In Tokyo this month to promote his latest work and research story ideas, Barry Eisler shares his thoughts on the art of fiction -- and martial arts.

Barry Eisler, a native of New Jersey currently residing in the San Francisco Bay area, spent three years living in Tokyo and Osaka in the mid-1990s and has made "innumerable trips back and forth since then." Even before his departure from Japan, Eisler had begun moving toward writing. His first novel, "Rain Fall," (G.P. Putnam's Sons, reviewed on this page Jan. 26) was published in July 2002. That work was well received, and an action-packed sequel, "Hard Rain," appeared this past summer.

Eisler's books bring a hard-boiled fiction series back to Japan for the first time in well over a decade. His protagonist, John Rain, is a half-American, half-Japanese assassin for hire, a Vietnam veteran who combines deadly martial arts skills with a variety of esoteric, high-tech weaponry. If the mayhem that Rain metes out to his adversaries seems authentic, it's no doubt because his creator took some real thumps and bruises learning the trade: Eisler is an experienced practitioner of Greco-Roman wrestling and judo, and has also dabbled in karate, tae kwan do and boxing.