"Ten Things You Need to Know About Haruki Murakami..." from The Sunday Times.

Another review about a book concerning our friend Murakami Haruki.







Suter, Rebecca. The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki Between Japan and the United States. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008. 250 pages.

The author Haruki Murakami is a difficult figure to categorize. Abroad in the West, Murakami is primarily known for his longer works of fiction which tackle such issues as urban malaise, American-styled capitalism, and the memory of war in Japan. However, in his native Japan, Murakami is still primarily known for his short stories and, it should be noted, this is the image that Murakami promotes of himself both in the West and in Japan. However, there is another aspect of Murakami’s literary career that is less mentioned in the West: his position as one of the most prominent translators of English language, mostly American, literature into Japanese. This issue, amongst others, is one of the primary focuses of University of Sydney lecturer of Japanese Studies Rebecca Suter’s recent book The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki Between Japan and the United States.

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I imagine most of you are on the Random House Murakami newsletter, but in case you aren't:
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Hello community,

I just bought a heap of Murakami novels in Japanese to improve my grasp on the language, and am looking forward to re-reading and re-discovering one of my favorite authors in his original language.

Now, I was wondering... I have heard that Murakami has distanced himself from his two earliest novels and this is the reason they have not been published in English outside of Japan.

Can anybody in this community point me to a source (either English or Japanese) in which he actually says this? Or do you know the reasoning behind this? I've been googling here and there but with no luck.

Thank you to anyone who replies.

Has a good chapter about Murakami and Postmodernism







Murakami Fuminobu. Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin. London: Routledge, 2005. 206 pages.

One of the most difficult issues when pursuing the study of a country which is based on systems of ethics, philosophy, religion, and culture from one’s own, is the application of theories, thought, and logic that are alien to the country coming under analysis. In his book Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin University of Hong Kong professor of Japanese Studies Fuminobu Murakami attempts not only to analyze the works of the authors Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto through the lenses of European/American theories of Postmodernism, Feminism, and Postcolonialism, and a touch of Queer Theory, but to show how such theories after being imported into Japan have influenced the works of these authors and thinkers while at the same showing how such theories are a bit ill-fitting within a Japanese context.

Beginning with Haruki Murakami, an author whose fictional works straddle the line between literary and popular fiction, Professor Murakami engages in a careful critique of Murakami’s early works, especially Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and Norwegian Wood to display how Murakami’s characters reject the “modernist” world of advancement, evolution, emotional love, and brutal violence for a “postmodern” world where ambition, and with it love and violence, has ceased to be and where everyone lives in harmony because there is no desire. Professor Murakami, however, states that this autistic, postmodern world leaves Haruki Murakami a bit on edge because of its lack of emotion and love, so in his later books, such as The Wind-up Bird Chronicle violence blossoms because love, and along with it, hate, is present. Haruki Murakami, according to Professor Murakami is trying to come to terms with the modernist concept of love and the violence attached to it.

Professor Murakami’s section concerning Banana Yoshimoto, one of Japan’s most read authors of popular literature, mainly focuses on Yoshimoto’s debut novel Kitchen as well as her novel N.P. Within this section, Professor Murakami takes on Yoshimoto’s passive feminist critique of modernist sexual relations. Although sexual activity is a major theme within the works of prominent female novelists such as Hitomi Kanehara Ami Sakurai, and Ami Yamada, sex in Yoshimoto’s novels lack the intensity found in these novels and more often that not resemble the lackadaisical sex found in Murakami’s early novels. This is significant because instead of desire for sex, Yoshimoto’s characters instead desire such things as food and incestuous, if not actually sexual, relations with family members or pseudo-family members instead of others outside of their homogeneous group. This aspect of Yoshimoto’s characters displays their postmodern natures and unwillingness to live in a modernist society of “traditional” love and violence.

Sections three and four of the book look at the careers of Takaaki Yoshimoto, Banana’s father, and Kojin Karatani, two of Japan’s most prominent philosophers. Professor Murakami does a fine job of developing an overview of these two men’s careers and mapping out the development of their though and their impact on the Japanese literary world. Heavily influenced by the works of Karl Marx and well aware of the European-American imperialism in the worlds of philosophy, political thought, and literary criticism, Murakami maps out how Yoshimoto and Karatani fight this imperialism. Unlike Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto, the works of Yoshimoto and Karatani, especially Yoshimoto, are not widely available in other languages other than Japanese, so Professor Murakami analysis is quite welcome.

Unlike a good number of books that tackle complex subjects such as modernism, postmodernism, and postcolonialism, Professor Murakami’s book, although it gets bogged down in philosophical, linguistic jargon from time to time, is a relatively easy read and he aids the reader in supplying histories of modernism and postmodernism in Europe/America and in Japan so the newcomer to such issues will not be left out in a sea of pedantic, incomprehensible language. While maybe not for the common reader of Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, etc., Professor Murakami’s book is quite welcome in the field of Japanese literary studies for its insights into the works of Murakami and Yoshimoto, and the critical introductions to the works of Takaaki Yoshimoto and Kojin Karatani.

After watching the BBC documentary Imagine...A Wild Sheep Chase, about my favourite author Haruki Murakami, I got thinking about what his books mean to me. The first work of his I read was Norwegian Wood. I ordered the book just before I went away for a few days to work in a kitchen. When I got home, the book had arrived in the post. I was exhausted from working washing plates for 12 hours a day, so I relaxed with the book. It was a revelation to me. Clever, honest writing - I felt as if he was writing exactly to me. I read and I read, stopping only to order my next fix of Murakami - Kafka On The Shore. That book hit me just as much. So surreal, yet still spoke to me. I knew this was a writer whose work I must cherish.

Shortly after finishing those two books, I found myself in a full time job. It was dull and monotonous - working in a university library. One day when returning books to the fiction section, I came across a copy of The Elephant Vanishes (a short story collection by Murakami). Every time I had to shelve a trolley of books, I would slink off and read a story from that book. It really helped to transport me somewhere else, away from the tedium. Similarly, I bought a copy of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. By this stage, working full time was really draining my spirit. Every lunch time, I would put my headphones in and walk down to a local park. I'd eat my lunch and read the book. For an hour, I was transported away to a whole different place - where I would forget about the tedious work of the rest of my day. (It was around this time I got a new favourite band in Belle & Sebastian. I would listen to them most lunchtimes, and their music seems to have formed a bond with Murakami). When I think about that book (or that band) I remember the smell of the grass in the park, the feeling of being relief in the prose I held in my hands, and the disappointment when I had to close the book and walk back to work. I purposely never opened that book any other time than in that park, it was my little lunchtime treat to keep me sane.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/imagine/article/haruki_murakami.shtml

Alan Yentob explores the mysterious, offbeat, sexually charged world of Japan's most popular and internationally acclaimed writer.

Haruki Murakami is incomparable, a literary novelist tipped for the Nobel Prize, who writes cool, witty, and often surreal bestsellers. Notoriously enigmatic and media-shy Murakami has always shunned radio and television. However, he agreed to a rare and frank off-camera interview with the producer for this programme.

In this impressionistic film, Alan Yentob travels in Japan through the strange, labyrinthine landscape of Murakami's fiction on a jazz-fuelled 'wild sheep chase' of a journey. In Tokyo and Kobe he delves into the social and political background of Murakami's work and encounters his fans, critics, translators and a talking cat.

A Wild Sheep Chase: In Search Of Haruki Murakami, BBC One, 24th June 2008, 10.45pm.
(That is BBC One TV.)

http://community.livejournal.com/hipsterbookclub/1081759.html?nc=13

Nothing major, but I think we could enlighten some folks on why we like Murakami.

I just finished reading, loved it and I was wondering... I couldn't help notice the name of Yuki's father seems to be an anagram of Haruki Murakami's own name... Do you know if he found himself in the character, or maybe a face of him, I believed he the author resonated more in the narrator... Anyway, great book, can't wait to read more.

Saw the post on the tattoo inspired from The Wild Sheep Chase, and thought I'd share this. Pretty awesome tattoo inspired by, well, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

More photos, including the tattoo process, here.