To write, you need very few things. Before, a pencil and paper. Now, a computer or smartphone. To be able to write, you need something that is as commonplace and elusive as that, the definition of that 'something'. Jorge Malpartida Tabuchi (Arequipa, 1990) has found in information and imagination the way to give meaning to that something that he turns into narratives. That 'something' is in his DNA, just like his Nikkei origin, which, in a certain way, also filters into his writings.
With more than 12 years in the daily work of a journalist, Jorge has managed to alternate with the best profession in the world, literary creation, university teaching and other tasks with some similarity. But what has turned his routine around has been the publication of his book of short stories Contra toda autoridad, menos... (Aletheya, 2024), which has been developed in the master's degree in Creative Writing that he completed at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP).
“The book manuscript is my thesis, it is the reflection of a three-year academic process. The interesting thing is that, in addition to being an academic space, it is a space to create, organize and develop an author’s vision.” In the case of this Nikkei Arequipeño (his mother is from Jauja and his Japanese grandparents migrated to Lima and then to Jauja), who grew up in this city but also in Bolivia, his eyes are trained in journalism. In Lima he worked as a journalist for the newspaper El Comercio and has published in this and other digital media such as the portal Entre Líneas.

“I write constantly, every day, about politics, police, economics, culture… I’m always connected to writing,” says Jorge, who in 2018 wrote the chronicle Patato: el goleador humilde que mirar al frente , about an Arequipa footballer from the Melgar FC team, which became a book (Quimera Editores). The following year, another chronicle, “No hay nada que puedo hacer por ti”, about a victim of the Covid-19 pandemic, was a finalist in the IX El Búho Literary Contest. On that occasion, it was presented under the very Japanese pseudonym Genkidama.
Origin of letters

“There is a universe of words that I heard since I was a child: okane , ocha , oyichan… if you notice, the language of migrants is always mixed with the urban,” Jorge explains from the other side of the screen, from Arequipa. He says that he sees this reflection in his own literature, in the gaze of authors such as another Nikkei writer, Augusto Higa, in the Arequipa-native Oswaldo Reynoso and the Chilean Alberto Fuguet, or the Colombian Andrés Caicedo. These are some of his references for their literary worlds from the linguistic, environmental or thematic point of view.
The short story “Nothing Serious,” from his latest book, has that youthful theme so often addressed by these authors who also mix voices from the street or content from pop culture such as rock and cinema. “They are characters of anguish, there is a look at the past but not of nostalgia,” adds the writer who, in his personal life, has been rather homely, somewhat nerdy, he confesses; which he was able to counteract with journalism that gave him contact with the street, the night and its characters. “Without that contact with the violence of street life my literature would be colder and more intellectual.”
There are also other urban elements in Malpartida Tabuchi’s literature: UFOs, eroticism and science fiction, for example. Many of the stories are set in Arequipa, where the writer now lives. He is also a Communications teacher at the National University of San Agustín (UNSA) where he studied. Perhaps this teaching streak led him to write a series of educational stories for children about caring for the environment for the Sociedad Eléctrica del Sur Oeste (SEAL) entitled Sealito . “I write a lot,” says Jorge and the evidence abounds.
The sound and the landscape
Returning to Contra toda autoridad, menos… , if it were a song it would be a punk, without a doubt. In fact, Jorge has a playlist on Spotify that brings together hardcore, punk and otaku music, from The Clash and Bink 182 to the Peruvians Leusemia and Diazepunk, who were the soundtrack to his book. This semi-retro world of discmen is inhabited by obsessive beings (otakus, TV reporters, UFO hunters) and by a critique that Jorge tries to make “less political” or combative (hence the “except…” in the title).
“Rebelling against authority, time, family, work, society…” Perhaps these ellipses have to do with what is not yet found, what remains in the middle of the questions and answers that his characters ask themselves. For this Nikkei who has the particularity of having been born in Arequipa (where there is not a large colony of migrants) music connects him with the urban and gives him a connection that was elusive on many occasions. “In Bolivia I was the 'Peruvian boy', not the Nikkei.”
Thanks to his mother, he was able to visit Jauja, the other land of his ancestors, where a significant Japanese colony arrived during the Second World War. There, on Ayacucho Street, the Tabuchi Matsumoto family lived sixty years ago.
“My obachan had her sewing workshop there, and my oyichan, in some quiet room, smoked and read the newspapers in the afternoons.” That setting became a vital space for his writing that is not present in this book, but that Jorge values because of authors like Edgardo Rivera Martínez from Jauja. “He is present in me as an author, he spoke of the homeland but with universality, I would like to do something similar.”
Nature and letters
People who are trying to explore their identity and passions. That seems to be the 'something' that hides the narrative identity of Jorge Malpartida who continues to reap what he sows with letters. Two of his latest recognitions are the OEI Prize for Science and Technology Stories , promoted by the Organization of Ibero-American States, in 2023, and the IV National University Floral Games , organized by the National University of Trujillo in October 2024.
“I knew you would come looking for me”, his science fiction and technological dystopia story, was included in the OEI Prize anthology, which was published this year under the title Otras formas de ser humano (Cía Naviera Ilimitada Editores). It deals with a drug that is used to recover emotions. Some of the ones Jorge has received this year must have been very satisfying (in August of this year he received an honorable mention for the story “ La del 1008 ”, which he submitted to the “Tócame con tus palabras” contest).
But the highlight came in Trujillo, where he arrived to receive the first place award in the Teachers category for his story “I Would Do Anything for Money,” which mixes the police genre with his deformed Nikkei memoirs. “This trip to the north comes with the influence of Watanabe. Over the years, his verses shaped an imaginary territory that now, finally, I can know,” wrote the young journalist. A declaration of origin like his connection with the letters that return him to the screen and the keyboard in search of the next something that will become news or fiction.

© 2025 Javier García Wong-Kit