it the "Independent Oglala Sioux Nation" and demanding government　redress of Native American grievances. In a siege by federal marshals that lasted until the Sioux surrendered on May 8, 1973, two Sioux were killed and one federal marshal seriously injured in exchanges of gunfire. 　 Means and his followers had not given up their battle against the federal government, and Miyauchi even joined their escapade to sneak into Nicaragua to help local Indian guerrillas. 　 "It took me 15 years to finish this novel," said Miyauchi, who has lived in Japan since December 1991. "I should use the next ten years to explore other literary themes I have yet to work on." 　 His mission, as he sees it, is to awaken more youngsters to the joy of reading literature, now especially that society is visibly ailing, with increasing signs of public fatigue. 　 Miyauchi added that he hopes to have his novel translated into English and other languages to prove it worthy of being ranked among "world literature." 　 "I should feel my efforts truly rewarded if non-Japanese readers were to tell me that they had been impressed by my novel," he said. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 　　　　　　　　Asahi Evening News　August 23,1998