Category Archives: Murakami

Dropped Namedrops

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Chapter 29 has some clear changes right from the beginning: The chapter title in the Complete Works edition is “Lake, Pantyhose” while in English translation and in the original paperback it is “Lake, Masatomi Kondo, Pantyhose.”

In this chapter, Watashi and the granddaughter swim across the lake, make their way through the subterranean INKling cave, and eventually get to the subway tunnels. This sounds like it could be a very short chapter, but this is Murakami we’re talking about, so we experience it through Watashi’s thoughts, which become ever more distracted as he descends into the End of the World.

Watashi thinks again of the woman wearing bracelets in the Skyline, and he turns the whole thing into an invented movie scene. The translation is really exceptional around this point, pages 305-306 in the English edition. When the granddaughter asks him what he’s thinking about, Murakami name drops some actors, which he cuts from the Complete Works edition. They remain in the English translation and look like this:

“What were you thinking about?”

“Movie people. Masatomi Kondo and Ryoko Nakano and Tsutomu Yamazaki.” (307)

This is the only place where the names are dropped in the chapter, so it’s not surprising it gets cut…unless they pop up somewhere in later chapters.

I had trouble finding Masatomi Kondo until I checked the Japanese version and realized that Birnbaum had mistaken Masaomi for Masatomi. Pretty funny mistake—shows you how important Google is. I’ve been meaning to write something about the new translations of Murakami’s first two novels because Birnbaum has a similar issue there—he makes mistakes with the names of books and movies, likely because they would have been difficult to track down back in the late 80s and early 90s without the Internet.

At any rate, here is Masaomi Kondo in some commercials that might have aired around this time. The car isn’t a Skyline, but I think this is almost exactly what Murakami was imagining. Some great shots of Kyoto back in the day as well in one of the CMs:

https://youtu.be/QcDo7sLMLAE

And there are no mistakes with Ryoko Nakano and Tsutomu Yamazaki, well known (at least abroad) for his work in Itami Juzo’s legendary Tampopo.

Birnbaum makes liberal cuts throughout the rest of the chapter as well, especially in a section where Watashi spends half a page trying to remember the last time he took a piss (gripping literature). This section is notable, however, for the first appearance of the “merry-go-round” image, which he would go on to use in the collection of stories Dead Heat on a Merry-go-round. Nice little easter egg for extreme Harukists.

One of the most interesting translation techniques is with the following section. The granddaughter is explaining to Watashi about how corrupt the System is, about how the Factory and System are controlled by the same forces to play each off the other for profit. Here is the Japanese original and my translation, in which the granddaughter explains the whole thing in a long piece of dialogue:

「祖父は『組織』の中で研究を進めているうちにそのことに気づいたのよ。結局のところ『組織』は国家をまきこんだ私企業にすぎないのよ。私企業の目的は営利の追求よ。営利の追求のためにははんだってやるわ。『組織』は情報所有権の保護を表向きの看板にしているけれど、そんなのは口先だけのことよ。祖父はもし自分がこのまま研究をつづけたら事態はもっとひどいことになるだろうと予測したの。脳を好き放題に改造し改変する技術がどんどん進んでいったら、世界の状況や人間存在はむちゃくちゃになってしまうだろうってね。そこには抑制と歯止めがなくちゃいけないのよ。でも『組織』にも『工場』にもそれはないわ。だから祖父はプロジェクトを降りたの。あなたや他の計算士の人たちには気の毒だけど、それ以上研究を進めるわけにはいかなかったのよ。そうすれば先に行ってもっと沢山の犠牲者が出すはずよ」

“Grandfather realized that as he continued his research at the System. In the end, the System is nothing more than a private corporation that had enveloped the state. The goal of a private corporation is the pursuit of profit. And they’ll do anything to get those profits. The System advertised itself as a protector of informational property rights, but it’s just lip service. Grandfather guessed that if he continued his research, things would only get worse. He said that the state of the world and human existence would would go to crap if the technology to modify and change the brain however you wanted was continued to develop. Controls and restraints were critical, but there were none—not in the System or the Factory. So he left the project. This was too bad for you and other Calcutecs, but he couldn’t allow the research to continue any longer. If he had, there would have been even heavier consequences.” (432)

Birnbaum takes the second half of this dialogue (right when readers would start to get bored) and turns it into Watashi’s thoughts. He cuts here and there and embellishes a little toward the end to get the character in there, but I think it’s effective. Very interesting technique:

“That’s what struck Grandfather while he was in the System. After all, the System is really just private enterprise that enlisted state interests. And private enterprise is always after profit. Grandfather realized that if he went ahead with his research, he’d only make things worse.”

So the System hangs out a sign: In Business to Protect Information. But it’s all a front. If the old man hands over technologies to reconfigure the brain, he seals the fate of humanity. To save the world, he steps down. Too bad about the defunct Calcutecs—and me, who gets stuck in the End of the World. (300)

Abstract Instruments

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thecellist

Chapter 28 “Musical Instruments” is a short End of the World chapter. Boku and the Librarian meet the Caretaker of the Power Station, a quiet young man with a collection of instruments he enjoys looking at. Boku peruses the instruments, tries out an accordion, and then receives it as a gift before leaving.

Just some minor cuts in this translation. Birnbaum avoids translating 煮込み as soup. He also eliminates a chess board as one of the Caretaker’s collection of beautiful objects.

The most interesting cut/revision is Birnbaum’s decision to abstract all the instruments rather than give their names. Here is Murakami’s description of the Caretaker’s room and my translation:

寝室の壁に沿って様々な種類の楽器が並んでいた。そのすべては骨董品といってもいいくらい古びたもので大部分は弦楽器だった。マンドリンやギターやチェロや小型のハープなんかだ。弦のおおかたは赤く錆びつき、切れ、あるいはまったく紛失していた。この街では代替品をみつけることはできないだろう。(421)

All sorts of musical instruments line the wall of the bedroom. They are all old enough to be considered antiques, and the majority are string instruments. There are things like a mandolin, a guitar, a cello, and a small harp. The strings are rusted, broken, or nonexistent. I’m unlikely to find replacements in the Town.

Birnbaum (or his editor) cuts the sentence with the names and the final sentence:

Arranged along the wall are various musical instruments. All are old. Most of them are string instruments, the strings hopelessly rusted, broken or missing. (293)

This happens elsewhere as well. バスーンに似た形の大型の管楽器 (a large wind instrument resembling a bassoon) becomes “a large tubular instrument, one obviously meant to be blown from the end.” ヴァイオリン (violin) becomes “…a wooden instrument. It is hollow and sandglass-shaped…” And last but not least 手風琴 (てふうきん, accordion) becomes “a box hinged with leather folds.”

This effectively extends Boku’s experience of living in the town to a greater degree than Murakami achieves in the original. Very nicely executed. Birnbaum buys into Murakami’s concept…and I’m tempted to say he translates like a fanboy would write fan fiction (and, oh yes, I’ve considered writing End of the World fan fiction). It’s a very nice touch to this chapter, one that increases the disconnection with a strange world that should be more familiar than it is.

Generosity

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Chapter 26 “Power Station” has very few cuts but many examples of how generous Birnbaum is as a translator. In the chapter, Boku and the Librarian wander out to the Power Station near the entrance of the woods in search of a musical instrument.

Here’s a quick cut. This is Birnbaum’s version:

We encounter beasts scavenging for food in the withered grasses. Their pale gold tinged with white, strands of fur grown longer than in autumn, their coats thicker. Yet their hunger is plain; they are lean and pitiful. Their shoulder blades underscore the skin of their backs like the armature of old furniture, their spindly legs knock on swollen joints. The corners of their mouths hang sallow and tired, their eyes lack life. (276)

And the original with my translation:

枯れた草の上を獣たちが食べ物を求めてさまよっている姿にも出会った。彼らは白みを帯びた淡い金色の毛皮に包まれていた。その毛は秋よりはずっと長く、そして厚くなっていたが、それでも彼らの体が前に比べて遥かにやせこけていることははっきりと見てとれた。肩の上には古いソファーのスプリングのようにくっきりとした形の骨がとびだし、口もとの肉はだらしなく見えるまでにたるんで下に垂れ下がっていた。眼には生彩がとぼしく、四肢の関節は球形にふくらんでいる。変わっていないのは額から突き出た一本の白い角だけだった。角は以前と同じように、まっすぐに誇らしげに空を突いていた。 (400)

We also come upon the beasts wandering about the withered grass in search of food. They are covered in light gold hair tinged with white. The hair is much longer than in autumn, and it’s gotten much thicker, but it is clear from looking at them that they are far skinnier than before. The bones on their shoulders stick out clearly like the springs in an old sofa, and the flesh around their mouths sags so that they appear disheveled. The luster in their eyes is gone, and the joints on their limbs are swollen. The one thing that hasn’t changed is the single white horn projecting out from their foreheads. The horn is, as before, straight and pointed proudly into the sky.

It’s kind of a strange cut. I imagine he does so to maintain the kind of somber, winter mood as they head out. It’s also not essential info that needs to be kept. You can tell from my plain translation that Birnbaum is working very hard to render a poetic version. The word “armature” is a great example of this.

Birnbaum does this throughout the chapter. Here’s another example, followed by the Japanese:

We decide to walk around the building. The Power Station is slightly longer than wide, its side wall similarly dotted with clerestory vents, but it has no other door. (278)

我々は建物をぐるりと一周してみることにした。発電所は正面よりは奥行の方がいくぶんながく、そちらの壁にも正面と同じように高く小さな窓が一列に並び、窓からあの奇妙な風音が聞こえていた。しかしドアはない。 (403)

“Clerestory vents” is the much more literal 高く小さな窓 (“small, high windows”) in the original. This passage also shows how he is still making small cuts as necessary.

Just a tiny little chapter. Now back to Hard-boiled Wonderland. Fortunately it looks like the next chapter isn’t that long.

And the Oscar goes to…

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It took me long enough, but I finally finished Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Chapter 25 “Meal, Elephant Factory, Trap,” a 31-page monstrosity during which the scientist explains exactly what he did to Watashi: install a new cognitive system (an edited version of his core identity) into his head which was used as a black box for shuffling data. Unfortunately, because his laboratory was destroyed, the scientist no longer has the ability to remove Watashi from the extra circuit he installed, which means Watashi will be stuck in that circuit (in his story called “The End of the World”) when the junction between the circuits breaks.

The chapter is a lot of pseudo-sci-fi mumbo jumbo, and I think I enjoyed it more when I first read it. The good news is that it’s more fleshed out than the “Little People” from 1Q84. And Birnbaum does some remarkable work in translation. There are minor cuts here and there as well as a few colorful renderings.

The most interesting cut comes toward the end of the chapter. Here is Birnbaum’s version:

“No, not annulled. Your existence isn’t over. You’ll enter another world.”

“Interesting distinction,” I grumbled. “Listen. I may not be much, but I’m all I’ve got. Maybe you need a magnifying glass to find my face in my high school graduation photo. Maybe I haven’t got any family or friends. Yes, yes, I know all that. But, strange as it might seem, I’m not entirely dissatisfied with this life. It could be because this split personality of mine has made a stand-up comedy routine of it all. I wouldn’t know, would I? But whatever the reason, I feel pretty much at home with what I am. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t want any unicorns behind fences.” (217)

Here’s the original and my translation with the cuts highlighted in red:

「いや、あんたの存在は終わらんです。ただ別の世界に入りこんでしまうだけです」

「同じようなものですよ」と私は言った。「いいですか、僕という人間が虫めがねで見なきゃよくわからないような存在であることは自分でも承知しています。昔からそうでした。学校の卒業写真を見ても自分の顔をみつけるのにすごく時間がかかるくらいなんです。家族もいませんから、今僕が消滅したって誰も困りません。友だちもいないから、僕がいなくなっても誰も悲しまないでしょう。それはよくわかります。でも、変な話かもしれないけど、僕はこの世界にそれなりに満足してもいたんです。どうしてかはわからない。あるいは僕と僕自身がふたつに分裂してかけあい万歳みたいなことをやりながら楽しく生きてきたのかもしれない。それはわかりません。でもとにかく僕はこの世界にいた方が落ちつくんです。僕は世の中に存在する数多くのものを嫌い、そちらの方でも僕を嫌っているみたいだけど、中には気に入っているものもあるし、気に入っているものはとても気に入っているんです。向うが僕のことを気に入っているかどうかには関係なくです。僕はそういう風にして生きているんです。どこにも行きたくない。不死もいりません。年をとっていくのは辛いこともあるけれど、僕だけが年とっていくわけじゃない。みんな同じように年をとっていくんです。一角獣も塀もほしくない」 (396)

“No, you won’t stop existing. You’ll just enter into a different world.”

“It’s the same damn thing,” I said. “You know, I get it—without a magnifying glass, my existence is undetectable. It’s always been that way. It takes forever to find me in my graduation photo. I don’t have any family, so if I disappear, nobody will be hard off. I don’t have any friends, either, so no one will be sad when I’m gone. I get that. But, and this may sound strange, I was satisfied in my own way with this world. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve been able to have some fun with everything because this split between me and my self was a nonstop comedy routine. I don’t know. But being in this world was comfortable. I hate a lot of things that exist in this world, and I think they may hate me as well, but there are some things I like, and the things I like I really like. Independent of whether or not they like me back. That’s how I live. I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t need immortality. Getting older is tough sometimes, but it’s not like I’m the only one. Everyone gets older in the same way. I don’t want unicorns or fences.”

Not a massive cut. I wonder what these “things” are. Critics might say they’re the lifestyle choices that Murakami includes in a lot of his fiction, which makes the joke on Watashi…he still hasn’t gotten over having his apartment smashed up by the goons. A more generous reading might call them cultural objects, or art. They don’t feel quite like people.

There’s one other passage worth mentioning at the end of the chapter. There are no cuts, but Birnbaum does drop an F-bomb to show Watashi’s anger. Very interesting translation choice. And as Watashi finally blows his cool, this section also feels like an “Oscar moment” that might win an actor the award or at least a nomination. Here is Birnbaum’s translation:

“As far as I can see, the responsibility for all this is one hundred percent yours. You started it, you developed it, you dragged me into it. Wiring quack circuitry into people’s heads, faking request forms to get me to do your phony shuffling job, making me cross the System, putting the Semiotecs on my tail, luring me down into this hell hole and now you’re snuffing my world! This is worse than a horror movie! Who the fuck do you think you are? I don’t care what you think. Get me back the way I was.” (274)

And the original Japanese:

「だいたいこのことの責任は百パーセントあななにあります。僕には何の責任もない。あなたが始めて、あなたが拡げて、あなたが僕を巻きこんだんだ。人の頭に勝手な回路を組みこみ、偽の依頼書を作って僕に車夫リングをさせ、『組織』を裏切らせ、記号士に追いまわさせ、わけのわからない地底につれこみ、そして今僕の世界を終わらせようとしている。こんなひどい話は聞いたことがない。そう思いませんか？とにかくもとに戻してください」 (397)

As you can see, the “Who the fuck do you think you are?” corresponds to そう思いませんか (“Wouldn’t you agree?”) in Japanese. A pretty dramatic shift in tone there, and not undeserved. Birnbaum gives Watashi a bit more fire and brimstone here.

This is especially notable (and funny) because earlier in the chapter, (in a section that was heavily adjust by Birnbaum [or his editor]) there is an exchange of dialogue where the scientist hesitates to tell Watashi the truth because he is afraid Watashi will get angry. Watashi then says he won’t get angry…a promise he breaks here at the end of the chapter.

Back Issues

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Welcome to the Eighth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation/analysis/revelation once a week from now until the announcement. You can see past entries in the series here:

Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year Four: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year Five: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year Six: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year Seven: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year Eight: Pigeon, Edits, Magazines, Awkwardness

I dedicated a previous Murakami Fest to excerpts from “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” (see “Year Three” above), the 1980 story that Murakami later rewrote for Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Murakami discusses the story at length in the 自作を語る for Hard-boiled Wonderland. Despite claiming that he viewed his previous stories “as documents that hold meaning as a sort of fixed-point observation,” Murakami declined to include “The Town” in the Complete Works, which he explains here:

書き始めた時点では、小説の構成については非常に漠然としたイメージしかなかった。しばらく前に『文学界』のために書いた『街とその不確かな壁』という中編小説（あるいは長い短編小説）を膨らませてリライトしようということだけは決まっていたのだが、それをどういう方向に書き直していくかということになると、全く方針が立たなかった。僕はこの『街とその不確かな壁』という小説を『１９７３年のピンボール』のあとで書いたのだが、このテーマでものを書くのはやはりまだ時期尚早だった。それだけのものを書く能力がまだ僕には備わっていなかったのだ。そのことは書き終えた時点で自分でもわかった。僕は自分がやってしまったことについてはあまり後悔している。発表するべきではなかったんじゃないかと思う。でも考えようによっては、活字にしてしまったなればこそ、なんとかこれを書き直して少しでもまともなものにしたいという思いも強くなったのかもしれない。もし『街とその不確かな壁』をあの時点で活字にしなかったら、『世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダラーンド』は今あるものとは全然違ったかたちのものになっていたかもしれない。今回この全集刊行にあたって『街とその不確かな壁』を全集に収録してほしいという要望が出版社側からなされたのだが、僕としてはそうしたくなかった。たとえそれが志のある失敗作であるにせよ（そうであることを筆者は願っている）、失敗作は失敗作であり、それを改めて衆目に曝したいとは思わない。どうしても読みたいという読者は図書館で『文学界』のバックナンバーをみつけて読んでいただきたいと思う。(V-VI)

I had only a very faint image of the structure of the novel when I started writing. I had only decided to rewrite and expand “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall,” a novella (or maybe a long short story) that I wrote for Bungakukai a little while before, but I had no plan whatsoever for the direction I would take in rewriting it. I wrote the story “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” after Pinball, 1973, but it was premature for me to write on those themes. I wasn’t yet equipped with the abilities to write on themes like that. I realized this myself immediately after I finished writing. I was disappointed with what I’d done. I think I probably shouldn’t have published it. But in a different light, my desire to rewrite it and turn it into something more respectable might have grown even stronger precisely because I put it into print. If I hadn’t published “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” at that time, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World might have become an entirely different book from what it is now. For the publication of this Complete Works, my publisher requested that I include “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall”, but I didn’t want to. A failed work is a failed work, even if it was ambitious (and the writer hopes it was). I didn’t want it to be exposed to public scrutiny once again. I would ask that readers who absolutely must read it please find a back issue of Bungakukai in the library and read it there.

I’ve read the story, and it’s not great, but it’s not terrible either. It feels disjointed, and it doesn’t really wrap up neatly, but there is some magic there at the End of the World. I’m surprised Murakami is so self-conscious about it.

It’s at least worth a trip to the National Diet Library for Murakami treasure hunters, and if you’re internet savvy, you can have them copy it out and send it to you (at a Japanese address)…which is what I did when I accidentally left my heavily annotated copy on a bus on the way back to Tokyo from Fukushima. Rest in piece, my original copy. The fresh copy I had sent from the NDL is nice, but I wish I still had my vocab notes.

This is the final post in Murakami Fest this year! The announcements begin next week, and as usual the Literature date has not yet been set.

(Translation updated on 2023/3/8)

Awkwardness

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Welcome to the Eighth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation/analysis/revelation once a week from now until the announcement. You can see past entries in the series here:

Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year Four: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year Five: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year Six: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year Seven: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year Eight: Pigeon, Edits, Magazines

The next volume in the Complete Works includes all of the short stories in Slow Boat to China and Firefly, Barn Burning, and Other Stories. Murakami wrote the stories in the former collection after Pinball, 1973, so I guess this post goes chronologically before the last Murakami Fest post.

Murakami writes in 自作を語る that the experience of rereading the stories for the first time in 10 years was very nostalgic for him. He then writes extensively about the revision process. It’s pretty interesting to read:

今回全集にあたって、いくつかの短編にはかなり大幅に手を入れることにした。これは今の時点で読み返してみて気になる部分が多々あったからである。僕は原則的に一度発表した作品にはそれ以上手を加えないことにしている。何故ならそれをやり始めるときりがないし、また作品というものはたとえいささかの欠点があったとしても（あるいは作家がそれを気に入らないと思ったとしても）、定点観測的な意味を持つひとつの資料として、オリジナルのかたちのものはやはりきちんと残しておくべきだと考えているからである。しかし今回は全集という形での出版であり、単行本のオリジナル・ヴァージョンとは違うもうひとつ別の選択肢を提供できるまたとない機会であったので、思い切って改訂を加えることにした。大幅に手を加えたものもあれば、字句表現の修正程度にとどまったものもあった。改訂については読者にもいろいろと異論があるかもしれない。しかし作者としては、当時表現しようと志して、十全には表現しきれなかった事柄を幾分なりとも明確にすることを基本的な方針として改訂を加えた。つまり今の時点から過去の自分自身に手を貸すということである。しかしもちろんいくばくかの問題があっても、ここはもう余計な口だしはせずに放っておいた方がよかろうと思えるところも多々あった。妙に手を加えてすっきりさせるよりは、不透明なままの思いを伝えた方が良いかもしれないということだ。若書きというのは結局そういうことである。下手にしか、不透明にしか伝えられないこともけっこう沢山あるのだ。

ただし、ここはこうしておけばよかったなと今になって後悔する部分もあって、これは書きなおした。余計な部分は削り、足りない部分は肉づけした。

そのような補修工事のあとで思うのだが、僕という人間、つまり村上春樹という作家のおおかたの像は、この作品集に既に提出されている。たしかにそれ以降、僕も僕なりに歳をかさねてより多面的に物を見て、文章を書けるようにはなった。自分がやりたいこともより明瞭に見えるようになった。作家としての自分のの力が今の段階でどの程度のものなのかということもだんだん把握できるようになってきた。しかし僕の世界というもののありようは未完成なりに、ぎこちないなりに、バランスが悪いなりに、この処女短編集におおむね提示されているように思える。スタイルなり、モチーフなり、語法なり、そういうものの原型はここに一応出揃っていると言っていいのではないかと思う。(II-IV)

For the Complete Works, I corrected a number of stories quite heavily. This is because there were a lot of areas that concerned me as I reread them at this point in time. In principle, once my works have been presented, I don’t alter them at all: Once you start with something like that, there’s no end to the changes, and even if there are slight defects in a work (and the writer doesn’t like those), I believe the original should really be left as it was, as a document that holds meaning as a sort of fixed-point observation. However, publication in the form of a Complete Works was a unique opportunity to provide a separate option different from the original hardcover version, so I decided to go ahead and add the revisions. Some I altered heavily, and others were limited to fixing up certain wordings. Readers might feel differently about these revisions. However, as a writer, my basic objective when revising was to make what I was trying but unable to fully express at that time somewhat more precise. In other words, the present me is lending a hand to my past self. However, there were of course a number of places where despite some problems I felt it was best to leave things as they were and not to interfere. Strangely, it might be best to express some ideas obscurely, just as they are, rather than making them more neat. In the end, that’s the kind of thing that early works are. There are a lot of things that can only be communicated in a poor, obscure way.

However, there were also places where I was disappointed I hadn’t put things in a certain way, and these I rewrote. I got rid of unnecessary sections and fattened up those that were lacking.

After undergoing this repair work, I’ve come to think that I as a human, in other words the majority of the figure of Murakami Haruki the writer, has already been exhibited in this story collection. I’ve definitely seen things from a more multifaceted point of view by growing older in my own way and being able to write about that. I’m more clearly able to see what I want to do. I’m also gradually beginning to grasp what my ability as a writer is at this point in time. However, I feel like my world was, for the most part, presented in all its incompleteness, awkwardness, and imbalance in this virgin collection of stories. It’s safe to say that the basic pattern of things like my style, motifs, and language all appear, more or less. (II-IV)

Very nicely put. Later in the pamphlet, Murakami goes on to note that one of the stories he did not revise was “Firefly,” which formed the basis for Norwegian Wood.

Magazines

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Welcome to the Eighth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation/analysis/revelation once a week from now until the announcement. You can see past entries in the series here:

Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year Four: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year Five: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year Six: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year Seven: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year Eight: Pigeon, Edits

gunzo

The 自作を語る for A Wild Sheep Chase is interesting. Murakami goes into detail about how drastically he changed his life after publishing his second novel: he moved to Chiba, started taking trips abroad, stopped drinking as much, and basically stopped living the urban social life he’d been living as the owner of a jazz pub.

He wrote the book from the fall of one year to the spring of the next, a pattern that he repeated for Dance Dance Dance. He went to Hokkaido to research sheep, without any real idea of the novel in mind, and he started writing and eventually the sheep fit in to the story. He also mentions how he was driven to write by a sense of competition with Ryū Murakami following the publication of Coin Locker Babies.

One of the things I didn’t know (or had forgotten) was that the novel was published in Gunzō. Murakami writes about that experience:

この作品は『群像』に一挙掲載のかたちで発表されたが、書いている途中で担当編集者が交代し、また編集部の方針も大きく変化したこともあって、作品はやっと出来あがったものの、作品の立場も僕の立場も正直言って—もうずいぶん昔のことだし、状況も変わったから正直に言っていいと思うのだけれど—あまり居心地がいいとは言えなかったように記憶している。なんだか出来の悪い醜い子供を産んでしまったあひるのお母さんみたいな気分だった。もちろん雑誌には雑誌のきちんとした性格なり方針なりがあるのは当然のことで、僕としてはそのこと自体はいっこうに構わないのだが、でもその時、雑誌といういれものは短編やエッセイはともかくとして、息の長い仕事をするには適していないのかもしれないという印象を持った。長編小説を書くというのは本当にデリケートな作業である。それは往々にして骨を削るような孤独な集中力を要求する。そしてちょっとした些細なことで力のバランスが狂ってしまいかねないのだ。

そのせいもあってこれ以降長編小説には全部書きおろしというシステムを取るようになった。まあ人にはいろいろな事情や仕事のやり方があるだろうけれど、経験的に言って、僕の場合は性格的に書きおろし形式が適していると思う。他の仕事は一切はずして、何ヶ月か集中して一気に書き上げ、それからゆっくり時間をかけて推敲するという書き方なので、連載小説というのはどうしてもできないし、かといって雑誌一挙掲載というのも何か二度手間みたいな気もする。そういう自分にいちばん適した書き方のペースを摑んだのもこの小説をとおしてだった。 (VI-VII)

This work was presented in Gunzō in its entirety, but the editor in charge changed while I was writing, and the editorial department’s objectives also underwent large changes, so while I finally managed to finish the novel, I do remember that its position as well as my own could not be called all that comfortable, to put it honestly—this happened long ago and the situation has changed, so I think it’s okay to put it honestly. I felt something like a mother duck who’d given birth to an ugly, misbegotten duckling. Of course it’s only natural that a magazine have its own proper, magazine-like character and objective, and I didn’t have any problem with those things themselves, but I was left with the impression that, at that time, setting aside short fiction and essays, magazines as a vehicle might not have been suited for sustained work. Writing a full-length novel is truly delicate work. It often demands a focus so lonely that it wears you down. And the slightest thing can throw off the balance of your powers entirely.

This is among the reasons I adopted the system of writing all my novels after this one as kaki-oroshi (new work published straight into book form). Well, I guess people must have various circumstances and ways of working, but speaking from experience, I believe that the form of kaki-oroshi suits me personality-wise. My writing process is to let go of all other work entirely, focus for several months and write everything up in one go, then take my time with revisions, so I’m totally unable to do serialized fiction, but having said that, I do want to have another go at publishing something in its entirety in a magazine. It was through this novel that I also came to understand this writing pace that most suits me. (VI-VII)

I wonder what it was about the new editor(s) and his/her/their new goals that irked him so much. It sounds like they wanted him to make changes to the work that he was uncomfortable with. I wonder if he was submitting excerpts and receiving feedback as he wrote. (He mentions that he wrote 650 Japanese manuscript pages, which was long for him at the time but nothing compared to his recent monstrosities.)

One final interesting thing to note is that Murakami would break this vow just a few years after writing this commentary. In October 1992, he began to serialize the first half of The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in Shinchō. This went until August 1993. The first and second half were then published in book form in April 1994.

Edits

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Welcome to the Eighth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation/analysis/revelation once a week from now until the announcement. You can see past entries in the series here:

Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year Four: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year Five: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year Six: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year Seven: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year Eight: Pigeon

The Complete Works combines Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 into a single volume, much like the recent new translation of both novels, and Murakami spends most of his time in 自作を語る discussing the first novel. He has a few interesting things to say about Pinball, notably that the incorporation of a “search” was useful for him in terms of plot structure (something the first book didn’t have much of). It’s something he’s gone back to a number of times.

He also says that he didn’t make any changes to these first two novels:

そしてこれが夜中に台所のテーブルで書きあげられた最後の長編小説となった。このあと僕は生活をがらりと変えて、フルタイムの専業作家としてやっていくことになる。そういう意味で、僕はこの最初のふたつの小説に僕なりの深い個人的愛着を持っている。この二冊の本には様々な思い出がしみついている。楽しいこともあったし、あまり思いだしたくないこともある。この全体に収録するにあたって、多くの短編は多少なりとも加筆しているわけだが、この二作についてはまったく筆を入れなかった。入れ始めるときりがないだろうと思ったせいもあるが、あえて入れたくないという気持ちの方が強かった。先にも書いたように、このふたつの作品はある種の不完全さと表裏一体となって成立していると思うからである。読者のみなさんにはあるいは御不満もあるかもしれない。でも理解していただきたい。これが僕だったのだし、結局のところどこまでいってもこれが僕なのだ。

(Pinball, 1973) was also the final full-length novel I wrote at night on my kitchen table. Shortly after, I completely changed my lifestyle and made a go of it as a dedicated full-time writer. In that sense, I have my own personal deep sense of attachment to these first two novels. All sorts of memories are ingrained in these two books. There were fun things as well as things I don’t really want to remember. In the process of putting together this Complete Works, I made minor revisions to most of the short stories, but I didn’t lay a finger on either of these two. Partly I felt like if I did start to change them, there would’ve been no end to the revisions, but I also felt very strongly that I shouldn’t dare change anything. This is because, as I mentioned previously, these two works came into being with a certain incompleteness and became tightly linked. As readers, you may be somewhat dissatisfied, but please understand: This was me, and no matter how far I go, it still is me. (VIII)

I’m still reading through the new translation of Pinball, 1973, and I don’t actually have paperback copies of either novel (which generally have the original text), so I can’t confirm whether Murakami’s claim is true or not, but I have finished comparing the two translations of Hear the Wind Sing. While there don’t seem to be any line by line changes, there is at least one somewhat major adjustment.

The new translation ends with Chapter 40, which feels much like a postscript because Murakami spends the short chapter discussing the fictional writer Derek Hartfield (or “Heartfield” in the Birnbaum edition). Birnbaum’s translation, however, has an additional postscript which is labeled as such and is not numbered. Here is what may be the original ending:

Heartfield, Again
(In lieu of a postscript)

If I hadn’t encounter the writer Derek Heartfield, I probably wouldn’t be writing novels. While it’s not for me to say, I surely would have taken up a completely different path from my present one.

When I was in high school, I bought up a number of Heartfield paperbacks that some merchant marine had left in a Kobe secondhand bookstore. Fifty yen apiece they were. If the place hadn’t been a bookstore, I’d hardly have thought them books, they looked so strange. The garish covers were all but torn off, the pulp pages discolored to orange. The books had probably logged on some cargo ship or cruiser along with this common crewman, then rode his bunk across time and the Pacific to wind up on my desk.

* * *

Some years later, I went over to America. A short trip just to visit Heartfield’s grave. Thomas McClure, the enthusiastic (and only) Heartfield scholar, had written me the location. “It’s a small grave,” the letter read, “the size of a high-heel point. Be careful not to miss it.”

From New York I caught a casket of a Greyhound bus and arrived in that tiny Ohio town at seven in the morning. I was the only passenger to get off there. The graveyard lay across a field on the edge of town. A graveyard bigger than the town itself. Overhead the skylarks were singing as they traced circles in the sky.

It look one solid hour to find Heartfield’s grave. I made an offering of some dusty primroses I picked in the surrounding fields, put my hands together in prayer, crouched down, and had a cigarette. There, under the even May sun, life and death both seemed equally cheap. I stretched out face up and closed my eyes, just listening to the skylarks for hours and hours.

The beginnings of this novel are there. Exactly where it has all led, even I have no idea. But as Heartfield would say, “Compared to the complexity of the universe, this world of our is like the brain of a worm.”

I only wish it were so.

* * *

In closing, I’d like to thank the aforementioned Thomas McClure for letting me quote several passages from his magnum opus, The legend of the Sterile Stars (1968), for the sections on Heartfield.

May 1979

(129-130)

It feels like Murakami overwrote his ending, and maybe he realized that when he put together the Complete Works. Perhaps this doesn’t really count as a revision—Murakami isn’t tinkering here but rather just drawing back the tape so that it doesn’t include that last little bit. I wish I had a 文庫本 copy to check the original text. Any readers have one handy?

Pigeon

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It’s that time of year again. Time for me to build up my hopes and dreams for Murakami to win the Nobel Prize for Literature only to have them dashed by some Norwegian guy.

I don’t actually get my hopes up anymore—I feel like I have a more objective view of Murakami’s work now, so I see why there’s just as good a chance that he never wins—but I am a sucker for tradition. So on that note…

Welcome to the Eighth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

With the goal of stirring up even more interest in Murakami between now and October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, I will post a small piece of Murakami translation/analysis/revelation once a week from now until the announcement. You can see past entries in the series here:

Year One: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year Two: Hotel Lobby Oysters, Condoms, Spinning Around and Around, 街・町, The Town and Its Uncertain Wall, A Short Piece on the Elephant that Crushes Heineken Cans
Year Three: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year Four: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year Five: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year Six: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year Seven: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace

passenger

This year I’m too short on time to continue my Hard-boiled Wonderland project for the whole month (I’ve gotten mired in an awfully long chapter which I will hopefully complete at some point), so I thought I would take a look at material from the 自作を語る pamphlets that Murakami included with his Complete Works. He used these to provide commentary on his writing process. Jay Rubin has used a number of excerpts in his book, and Murakami has rewritten many of those stories over and over, such as the baseball origin.

Recently Murakami told this story again as an introduction for the new, official translations of his first two novels, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. This intro has been published in The Telegraph in full.

I read it without really noticing anything until a friend said to me, “Aren’t passenger pigeons extinct?” Yet Murakami claims to have encountered a passenger pigeon on the day he learned he was a finalist for the writing competition that he eventually won. I went looking for this passage in the Japanese. Obviously this isn’t identical to the one in The Telegraph; it’s a different version, one Murakami wrote 25 years ago for the Complete Works, but he’s writing about the same moment. Let’s take a look:

『風の歌を聴け』が最終選考に残ったと『群像』編集部のMさんから知らされた日のことをよく覚えている。それは春の始めの日曜日の朝のことだった。僕はもう三十になっていた。その頃には新人賞に応募したことさえすっかり忘れていたので（原稿を送ったのは秋だった）、電話がかかってきて、最終選考に残りました、と言われたとき、仰天してしまった。それからとても嬉しくなった。僕は作家になってからいろんな喜びを体験したけれど、あれほど嬉しかったことは一度もない。新人賞そのものを取ったときですらあれほど嬉しくはなかった。その電話を切ってから女房とふたりで外に散歩に出た。そして千駄ヶ谷小学校の前で、羽に傷を負って飛べなくなった鳩をみつけた。僕はその鳩を両手に抱いたまま、原宿まで歩いて、表参道の交番に届けた。その間ずっと鳩は僕の手の中でどきどきと震えていた。その微かな生命のしるしと、温かみを僕は今でも手のひらに鮮やかに思いだすことができる。それはぼんやりとした暖かな春の朝だった。貴重な生命の匂いがあたりに満ちていた。たぶん新人賞を取ることになるだろうな、と僕は思った。何の根拠もない予感として。

そして実際に僕は償を取った。

I remember really well the day that M-san from the Gunzō editorial department called to say that Hear the Wind Sing made it to the finalists. It was a Sunday morning in early spring. I had already turned 30. At that point I had completely forgotten that I submitted to the contest (I sent the manuscript in the fall), so when the phone rang and they said, you made it to the finalists, I was shocked. Then incredibly happy. I’ve experienced all different sorts of joy since becoming a writer, but never have I been as happy as that. I wasn’t even as happy as that when I actually won the New Writer’s contest. After getting off the phone, I went out for a walk with my wife. We found a pigeon with an injured wing that couldn’t fly in front of Sendagaya Elementary School. I walked to Harajuku with the pigeon in my hands and brought it to the police box in Omotesando. It shivered nervously in my hands the whole time. Even now I can vividly remember that faint sign of life and its warmth in the palms of my hands. It was a vaguely warm spring morning. The area was filled with the smell of precious life. I thought to myself, maybe you’ll win the New Writer’s prize. A sort of premonition without any basis.

And then I actually won the prize.

As you can see from the Japanese, he uses 鳩. Passenger pigeon is リョコウバト or 旅行鳩. Makes me curious to see what word the original Japanese for the piece from The Telegraph uses. I wonder whether the editors at The Telegraph lodged any complaints or even noticed (or whether the translator, Ted Goossen, did). I imagine that the Japanese editions may get rereleased in Japan, maybe even in a combined text, along with this intro essay, so we might be able to check at some point.

Other than that the story is almost identical. Murakami is not as emphatic about how “bright and clear” the day was in this version, although I’m not sure if I’ve rendered ぼんやりとした correctly. Is it modifying the kind of heat on the day?

Next week I’ll try to take something from the Pinball, 1973 section, and I’ll continue on through his works all this month. Check back next week!

Confusion

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After an extended break for ten days of travel through Bavaria and Bohemia (it was excellent; see Twitter/Instagram for details), I’m back at Hard-boiled Wonderland. In Chapter 24 “Shadow Grounds,” Boku visits the Gatekeeper and then has a catch-up with his shadow.

Most of the translation changes in this chapter feel relatively standard for Birnbaum’s style, but they are still evident even from the first few sentences. Here is the official translation:

Three days of clear weather have come to an end. I know it as soon as I awaken. I open my eyes with no discomfort.

The sun is stripped of light and warmth, the sky is cloaked in heavy clouds. (242)

Here is the Japanese with my translation following:

三日間つづいた見事な晴天は、その日の朝目を覚ますともう終わっていた。空は暗い色をしたぶ厚い雲に一部の隙もなく覆いつくされ、そこをとおり抜けやっと地上にたどりづくことのできた太陽の光はその本来の暖かみと輝きのあらかたを奪いとられていた。(354)

Three days of perfect weather are over when I wake up. The sky is covered with a thick, faultless layer of darkly colored clouds, and the light that manages to make its way through that covering has been robbed of most of its original warmth and brightness.

As you can see, the official translation is much more minimal than the original Japanese, yet Birnbaum (or his editor) adds a few details to help re-establish the scene (Boku and his eyes) in the End of the World. Maybe this is for the best after the lengthy Hard-boiled Wonderland chapters. I immediately looked at the paperback version of the book to see whether Murakami might have cut the sentences from the Complete Works edition, but the two are the same.

I did spot one cut by Murakami later in the chapter. Boku and his shadow sit under an elm tree, kicking their heels in the frozen ground. The shadow draws a circle in the ground to represent the perfection of the Town in the End of the World. They discuss plans for escape and the difficulties of living in the End of the World:

“My confidence is going, it’s true,” I say, dropping my eyes to the circle on the ground. “How can I be strong when I do not know my own mind? I am lost.”

“That’s not true,” corrects my shadow. “You are not lost. It’s just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed—your self. You must believe in your own powers.”

“I will try,” I say. (248-249)

And here is the original paperback version:

「たしかに僕は混乱している」と僕は地面に描かれた円に目を落としながら言った。「君の言うとおりだ。どちらに進んでいいのかを見定めることもできない。自分がかつてどういう人間であったのかということもだ。自己を見失った心というものがはたしてどれだけの力を持てるものなんだろう。それもこれほど強い力と価値基準を持った街の中でだ。冬がやってきて以来僕は自分の心に対して少しずつ自信を失いつづけているんだ」

「いや、それは違うね」と影は言った。「君は自己を見失ってはいない。ただ記憶が巧妙に隠されているだけだ。だから君は混乱することになるんだ。しかし君は決して間違っちゃいない。たとえ記憶が失われたとしても、心はそのあるがままの方向に進んでいくものなんだ。心というものはそれ自体が行動原理を持っている。それがすなわち自己さ。自分の力を信じるんだ。そうしないと君は外部の力にひっぱられてわけのわからない場所につれていかれることになる。」

「努力してみるよ」と僕は言った。(67)

“I definitely feel confused,” I say as I lower my eyes to the circle drawn in the ground. “It is as you say. I’m unsure of where I should be heading. Or of what kind of person I was in the past. How strong can a mind without a self actually be in the end? Especially in a town with such power and strong standards of value. Ever since winter arrived, I just keep losing confidence in my mind little by little.”

“No, you’re wrong,” my shadow says. “You haven’t lost your self. They’ve just hidden your memories. Which is why you feel confused. However, you’re not totally off. Even if you lose your memories, your mind will continue on in its original direction. A mind has inherent principles of movement. And that is, in other words, your self. Believe in your own strength. If you don’t, you’ll be thrown off course by powers outside of yourself.”

“I’ll try,” I say.

As you can see, it’s still quite different from Birnbaum’s translation. Lengthier, to be sure, but Birnbaum keeps many of the elements from the paperback. In the Collected Works edition, Murakami edits the shadow’s response:

「いや、それは違うね」と影は言った。「君は自己を見失ってはいない。ただ記憶が巧妙に隠されているだけだ。だから君は混乱することになるんだ。しかし君は決して間違っちゃいない。自分の力を信じるんだ。そうしないと君は外部の力にひっぱられてわけのわからない場所につれていかれることになる。」(363)

“No, you’re wrong,” my shadow says. “You haven’t lost your self. They’ve just hidden your memories. Which is why you feel confused. However, you’re not totally off. Believe in your own strength. If you don’t, you’ll be thrown off course by powers outside of yourself.”

Gone is the section about the mind and its “principles of movement.” It’s an interesting idea, but perhaps felt a little unwieldy when Murakami looked it over again? That’s the only thought I have now.

As I mentioned at the top, no major adjustment changes, but now that I’ve written this post, the English version does seem more intrusive than I initially thought. The compressions illustrated in the passages above are uniform throughout the chapter. But I guess this isn’t a big surprise: This is how Murakami was initially translated, and it’s not like the final product is a disaster. On the contrary, it’s pretty strong. Just a translation, innit?

In terms of language notes, I struggled with 間違っちゃいない and eventually resorted to help on Facebook after doing some googling and still not being totally sure about the meaning. The word is a contraction, of course, for 間違ってはいない, and I think it gave me fits because it seems to contradict with the 違う at the beginning of the passage. There is also a kind of “set phrase” feel/tone to the word and certain circumstances in which it gets used. As a native speaker Facebook friend noted, it means “you’re not (entirely) wrong (either)”

Now it’s on to the next 30-page Hard-boiled Wonderland behemoth. I’ll try to get through it quickly.