I am beside myself. I forgot to include one of the most important and most useful examples of 伺う (ukagau, ask/hear/visit) in daily Japanese.

I wrote about 伺う last month in the newsletter and how it is a powerhouse 謙譲語 (kenjōgo, humble keigo) verb. It can mean to hear/learn something, to ask a question, and to visit someone. It’s especially useful in business environments, on phone calls, and here and there in your daily life.

But BY FAR the most useful way you can use 伺う is when you are asking someone’s name.

Beginner students will often resort to the extremely basic お名前は何ですか (O-namae wa nan desu ka, What is your name?), which is fine, I guess, but it makes the speaker sound like an elementary school student going down a list of questions for an assignment. Even the slightly more polite お名前は何でしょうか (O-namae wa nan deshō ka, What is your name?) with a softer ending isn’t that much better. It’s fundamentally too direct.

I don’t want to shame anyone for their Japanese level—because I know mine, while reliable, will absolutely dip in register to levels that might embarrass a junior high student—but at a certain point, we have to aim to do better, and one of the most effective ways of doing better is by memorizing and becoming familiar with set phrases so that eventually they feel lived-in and natural enough for us to use without any hesitancy.

That brings me to the phrase:

お名前を伺ってもいいですか (O-namae o ukagatte mo ii desu ka, May I ask your name?)

Drill this into your head!

You can opt to level it up by changing いい to よろしい and ですか to でしょうか, but even this basic phrase will serve you well.

I’ve found this especially useful when you’re in a conversation with someone and starting to get more comfortable/familiar but don’t yet know their name. Maybe at a bar or restaurant in your neighborhood that you’ve been to a few times. You know the bartender or マスター (masutaa, “master”/head) relatively well, but you don’t yet know their name. This is the way to ask it!

“Why would you need to know their name?” you might ask. Well, in Japanese someone’s surname is one of the most natural ways of saying “you” in Japanese. Just today, on the walk in to work from the station, I asked a coworker 田中さんは、この会社長いですか (Tanaka-san wa, kono kaisha nagai desu ka, Have you been at this company a long time?)

Knowing someone’s name opens up more natural modes of expression, and if you know the way to ask it without sounding like a child, I’d say that’s going to be a win that will compound into future linguistic victories.

I discussed this phrase in further detail at the end of the podcast this month. Give it a listen:

The core part of the podcast is about the word 修飾 (shūshoku, modifier/adjective) and one sentence from last month’s reading group in particular, which I wrote about over on the newsletter. Give it a read!

And here are links to the Murakami reviews I mention:

• Junot Diaz in The New York Times
• The Onion AV Club
• Vulture

This has felt like a very uneven month to me. I was in the U.S. from July 2-29, so a bit less than a clean month. I was over jet lag for two of those weeks, and now I’m right back in the thick of it. As I was in the midst of it—my body biking through the lush, crisp Chicago summers while my brain was still oppressed by the heat and humidity of Tokyo—former Prime Minister Abe was assassinated.

I’ve written previously about suffering duel disasters while separated from Japan and New Orleans, and this felt similar in some way. I have my fingers crossed that there’s not a parallel event now that I’m back in Japan. We’ve had enough black swan events in the past three years for a decade; settle down, now, universe.

I wrote about my run-in with PM Abe for the newsletter this month, and I’ll share the photo here.

I swear that I also have a photo with former PM Junichiro Koizumi. He visited Harvard my Junior fall, and they invited several of us who had just come back from a summer internship in Okayama to the welcome event. It was in the Faculty Club, and we were supposed to stand in a certain corner, where he’d come to greet us after his speech. The room was packed, like standing room only, with probably every Japanese enrolled in any program at Harvard, so after Koizumi said a few words (I remember he mentioned how excited he was to see the Patriots play that night, so it must’ve been a Monday afternoon), he was steered over to us. I remember kind of having to shout a few words or something, and once he’d shaken our hands, he audibled and veered out into the crowd of the room to do some gladhanding. Everyone was so excited he was there, except for the Secret Police—lots of talking into mics and adjusting to the quickly changing situation.

I basically went through all of my worldly possessions before this move, including the two files where I keep important photographs, and nothing with Koizumi came up, so I might just be imagining it. My stuff is now mostly with me here in Japan, other than a few boxes in St. Louis and New Orleans.

It still hasn’t sunk in that I’m back in Japan for the duration. Once I manage to get over this jet lag and rejoin my brain and body (a metaphor I’m totally cribbing from a William Gibson novel), I’ll be curious to see how things feel. Just a few months of summer left to endure.

I’ve been neglecting this update for too long – I’m not sure where the time went over the holidays. I was in the Japan Times twice recently, spanning the decades. First with a look at some random bits and pieces I had lying around: “Cleaning house (and head) at the end of the year.” And then with my 60th Bilingual page article and a look at the number 60: “Life begins at 60 (or at least it starts anew).”

It’s funny how you gain an intuition in a non-native language. There are times when I know something is incorrect, or not quite polite enough, and I’ll go Googling and find out that, of course, I was right.

This is a page I used to track down the right usage. 来られますか (koraremasuka, Are you able to come?) isn’t quite impolite, but it’s possible to be more polite.

This Mayonez piece has an interest look at keigo in general and a nice concise look at ら抜き (ranuki, potential verbs with the ら dropped from them – e.g. 食べれる, 来れる) verbs and how they are perceived.

My intuition was once again confirmed when I went looking to see whether or not women also celebrate 還暦 (kanreki, 60th birthday), and this Chiebukuro person was asking the same question that I was – do women also celebrate 還暦?

I think that’s because I’d only ever been exposed to men wearing the red getup. I’d only ever seen it on social media until September 2018 when, at a work conference, my Japanese colleagues surprised one of their group with a cake, candles, and the red clothing. Bizarrely enough, another member of the group had the same birthday and was also turning 60. It was fun to see in person.

It’s nice to know that this intuition is still around, despite having moved home from Japan 10 years ago this year. It helps that I’m in a position of being able to visit regularly. I’m booked for a work trip in May and may have a chance to go again. Unfortunately the May trip is just about fully accounted for, so I won’t have much time to myself, but it will be super busy. By the end of the weak I’ll be ready to pass out in my aisle seat and wake up at O’Hare.

On my list of things to bring home? Higashimura Akiko manga (this is a clue for my next Bilingual article) and some Evan Williams Red Label bourbon. Anyone have whiskey recommendations? Glad to hear them.

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, Back Issues
Year Nine: Water, Snæfellsnes, Cannonball, Distant Drumming
Year Ten: Vermonters, Wandering and Belonging, Peter Cat, Sushi Counter, Murakami Fucks First
Year Eleven: Embers, Escape, Window Seats, The End of the World
Year Twelve: Distant Drums

Murakami begins the memoir in Rome, and it quickly becomes apparent that his excuse from the prologue was cover for one of the very real reasons he decided to travel—the trip was an escape from some of the responsibilities of a young, popular writer in the Japanese literary establishment. After five years of writing and three of being a full time writer, Murakami is exhausted and wants an escape of sorts.

He personifies this exhaustion in the form of two bees buzzing in his head, going as far as naming them Giorgio and Carlo.

So he and his wife pack up, ask friends to take care of their cats, rent out their place, and take off for Rome.

He makes it clear that the memoir is made up of nonfiction he wrote for magazines while he was traveling, that the collection was basically serialized to a certain extent, and this introduction feels like he is pumping himself up to get ready to write. To write not only the rest of this memoir but the other fiction he would put together over the subsequent years.

There are some interesting Easter eggs in this part. Take a look:

The biggest problem was that I was tired. How the hell had I even gotten so tired? But no matter how it’d happened, I was tired. At least too tired to write fiction. That was the biggest problem I was facing.

I wanted to write two novels before turning 40. No, “wanted” wasn’t quite the word; I had to write them. That was very clear. But I was unable to get started on them. I knew basically what to write and how to write it. But I couldn’t get it out of me, unfortunately. It even felt like I might never write again. And the bees were buzzing around in my head. They were so loud I couldn’t even think straight.

The phone was still ringing in my head. That was also part of the sound the bees made. The phone. The phone was ringing. Ring ring ring ring ring ring. They were demanding things of me. Do an ad for a word processor or something, they said. Give a lecture at some women’s college, they said. Make some food you like for a feature photo shoot, they said. Do a magazine talk with some writer you’ve never heard of, they said. Give us your comments on sexism or overtourism or some musician who died or the revival of the miniskirt or how to quit smoking, they said. Judge some competition, they said. Write a 30-page “city fiction” story by the 20th of next month, they said. (And what the hell is “city fiction”?)

It’s not like I was particularly angry about any of it. Of course I wasn’t angry. Because these were all matters that had already been determined. Because I was simply being included. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, and no one had messed up. I knew that. In a certain sense, I was even an accomplice in the circumstances. It’s a winding bottleneck you have to go through to get to what I mean, but I still had a hand in it. So I had no right to get angry at anything. At least I don’t think I did. I was the one calling myself. In a certain sense.

That duplicity frustrated me. And left me feeling powerless. (35-36)

いちばんの問題は僕が疲れすぎているということだった。まったくどうしてこんなに疲れちゃったんだろうな？でもとにかく僕は疲れている。少なくとも、小説を書くには疲れすぎている。それが僕の抱えたいちばんの問題だった。

僕は４０になる前に二冊の小説を書きたいと思っている。いや、思っているというよりは、書く必要があるのだ。それはとてもはっきりしている。でも僕はそれに手をつけることができないでいる。何を書けばいいのか、どう書けばいいのか、それもだいたいわかっている。でも書き出すことができないのだ、不幸なことに。このままでは永遠に書けないんじゃないかという気さえする。そして頭の中をぶんぶんと蜂が飛び回っている。すごくうるさくて、僕はものを考えることさえできないのだ。

僕の頭の中では、まだ電話のベルが鳴り響いている。それも蜂のたてる物音の一部なのだ。電話だ。電話がなっている。りんりんりんりんりんりん。彼らは僕にいろんなことを要求する。ワープロだかなんだかの広告に出ろと言う。何処かの女子大で講演をしろと言う。雑誌のグラビアのために自慢料理を作れと言う。誰それという相手と対談をしろと言う。性差別やら、観光汚染やら、死んだ音楽家やら、ミニスカートの復活やら、煙草のやめ方やらについてコメントをくれと言う。なんとかのコンクールの審査員になれと言う。来月の二十日までに「都会小説」を三十枚書いてくれと言う（ところで「都会小説」って一体なんだ？）。

僕は別に腹を立てているわけではない。もちろん腹なんか立てていない。何故ならこれらは既に決定された事項であるからだ。僕はただ単にそこに含まれているだけなのだから。誰が悪いわけでもなく、誰が間違っているわけでもない。それはわかっている。僕だってある意味では、そういう状況に加担している人間のひとりなのだ。かなりまわりくどい意味の隘路を辿って行くことになるけれど、それでもやはり僕だってちゃんとそれに加担しているのだ。だから僕にはそういう物事に対して腹を立てる権利なんてないのだ。たぶん、ないと思う。僕に電話をかけているのは、僕自身でもあるのだ。ITALICSある意味では。 ITALICS

そいう二重性が僕を苛立たせる。そして無力感を抱かせる。(35-36)

I love this section. You have a different perspective on the telephone. It comes up so frequently in Murakami’s fiction, which I wrote about it in my review of The Colorless Tazaki Tsukuru, but here it’s kind of a bother whereas in his fiction it generally connects, although can sometimes be ominous.

You also get some really interesting hints about the kind of projects he’s working on. He makes a clear reference to the short stories that would become 回転木馬のデッドヒート(Dead Heat on a Merry-go-round), which I wrote about (also over at Neojaponisme). The series was initially titled 街の眺め (Views of the City), and he seems to have figured them out in an effective way despite his skepticism here. He’s even said that the series was critical training for more realistic writing and that without it he wouldn’t have been able to write Norwegian Wood. The series ran from 1983-1985, so it spans the first part of his trip.

It’s also interesting that Murakami brings up 対談 (taidan) which I’ve translated as “magazine talk.” There’s nothing that really equates with the 対談 phenomenon in the U.S….except maybe podcasts? They are conversations between two people, often writers or intellectuals, and the transcript is edited and then printed in the magazine with photos of the writers looking very serious and intellectual. Murakami did one with Murakami Ryu that was republished in a hardcover format.

He also did at least 17 others between 1980 and 1984, which is about one every 2-3 months. I can’t tell whether that’s a lot or a reasonable amount, but combined with all the other asks on him and the essays and fiction he was also being asked, it was probably somewhat of a burden. I can’t imagine that these are as easy as showing up and having a chat with someone.

I wonder if he had a particular writer in mind with that line or if it was just kind of a random throwaway line.

If you’re interested in finding out, I’ve picked out all the 対談 Murakami did. This comes from Osakabe Yoshio’s now-defunct website that tracked all of his publications. It’s cached on Archive.org if you want to track it down. Here are the 対談 with English dates added:

May 1980:
happy end 通信 1980年5月号 Vol.2 No.4
対談： 映画月評 「出逢いを見て考えたこと」 (対談相手： 高橋千尋） 表紙と裏表紙

December 1980:
小説現代 1980年12月
対談： [特別企画－小説・ジャズ・野球] 「一九八〇年の透明感覚－村上龍Vs.村上春樹」

November 1981:
平凡パンチ 1981年11月2日号 第18巻第42号
原作者対談：映画ってなんだ!?」 『遠雷』立松和平Vs『風の歌を聴け』村上春樹 P27-29

December 1981:
対談： Hot Dog Press 1981年12月10日 第3巻第19号 No.37 P16-18
対談： HUMAN HOT INTERVIEW SPECIAL 「風の歌を聴け」 原作者 村上春樹 VS. 監督 大森一樹

April 1982:
朝日ジャーナル 1982年4月2日号 24巻 P26-32
対談： 「大衆化した「大学」はどこへ行く–「300万人の大学」執筆者 (漂う「大学」の脱出路)」 天野郁夫; 樋口恵子; 村上春樹

April 1982:
GORO 1982年4月22日号 第9巻第9号
カルチャー・ショック対談： 村上春樹VS糸井重里 湯村輝彦・イラスト P160-163

July 1982:
ユリイカ 1982年7月号 14巻 P110-135
対談： 特集 チャンドラー 川本三郎との対談 「R.チャンドラー あるいは都市小説について」

February 1983:
小説現代　1983年2月号 P222-233
対談： （五木寛之） 「言の世界と葉の世界」

May 1983:
クロワッサン 1983年5月10日 P48-51
対談： (道下匡子） 「あるとき、いちばん嫌いな人（ヤツ）を好きになってしまった！」

May 1983:
平凡パンチ 1983年5月30日号 第20巻第20号 P32-33
WIDE SPECIALならためて YMO でございます。 「創作作法対談 村上春樹氏とー坂本龍一」

July 1983:
「話せばわかるか」 （糸井重里対談集）1983年7月30日
対談： （糸井重里） 「1982.2.22　村上春樹と六本木・瀬里奈で話した」 エッセイ集

February 1984:
イラストレーション 1984年2月号 No.26 P34-40
対談： 特集：安西水丸・透きとおる影 対談：村上春樹ｖｓ水丸

February 1984:
GORO 1984年2月23日
対談： (安西水丸） 「男にとって”早い結婚”はソンかトクか」

February 1984:
ビックリハウス 1984年2月号 第10巻第2号 (通巻109号) P98-102
対談： (安西水丸） 「千倉における朝食のあり方」 安西水丸氏に聞く?T 小竹文枝・イラスト

March 1984:
ビックリハウス 1984年3月号
連載エッセイ： 人はなぜ千葉県に住むのか？?D 対談： (安西水丸） 「千倉における夕食のあり方」

May 1984:
朝日ジャーナル 1984年5月25日 26巻 P43-47
対談： (筑紫哲也） 「若者たちの神々」 P81-82

Sometime in Fall/Summer 1984 (or February 1982?):
文庫版「話せばわかるか」（糸井重里対談集）
対談： (糸井重里） 「1982.2.22　村上春樹と六本木・瀬里奈で話した」

March 1985:
国文学 1985年3月号 30巻 P6-30
対談： （中上健次） 「仕事の現場から」（都市と反都市<特集>）

October 1985:
NEXT 1985年10月
対談： （島森路子） 村上春樹の世界　話題作「世界の終わりとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド」を手がかりに

October 1985:
IN★POCKET 1985年10月号 第3巻第10号 P4-74
対談： (村上龍、司会： 島森路子） 「作家ほど素敵な商売はない」 宮内忠敏/野上透/塚越亘/景山正夫・写真

February 1986 (and maybe February 1994):
「風の対話」 1986年2月
文庫版「風の対話」は 1994年2月4日 河出書房新社 （河出文庫）
対談： 五木寛之対談集 「ワンダーランドに光る風」

June 1986:
「on the border」 最新エッセイ＋対談 1982-1985／オン・ザ・ボーダー 中上健次・著 1986年6月
対談： （中上健次） 「仕事の現場から」 P88-136

June 1986:
波 1986年6月 P6-11
対談： （中野圭二／村上春樹） 「アーヴィングが世界を見れば」

December 1989:
シネマ・ストリート パート２ （安西水丸著） 1989年12月12日
対談： (安西水丸） 「私の嫌いなもの・恐いもの」 285-299

I’m in the Japan Times this week with an ode to the long, fold-out indexes of Japanese literary magazines: “There’s more than just page numbers in the index of a Japanese literary magazine.”

I did a little digging for the history of these indexes, but unfortunately I wasn’t able to find much – any search you do for the word 目次 (mokuji, index) automatically retrieves, well, every work with an index. I found it nearly impossible to sort out information about indexes from works with indexes.

If you have any leads, send them my way!

I did find this tweet, which shows the index of a very old literary magazine.

初版道さんから頂いた「国粋」の、そういえば出してなかった目次と、中の驚き折り込みカラー。
こんな洒落た付録の様な絵が、既に大正十年時の雑誌にあったんですね。
製本も山折り金具留で揃った、綺麗な製本。
頁を捲りながら、今とは違う使われている漢字や表現の仕方に、ドキドキしんでますｖ pic.twitter.com/f07HA01M2Y

— 文豪ニュース (@BungoNews) June 11, 2017

I don’t think the index folds out, but there are some nice fold-out illustrations, which shows the concept in practice.

I found two interesting links while researching this article.

The first is a site I found listing the 枚数 for different lengths of Japanese fiction. I’m realizing now that this site specializes in mystery writing and even has a walkthrough on how to write your own mystery novel, complete with 起承転結 construction.

The second and lengthier link is 文芸5誌について, a post from 2012 detailing the five major literary magazines and their philosophies/differences. It’s also a super effective primer on 純文学, 私小説, and how the 文壇 works. Although it does seem to have a very strong critical take on the current state of 純文学.

I’m still reading through this post. It’s long and dense, and I don’t really have the breadth of knowledge for it to be super helpful, although I recognize some of the names so far – Wataya Risa and Kanehara Hitomi being two of them.

I mostly end up thinking in terms of Murakami (as is my tendency), so I thought I would break down where his works have been published:

Gunzo
1979 – Hear the Wind Sing
1980 – 1973 Pinball
1982 – Wild Sheep Chase
1996 – “Lexington Ghost”

Bungakukai
1980 – “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall”
1983 – “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”
1985 – “The Elephant Vanishes”
1989 – “Sleep”
1991 special issue – “Iceman,” “The Green Beast,” F Scott Fitzgerald translation, “The Windup Bird and Tuesday’s Women” (EN)
1995 – “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”

Shincho
1980 – “A Poor Aunt’s Story”
1981 – “Kangaroo Communique”
1983 – “Barn Burning”
1984 – “The Dancing Dwarf”
1986 – “The Windup Bird and Tuesday’s Women”
1993 – The Wind Up Bird Chronicle Part 1 (serialized)
1999 – Stories from After the Quake, from August to December
2005 – Stories from Tokyo Kitanshu, from March to June

Subaru
1982 – “Her Small Dog in the Ground”

Bungei
Essays and other writing but no fiction

Bungeishunju
1990 – “Tony Takitani”
1996 – “The Seventh Man”

Pretty interesting! This only includes his fiction, so it doesn’t give a full picture of his writing, but it does tell an interesting story. Murakami basically moved away from Gunzo after his first few novels and has been publishing his short story sets and longer works in Shincho more regularly.

I was keen to check out this lone story in Subaru for a second—I thought a trip to the National Diet Library might have been in order for my next trip to Japan—until I realized it’s collected in A Slow Boat to China. Alas. I’ll have to track down some obscure nonfiction instead.

I have an article in a series new to the Japan Times this month, “Why Did You Leave Japan?”: “Model mixes punk with fashion on the runways of New York.”

A college friend introduced me to Tsubasa Watanabe when I visited New York in March, and we got to meet and talk at a coffee shop in the East Village. She has a vivid memory and lots of good stories to tell. Even after I got back to Chicago, she sent me several emails full of her experiences. Actually, the closing anecdote came from one of the last emails she sent me before the deadline. I thought it was a nice one.

The Japan Times asks writers to collect some basic information in addition to the types of stuff you’d normally ask in a profile interview, including a 座右の銘 (zayū no mei, lit. “a nearby motto” i.e. a favorite saying).

When I asked Tsubasa, I was surprised how quickly she responded with 一心不乱 (isshin furan). She didn’t hesitate at all. I had to have her write it out for me and confirm the meaning later, but I had a basic understanding after seeing the characters: one-heart, no-confusion. Wholeheartedly, single-mindedly, intensely focused.

This captures her spirit perfectly. She set herself on a path and has followed through with it. It will be interesting to see where her focus takes her from her. Find her in Project Runway All-Stars Season 6 and keep an ear out for her music. Check her out on Instagram at @tsubi.