Year 18 of Murakami Fest. Murakami Fest can legally vote. Wild. See the previous entries in Murakami fest here. This year, I’m continuing my look at his travel memoir Distant Drums.

The Murakamis are back in Rome for the winter, and the first thing on the to-do list is buying a television in this chapter titled “TV, Gnocchi, Prêtre” (テレビ、ニョッキ、プレートル). Murakami says he needs a more active source of news, particularly for the transportation information (there are lots of strikes) and the weather. In Japan he could just dial a number on the phone to get access to the information.

Strangely enough, it looks like this service may have just ended. NTT, at least, ended their 177 service on March 31 of this year after being in service for 70 years. An NHK news article notes that the usage of this service peaked in 1988 (the last year of Murakami’s trip to Europe) at over 300 million calls and fell to 5.56 million by 2023 (which still seems like a lot!). Thus, our bizarre look at Japan’s history through Murakami’s travel memoir continues.

Murakami spends some time describing Italian public TV and the newscasters who are all quite animated and colorful (which he claims to be able to detect despite the fact that he buys a black and white TV).

He then shifts into a trip to Bologna for gnocchi. He highlights how pleasant it is to travel there because there are fewer tourists and because he’s found some decent restaurants. He ends the chapter with two music anecdotes. After watching The Sicilian in Bologna, he walks through town and stumbles on a Lee Konitz concert in the basement of a random osteria. Unfortunately it’s sold out. Later, back in Rome, he and his wife go to see Georges Prêtre conducting the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

This chapter is only OK. The sections on Italian TV—in particular the dramatic, aging weatherman—are probably the most interesting, but they border on caricature. The Bologna trip is mostly told in exposition. But taken together, there are two interesting stories that speak to the buying power of the yen, the economic mindset that Murakami was in at the time, and the (universal-ish?) experience of having life in a foreign country influence your perception of costs.

First, Murakami talks about buying a TV, and he’s operating on a particularly Japanese mindset:

でもわざわざ高いテレビを買うのもばかばかしいから、まず近所の中古電気屋をのぞきにいく。日本の量販店なんかだと小さいテレビなら二万円くらい出せば買えるからそのつもりで行ったのだが、これが思ったよりかなり高い。やたらでかくって古色蒼然としたのが三万円もする。画像もちょっとぼけてる。日本だったら絶対にスクラップという代物である。僕は昔、これよりずっと鮮明に映るやつを国分寺駅近くのごみ捨て場で拾って帰ったことがある。仕方ないから一番安い白黒の新品を買うことにした。ニュースと天気予報がわかりゃいいんだから色なんてあってもなくても同じである。 (314-315)

But it would also be ridiculous to buy an expensive television, so first I checked out the local used electronics store. At the big box stores in Japan, you could pick up a small TV for about 20,000 yen, so that’s what I had in mind when I went, but they were much more expensive than I thought. A TV much larger than I needed with a dim, faded screen ran 30,000 yen. The picture was a little warped as well. If this was Japan, it would’ve been on the scrapheap. A long time ago, I managed to go home with a TV with much clearer picture that I picked up at a garbage drop off near Kokubunji Station. Now I didn’t have a choice, so I decided to but the cheapest new black and white model. All I needed it for was the news and weather report, so it made no difference if it was color or not.

This reminds me of an anecdote from Matt Alt’s book Pure Invention of being able to score very lightly used electronics on trash day in Bubble-era Japan. Interesting to see Italy in a very different situation when it comes to the ubiquity of electronics and their costs.

It does seem like living in Italy has started to influence Murakami’s perception of costs a bit. He’s potentially started to anchor toward the cheaper cost of living, as shown when he goes to get tickets for the orchestra:

十二月六日、日曜日、ローマでジョールジュ・プレートル指揮の聖テチリア・オーケストラを聴きに行く。演奏曲目はベートーヴェンの交響曲の五番と六番という凄まじいというか何というか、かなりのものだけれど、年末でもあることだしベートーヴェンをまとめて聴くのも悪くないんじゃないかという感じで前日にヴァチカンの前にある聖チェチリアのホールまで切符を買いに行った。値段は5500円、3900円、2200円だが残念ながらいちばん高い券しか残っていない。それも前例のはしっこの方である。それで女房と二人で随分迷ったのだけれど、年末だからまあいいか（何がどういいのかよくわからないけど）、とあきらめて買ってしまう。どうしてかはわからないけれど、外国にいると知らず知らずだんだん生活がつつましくなってくる。東京にいると一万円のチケットでもさっさっと買っちゃうのに。 (321)

On Sunday, December 6, we went to hear Georges Prêtre conducting the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. The selection was Beethoven’s 5th and 6th Symphonies—which I guess you might qualify as staggering works, at any rate quite major—it was the end of the year, and hearing a number of Beethoven pieces at once sounded like it would be nice, so the day before we went to Saint Cecilia Hall in front of the Vatican to buy tickets. The prices were 5,500 yen, 3,900 yen, and 2,200 yen, but unfortunately only the most expensive were left. And those were on the edge of the front row. My wife and I had a lot of trouble making up our minds, but it was the end of the year so we thought it was fine (what was fine, I couldn’t say exactly), so we ended up buying them. I don’t know why, but when we’re living in a foreign country, our lifestyle gets increasingly frugal without even realizing it. Despite the fact that in Tokyo we’d shell out 10,000 yen for a ticket without a second thought.

So the cost of electronics is expensive in Italy, but the orchestra is relatively affordable. The opposite of in Japan. To provide some reference, in December 1987, the yen was around 130 JPY/USD.

Year 1: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year 2: 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 3: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year 4: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year 5: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year 6: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year 7: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year 8: Pigeon, Edits, Magazines, Awkwardness, Back Issues
Year 9: Water, Snæfellsnes, Cannonball, Distant Drumming
Year 10: Vermonters, Wandering and Belonging, Peter Cat, Sushi Counter, Murakami Fucks First
Year 11: Embers, Escape, Window Seats, The End of the World
Year 12: Distant Drums, Exhaustion, Kiss, Lack of Pretense, Rotemburo
Year 13: Murakami Preparedness, Pacing Norwegian Wood, Character Studies and Murakami’s Financial Situation, Mental Retreat, Writing is Hard
Year 14: Prostitutes and Novelists, Villa Tre Colli and Norwegian Wood, Surge of Death, On the Road to Meta, Unbelievable
Year 15: Baseball on TV, Kindness, Murakami in the Asahi Shimbun – 日記から – 1982, The Mythology of 1981, Winning and Losing
Year 16: The Closet Massacre, Booze Bus, Old Shoes, Editing Norwegian Wood, Prophecy
Year 17: Athens Marathon 1987, Infinite Appetites, Black Monday, Vibes-cation

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The final week of Murakami Fest 2024.

This next chapter, ペトラ (Petra), is a bit of a return to form. It’s a few pages longer than the previous chapters and Murakami hits the ennui notes that he’s been going for over most of the book, painting a subtle, muted portrait of offseason travelers taking things as they come in Europe.

After exhausting the sights in Mitilini, they take a bus to Petra where they take a room with a family through what may be the Women’s Cooperative of Petra. Murakami refers to it as 農業婦人会 (Nōgyō fujin kai, women’s agricultural association). They have lunch at a restaurant, see an uzo distillery, buy postcards, have coffee, watch the sunset, and then return to their hotel room where Murakami drinks brandy and reads Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Not a bad way to spend the vacation.

It’s a nice chapter, with a few delicate portraits of the people they run into. Here’s how he ends things:

“You’re Japanese?” she said. “I met a lot of Japanese in Australia. They’re a clever people.” She shook her head sadly. Then she gazed out past the fields, almost like she could make out Australia just past the horizon. “Visit again sometime,” she said. “It’s quiet here. Next time you can take it easy.”

We will, I said. We want to visit during the summer next time.

“You don’t have children?” she asked, like she’d suddenly remembered.

We don’t, I responded.

She looked at us and then smiled. “But you’re still young.”

We packed our things and paid the bill. She seemed very embarrassed to take the money. I don’t know why. Maybe she hadn’t yet adjusted to working with customers like that. I gave her some coins from Japan and told her it was for the girl who had shown us the way. She thanked me and stared at the coins in her palm. “Sayonara,” we said. Then we left her behind in her silent, puddle of sadness.

That’s everything that happened in Petra.

「日本の方ですね。オーストラリアで沢山日本の人見ました。クレヴァーな人達」そして彼女は哀しげに首を振る。それから畑の向こうの方に目をやる。そのむこうにオーストラリアが見えるかしら、という風に。「また来て下さい」と彼女は言う。「ここは静かでいいところです。今度はゆっくりと来てくださいね」

そうする、と僕らは言った。今度は夏に来たいものですね。

「お子さんはいらっしゃらないの？」とふと思いついたように彼女は尋ねる。

いない、と僕らは答える。

彼女は僕らの様子を見て、それからにっこりと笑う。「でもまだお若いですものね」

僕らは荷物をまとめ、勘定を払う。お金を受け取る時、彼女はとても恥ずかしそうにする。どうしてかはよくわからない。まだそういう客を相手にする仕事に慣れていないのだろうか。僕は案内してくれた女の子にと言って日本から持ってきた小銭をあげる。彼女は礼を言って、手のひらに乗せたその小銭をじっと見る。「さよなら」と僕らは言った。そして彼女をその物静かなみずたまりのような哀しみのなかにそっと置き去りにした。

それがペトラの町で起こったことの全てである。 (310)

It’s starting to become more apparent that this is Bubble Era Japan. Obviously, the whole book is premised on this fact. Murakami, a mid-tier writer with a small but dedicated readership, could afford to close up shop in Japan, giving up many if not all of his regular writing gigs (one of the main points of the trip), and move to the Mediterranean for three years, living on a restricted budget. Room and board is 1,800 yen for the night and 500 yen for breakfast for two. Dinner for two is 1,300 yen and includes fish, salad, and wine. This only works if the yen is super strong. I’m sure that Norwegian Wood’s runaway success changed the equation a little, but it doesn’t seem to have hit yet. Something to watch for in coming chapters.

Year 1: Boobs, The Wind, Baseball, Lederhosen, Eels, Monkeys, and Doves
Year 2: 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 3: “The Town and Its Uncertain Wall” – Words and Weirs, The Library, Old Dreams, Saying Goodbye, Lastly
Year 4: More Drawers, Phone Calls, Metaphors, Eight-year-olds, dude, Ushikawa, Last Line
Year 5: Jurassic Sapporo, Gerry Mulligan, All Growns Up, Dance, Mountain Climbing
Year 6: Sex With Fat Women, Coffee With the Colonel, The Librarian, Old Man, Watermelons
Year 7: Warmth, Rebirth, Wasteland, Hard-ons, Seventeen, Embrace
Year 8: Pigeon, Edits, Magazines, Awkwardness, Back Issues
Year 9: Water, Snæfellsnes, Cannonball, Distant Drumming
Year 10: Vermonters, Wandering and Belonging, Peter Cat, Sushi Counter, Murakami Fucks First
Year 11: Embers, Escape, Window Seats, The End of the World
Year 12: Distant Drums, Exhaustion, Kiss, Lack of Pretense, Rotemburo
Year 13: Murakami Preparedness, Pacing Norwegian Wood, Character Studies and Murakami’s Financial Situation, Mental Retreat, Writing is Hard
Year 14: Prostitutes and Novelists, Villa Tre Colli and Norwegian Wood, Surge of Death, On the Road to Meta, Unbelievable
Year 15: Baseball on TV, Kindness, Murakami in the Asahi Shimbun – 日記から – 1982, The Mythology of 1981, Winning and Losing
Year 16: The Closet Massacre, Booze Bus, Old Shoes, Editing Norwegian Wood, Prophecy
Year 17: Athens Marathon 1987, Infinite Appetites, Black Monday

Mitilini in 2010, via Wikimedia Commons.

In the next chapter, レスボス (Lesbos), Murakami continues his vibes-cation. He’s on Lesbos, as the title suggests, and there isn’t much to do. So they take a taxi outside the main town to see the Museum of Theophilus, a museum dedicated to the Greek folk artist.

Murakami seems impressed with the amateurish paintings and the way Theophilus is able to capture the awkward and frightening and suggestive, but part of the appeal is the moment in which he’s viewing the works. The Murakamis are the only people in the museum on a warm October day during the offseason.

They go to another museum right next door, which seems to be the Museum-Library Stratis Eleftheriadis-Tériade. Murakami describes it as containing works of Picasso, Matisse and others collected by a publisher who lived in Paris, which seems to correspond to Tériade.

They take their time, and when they finish, they head up the hill for a beer. Murakami ends the chapter in a nice way.

We go outside and up the hill a bit, go into the first kafenio we see, and order a cold beer. The beer is so cold it makes my eye sockets rattle. The afternoon is quiet, the light is warm. A tourist pamphlet notes, “Lesbos is known for having the most clear days in all of Greece.” I see a patrol boat heading into the port. A blue and white Greek flag flutters in the wind. Today feels like one of life’s sunny patches.

I wonder if someone could paint our picture. A 38-year-old writer and his wife, far from home. Beer on the table. Life is pretty good. And occasionally there are patches of sun in the afternoon.

外に出て少し丘を上がり、最初にみかけたカフェニオンに入って、冷たいビールを注文する。目の奥が痛くなるくらいよく冷えたビールである。静かな午後、暖かい光。「レスボス島はギリシャでいちばん晴天日の多いことで知られています」と観光パンフレットにはある。パトロール・ボートが港に入ってくるのが見える。青と白のギリシャの旗が風に揺れる。まるで人生の日だまりのような一日。

誰かが僕らの絵を描いてくれないかな、と思う。故郷から遠く離れた三十八歳の作家とその妻。テーブルの上のビール。そこそこの人生。そしてときには午後の日だまり。 (302)

It doesn’t feel as substantive as some of the other writing in the book, but it’s a nice little chapter. I do feel like the chapters have gotten shorter as we pass the midpoint of the book, which makes me wonder whether Murakami was writing these contemporaneously. We know that he kept a journal, so he very well could have written these out after the fact; the book wasn’t published until 1990. If he was writing them contemporaneously, however, it might make sense that we get these short, sparse vignettes rather than the extended travel writing at the beginning of the trip. These are maintenance pieces. Written after he finished literal and figurative marathons.

I think it again highlights exactly how quickly Murakami works. He left on the trip without having started Norwegian Wood, and finished it in less than a year. While traveling and writing (or at least journaling/taking notes) about everything he did while abroad. Say what you will about Murakami, but he’s not a slacker. These chapters, however, do feel a bit vibey and muted, but perhaps that’s what Murakami was going for.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

In the next chapter, カヴァラからのフェリーボート (The Ferry from Kavala), Murakami rides the ferry from Kavala to Lesbos. It’s notable for the point of view which really focuses in on Murakami himself, and not his wife. He’s on the ferry and notices a group of young Greek soldiers. They’re always riding ferries, although he doesn’t have a good idea of where they’re going.

There’s a nice scene describing the young soldiers laughing and smoking cigarettes. Murakami writes them sympathetically because he’s been thinking about fighting ever since the Evros River incident, which happened the December of 1986 (the year prior).

He goes on a little aside about the futility of war before being brought back to his senses by a Greek man who points at the television:

The middle-aged Greek man seated at the table next to me says, Hey, look at the TV, it’s Japan. The news on the TV in the first-class lobby is showing the Tokyo Stock Exchange in Kabutocho. People with rigid looks on their faces are shouting something. They’re pointing. Their sleeves are rolled up, and they’re yelling into phones. But I’m unable to figure out what’s going on. “It’s money,” the Greek man says in broken English, “Money.” He pantomimes counting out money. I take it that stocks have crashed. But I can’t explain the details with my level of English. (* I realized this later, but this was Black Monday. When I think about it, I’m reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald. In 1929, Fitzgerald learned of the Great Crash when he was traveling in Tunisia. He describes it “like distant thunder.” Of course, Black Monday wasn’t anywhere close to the scale of the 1929 crash, but I still remember feeling a sort of sense of unease. I might’ve been thinking about war just at that moment, so the stock crash and everyone’s paralyzed faces on TV may have felt more darkly ominous than usual to me.)

隣のテーブルに座っている中年のギリシャ人が僕に向かってほら、テレビを見てごらんよ、日本だよ、と言う。一等船室のロビーのテレビのニュースが東京兜町の証券取引所の光景を映し出している。こわばった顔つきをした人々が何かを叫んでいる。指を上げている。シャツの袖をまくりあげて、電話に向かって何か怒鳴っている。でも何のことだか僕には理解できない。「moneyだよ、money」とギリシャ人が片言の英語で言う。そして金を勘定する仕種をする。どうやら株が暴落したらしい。でも詳しいことは僕の英語力では説明できない。（＊あとになってわかったことだが、それが例のブラック・マンデーだった。僕はこのときのことを思い出すたびに、スコット・フィッツジェラルドのことを考える。スコット・フィッツジェラルドは1929年の大暴落をチュニジアを旅行している時に知った。「まるで遠い電鳴のように」と彼は描写している。もちろん、ブラック・マンデーは規模として1929年の暴落とは比べ物にならなかったけれど、その時のなにかしら不安定な空気のことを僕はまだ記憶している。たぶんちょうどそのとき戦争のことを考えているので、株の暴落とテレビの画面に映る人々のひきつった顔が、僕には余計に暗く不吉に思えたのだろう） (296)

That’s essentially the end of the chapter. There’s a brief news segment on the TV about Prime Minister Nakasone stepping down for Prime Minister Takeshita. Red Dawn starts to play after the news. And Murakami returns to his cabin after eating a pear and crackers and drinking some brandy. He awakes in Lesbos.

This is an interesting chapter because of the F. Scott Fitzgerald connection and because Black Monday happens to be my birthday. So when I turned 6, Murakami was asleep on a ferry in the Aegean Sea.

I’m unable to track down the Fitzgerald quote, so that’s my translation of Murakami’s Japanese. If anyone knows where I might find that Fitzgerald writing (it seems to be his journal/diary rather than a piece of published writing), let me know!