Well, Murakami did not win the Nobel Prize this year. But I’m back on my Murakami bullshit anyway.

(Brief aside to note that I missed out on purchasing a translation of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian for 799 yen immediately after the announcement because some other Mercari maniac had the exact same thought. I saw the moment it was purchased, essentially. It was not marked as sold when I searched, and then by the time I tapped on the item, it had been marked as sold. Alas. Would’ve been a steal of a deal!)

I’m going back through Distant Drums and covering some of the chapters that I did not look at thoroughly. In this post, I’m looking at a really short chapter called ローマ (Rome) in which Murakami outlines his reasoning for choosing Rome as a sort of headquarters for his three years in Europe: It’s warm, and he has a friend living there.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

He also writes briefly about the work required to leave Japan and how he felt exhausted upon arrival and needed two weeks to recover.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

We left Japan filled with the sense of moving. We were going to be away from Japan for an extended period of several years, so we rented the house we’d been living in to an acquaintance. We stuffed everything we needed for life abroad into suitcases. This was actually quite difficult work. Think about it: Your average person has no idea what or how much is necessary for life in southern Europe for a few years. As you consider it, everything starts to seem essential; reconsider it, and nothing seems necessary at all.

I wrapped up the work I was doing and managed have the regular features I was writing closed out. For one of the magazines—after being begged—I wrote six months’ worth of essays and submitted them all together. I met with the people I needed to and gave the necessary goodbyes. We found someone to handle things that came up while we were away. There was so much to do, and no matter how much we did, the things we had to deal with kept piling up. By the end I didn’t know whether we were progressing or regressing. I couldn’t even remember what we’d packed or the number of suitcases we had.

我々は引っ越しをするような気分で、日本をあとにした。何年か長期的に日本を留守にするわけだから、それまで住んでいた家も知人に貸した。外国生活に必要なものをあらいざらいスーツケースにつめこんだ。でもこれはけっこう大変な作業だった。だって何年間か南ヨーロッパで生活するにあたってどんなものがどれくらい必要かなんて、普通の人間にそう簡単にわかるものではないのだ。必要だと思えば何もかもが必要であるように気がしてくるし、要らないと思えば、何もかもが要らないようにも思えてくる。

とりかかっていた仕事はまとめてかたづけ、連載はなんとか打ち切らせていただいた。ある雑誌のためには—どうしてもそうしてくれと言われたので—六ヶ月ぶんのエッセイをまとめ書きして渡した。しかるべき人と会って、しかるべき挨拶をした。留守中の雑用をとりしきってくれる人をみつけた。やるべきことは山ほどあって、どれだけやってもあとからあとから用事が出てきた。最後には自分が前に進んでいるのか後ろに進んでいるのかさえわからなくなってきたくらいだった。スーツケースに何が入っているのか、いったい幾つのスーツケースを持ってきたのか、それさえ思い出せなかった。(26)

Very interesting to note that they really do give up on their life in Japan temporarily. He rents out his house. He stops taking work, but only after stopping his regular serializations, going as far as doing six months’ of work at the request of an editor. As someone who not too long ago wrote out three to four months worth of newsletters to get ahead, I can understand how Murakami might feel this way.

It’s clear that this introduction was written after the trip was complete and that some of the subsequent writing was written closer to the moment of the events, which is just one more reason this is such an interesting collection. I really hope it gets translated at some point.

A reminder that you can see all the posts in this series on my page for Distant Drums.