The End of the World

Posted on October 29, 2018 by Daniel

Here we are, the final chapter of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I first read this book during the summer of 1999. I remember the first 100 pages being a slog and then just flying through the second half.

(I was visiting colleges while I read the book, and it had me convinced that I wanted to study cognitive neuroscience, even though the only thing I knew about cognitive neuroscience was the limited perspective of Murakami’s old man scientist. By “I want to study cognitive neuroscience” I basically meant “I really like this book I’m reading right now by Haruki Murakami.”)

I finished the book ravenously as I was on a flight home to New Orleans, worried that we might crash or I might otherwise expire—like our embattled data agent—and not know how the book ended.

Fortunately I’ve survived 20 years and finished the book in both languages. Pretty cool.

Here are the previous Murakami Fest posts:

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

Chapter 40 “Birds” is the last chapter of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Boku and his shadow have arrived at the Southern Pool and stand at its edge quietly for a moment just looking at it as the snow falls around them. When the shadow suggests they jump in, Boku says he’s staying and can’t go. He’s realized he has a responsibility to everything in the Town because he’s created them all; they’re all part of him. The shadow is angry and they discuss what it means to stay—the conversation is treated quite differently in translation than the original. Then the shadow jumps in the pool. Boku turns back toward the town with thoughts of the Librarian and his accordion, and the book ends.

Here’s the conversation the two have in the original Japanese:

影は立ちあがって、たまりの静かな水面をじっと見つめた。降りしきる雪の中に身じろぎひとつせずに立った影は、少しずつその奥行を失い、本来の扁平な姿に戻りつつあるような印象を僕に与えた。長いあいだ二人は黙りこんでいた。口から吹きだされる白い息だけが宙に浮かび、そして消えていった。

「止めても無駄なことはよくわかった」と影は言った。「しかし森の中の生活は君が考えているよりずっと大変なものだよ。森は街とは何から何までが違うんだ。生き延びるための労働は厳しいし、冬は長く辛い。一度森に入れば二度とそこを出ることはできない。永遠に君はその森の中にいなくてはならないんだよ」

「そのこともよく考えたんだ」

「しかし心は変わらないんだね？」

「変わらない」と僕は言った。「君のことは忘れないよ。森の中で古い世界のことも少しずつ思いだしていく。思いださなくちゃならないことはたぶんいっぱいあるだろう。いろんな人や、いろんな場所や、いろんな光や、いろんな唄をね」

影は体の前で両手を組んで、それを何度ももみほぐした。影の体に積もった雪が彼に不思議な陰影を与えていた。その陰影は彼の体の上でゆっくりと伸びちぢみしているように見えた。彼は両手をこすりあわせながらまるでその音に耳を澄ませるかのように、軽く頭を傾けていた。

「そろそろ俺は行くよ」と影は言った。「しかしこの先二度と会えないというのはなんだか妙なものだな。最後に何て言えばいいのかがわからない。きりの良いことばがどうしても思いつけないんだ」

僕はもう一度帽子を脱いで雪を払い、かぶりなおした。

「幸せになることを祈ってるよ」と影は言った。「君のことは好きだったよ。俺が君の影だということを抜きにしてもね」

「ありがとう」と僕は言った。 (590-591)

My shadow stands up and stares at the calm surface of the Pool. Standing absolutely still in the heavy snow, he gives the impression that he’s gradually losing all of his depth and returning to his original flatness. We are silent for a long while. Only puffs of white breath emerge from our mouths into the air and then disappear.

“I knew it was futile to try and stop you,” my shadow says. “But life in the Woods will be much more difficult than you think. The Woods are entirely different from the Town. It’s tough work to survive, and winter is long and trying. Once you enter, you cannot leave. You’ll have to remain in the Woods forever.”

“I’ve considered this, too.”

“And you haven’t changed your mind?”

“No,” I say. “I won’t forget you. I’ll slowly start to remember things about the old world as well. There are likely many things that I’ll have to remember. Many people, places, lights, songs.”

My shadow crosses his arms in front of him and rubs them together several times. The snow that collects on his body gives him a mysterious shadow that seems to expand and contract over him. He rubs both hands together and tilts his head ever so slightly as though listening for the sound they make.

“I’m going to go,” he says. “But it’s strange to think we’ll never see each other again. I don’t know what to say in the end. I can’t think of the right words to leave things.”

I take off my hat again, brush off the snow, and put it back on.

“I hope that you’ll be happy,” my shadow says. “I loved you. And not just because I was your shadow.”

“Thank you,” I say.

And here is Birnbaum’s official translation, which makes some significant adjustments:

My shadow rises and stares at the calm surface of the Pool. He stands motionless amid the falling snow. Neither of us says a word. White puffs of breath issue from our mouths.

“I cannot stop you,” admits my shadow. “Maybe you can’t die here, but you will not be living. You will merely exist. There is no ‘why’ in a world that would be perfect in itself. Nor is surviving in the Woods anything like you imagine. You’ll be trapped for all eternity.”

“I am not so sure,” I say. “Nor can you be. A little by little, I will recall things. People and places from our former world, different qualities of light, different songs. And as I remember, I may find the key to my own creation, and to its undoing.”

“No, I doubt it. Not as long as you are sealed inside yourself. Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still, you can’t say I didn’t try,” my shadow says, then pauses. “I loved you.”

“I will not forget you,” I reply. (399)

He’s clearly taken some liberties in dictating through the shadow what it will mean for Boku to stay in the Town. I had to look at the 1985 paperback version twice just to make sure that Murakami himself hadn’t made cuts to the 1990 Complete Works edition; when Birnbaum and the Complete Works editions don’t align, often it’s been because Birnbaum was clearly translating based on the 1985 edition. But that’s not the case here. The “You will merely exist” feels so appropriate for this world, but it’s not in the Japanese.

That said, Birnbaum’s translation is just supreme—“different qualities of light” is such a perfect line.

***

So what have we learned?

We’ve learned that Murakami made changes to the original version of Hard-boiled Wonderland that was published in 1985 for the Complete Works version that was published in 1990. He cuts some name drops, some random asides, and some jokes. Some changes are a little strange, and sometimes as small as a single sentence in a chapter. I don’t think it’s too farfetched to say that many of these changes were made after Murakami saw the English translation. Too many of the cuts coincide too perfectly with cuts that Birnbaum made in translation.

It’s conceivable that Birnbaum was working based off of the manuscript for the 1990 version, but there are places that Murakami cuts and Birnbaum keeps, which would be strange unless he was actively comparing the two different manuscripts. I think it’s more likely he completed the translation in 1988 or 1989, Murakami saw the translation during the editing process, and then he had time to make adjustments to the Complete Works text. I wonder whether he would have read the English himself or whether the editors noted specifically which sections were being removed from the Japanese.

At any rate, this was a very productive time during Murakami’s career, and we’ve learned that he was recycling themes and images across works, notably from his 1985 short story collection Dead-heat on a Merry Go Round.

We’ve learned that Birnbaum is a brilliant writer and translator. His prose is beautiful and hilarious. He has excellent control over the tone of the work and how that builds the worlds, especially in the End of the World sections.

But we also know that he has several techniques that “improve” the work in translation. He uses space breaks to create dramatic moments and trims the endings of chapters so that they’re either dramatic dialogue or in media res. He adds entirely new lines to make things more dramatic.

He does, however, alter the work at times. He trims sections where Murakami tends to run long in his usual improvisational way, mostly with good results but occasionally something nice gets axed. He tends to cut places where Watashi brings in the outside world, sections that point to a larger context for his feeling of helplessness, and suggest that it refers more broadly to the human condition.

Overall he dials down the sexiness. From the beginning he’s a little less blatant about Watashi’s vision of the Girl in Pink. He dials back on a lovely exchange with the Librarian and cuts some of the sexy encounters between Watashi and the Girl in Pink entirely, including one where he drops his pants to show her his erection (!).

We’ve also learned that even the best translators make mistakes, or are forced into mistakes through their editors.

Hard-boiled Wonderland is really a perfect text to analyze Murakami’s editing process, how Japanese writers were translated during the 80s and early 90s (especially before they had much clout in the publishing industry and before the anime/manga boom really took hold), and the goals of translation more broadly. There are a probably a few other works that present opportunities this rich, notably Dance Dance Dance and Wind-up Bird Chronicle (both of which had extensive cuts in translation, about which Jay Rubin has been very transparent) and Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball 1973, and Norwegian Wood (all of which have been translated twice by multiple different translators). At the very least, I think someone could do a really good paper about Murakami’s preparation of the Complete Works texts.

I wonder whether Hard-boiled Wonderland was the only work he edited for re-publication. I have a feeling that this is not the case.

***

I was disappointed with the ending the first time I read the book. I wanted Boku to escape and Watashi to live. I wanted him to somehow succeed against everything he was facing—the System, the Factory, the Gatekeeper. I’d even started to wonder whether the Girl in Pink pulled a Psycho move and had him frozen in her apartment. But the ending has grown on me.

We have an approximation of Murakami’s vision of escape from the novella “The Town and its Uncertain Wall,” which was a first draft of sorts for this novel. The narrator escapes and ends up being tortured by nostalgic yearnings of life in the Town. We know nothing about this narrator—it’s not the clearly defined Murakami male persona from Hard-boiled Wonderland—but it’s easy to imagine Watashi in the Hell of a forced continued existence in the modern world, with an itch he’s never able to scratch (presumably after he’s separated himself from that interior world); the whole novel has basically been to show how miserable he has it. Better for him to pass into the tautology of his inner experience.

I do wonder sometimes whether Murakami will write a sequel. He’s left enough threads unfollowed—we have the Girl in Pink freezing the body and the Woods are yet unexplored and filled with different people. But more and more frequently Murakami just repeats “I never remember what I wrote” when asked about past works. More recently, he only seems to write sequels immediately after completion of a book as with 1Q84 and Wind-up Bird Chronicle.

And part of me doesn’t want him to change anything. It’s such an interesting work as is.

I also wonder whether there will be another attempt at translation. I imagine this won’t happen until after Murakami dies, perhaps not even until the work goes into the public domain. We’ll all have expired into our personal Ends of the World by that point. And to be honest, I don’t know that the original Birnbaum translation can be topped—I think this is something else we’ve learned through this project.

____

Update:

I’m realizing now that readers who come across this post may not understand the difference between Murakami Fest and this Hard-boiled Wonderland Project. Although they overlapped at times, I started blogging about untranslated Murakami works once a year around the Nobel Prize announcements in the early years of the blog. In 2012, in an attempt to post on the site more frequently, I started blogging about the translation of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. You can see an index of all those posts on this page.

Window Seats

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Daniel

Murakami Fest 2018, Week 3! The PENULTIMATE chapter of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.

Here are the previous fest posts:

Chapter 39 is titled “Popcorn, Lord Jim, Extinction.” Watashi and the Librarian buy beer and drive to Hibiya Park where they sit and drink and talk about life. She heads off to shop after a bit, and Watashi watches a mother and child feed the pigeons. He drinks more beer, burns his credit cards. He buys popcorn for himself and the pigeons, does more thinking about the fairness of life, and whether fairness matters. He calls his apartment and is surprised to find the chubby Girl in Pink who is going to live in his apartment and promises to freeze him, possibly so her grandfather can bring him back to life later. Watashi drives to the pier where he parks, thinks about happiness while listening to Bob Dylan, and then gives himself over to sleep (and presumably dies).

This chapter has the usual in terms of cuts/adjustments from Birnbaum (or his editor): trimming here and there, a few larger cuts where Murakami gets wordy, and the timely addition of a space break.

But it also has the rare Murakami self-edit! Hooray! I’m so glad we got at least one more of these in the final chapters.

Take a look at this section from the original 1985 version with my translation:

「どうして離婚したの？」と彼女が訊いた。

「旅行するとき電車の窓側の席に座れないから」と私は言った。

「冗談でしょ？」

「J.D.サリンジャーの小説にそう科白があったんだ。高校生のときに読んだ」

「本当はどうなの？」

「簡単だよ。五年か六年前の夏に出ていったんだ。出ていったきり二度と戻らなかった」 (324)

“Why did you get divorced?” she asked.

“She never let me sit in the window seat on the train when we traveled,” I said.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It’s a line from Salinger novel. I read it when I was in high school.”

“What was the real reason?”

“Simple, really. She up and left the summer five or six years ago. She left and never came back.”

And here is Birnbaum’s official translation, which cuts the reference to Franny and Zooey:

“Why’d you get divorced?” she asked.

“Because she never let me sit by the window on trips.”

She laughed. “Really, why?”

“Quite simple, actually. Five or six summers ago, she up and left. Never came back.” (388)

Pretty minor changes, but still adjusted.

Now take a look at what Murakami did to the manuscript for the Complete Works edition in 1990:

「どうして離婚したの？」と彼女が訊いた。

「簡単だよ。五年か六年前の夏に出ていったんだ。出ていったきり二度と戻らなかった」 (573)

“Why did you get divorced?” she asked.

“Simple, really. She up and left the summer five or six years ago. She left and never came back.”

He cuts the whole joke! I wonder if he thought it wasn’t funny anymore or that the Salinger name drop wasn’t necessary. Kind of a weird little cut, which is similar to some of the other things he’s cut.

There are two weightier sections that Murakami keeps but get trimmed in translation and are worth looking at.

Here’s the Birnbaum translation of a section with Watashi and the Librarian talking. He’s talking about a line from The Brothers Karamazov when Alyosha is telling Kolya Krasotkin about his future:

“When I first read that, I didn’t know what Alyosha meant,” I said. “How was it possible for a life of misery to be happy overall? But then I understood, that misery could be limited to the future.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Neither do I,” I said. “Not yet.”

***

She laughed and stood up, brushing the grass from her slacks. “I’ll be going. It’s almost time anyway.” (389)

As you can see, he does some pretty serious tidying up, using the space break to do a massive cut:

「アリョーシャはいろんなことがわかるんだ」と私は言った。「しかしそれを読んだとき僕はかなり疑問に思った。とても不幸な人生を総体として祝福することは可能だろうかってね」

「だから人生を限定するの？」

「かもしれない」と私は言った。「僕はきっと君の御主人にかわってバスの中で鉄の花瓶で殴り殺されるべきだったんだ。そういうのこそ僕の死に方にふさわしいような気がする。直接的で断片的でイメージが完結している。何かを考える暇もないしね」

私は芝生に寝転んだまま顔を上げて、さっき雲のあったあたりに目をやった。雲はもうなかった。くすの木の葉かげに隠れてしまったのだ。

「ねえ、私もあなたの限定されたヴィジョンの中に入りこむことはできるかしら？」と彼女が訊いた。

「誰でも入れるし、誰でも出ていける」と私は言った。「そこが限定されたヴィジョンの優れた点なんだ。入るときには靴をよく拭いて、出ていくときにはドアを閉めていくだけでいいんだ。みんなそうしている」

彼女は笑って立ちあがり、コットン・パンツについた芝を手で払った。「そろそろ行くわ。もう時間でしょ」 (574-575)

“Alyosha knew all sorts of stuff,” I said. “But when I read that, I had my doubts—whether or not a miserable life could be fortunate on the whole.”

“That’s why you limited your life?”

“Maybe so,” I said. “I should’ve been brained with an iron vase in that bus instead of your husband. I feel like that was really the way for me to go. Direct, fragmentary, a self-contained image. Without a second to think about anything.”

I looked up from my position lying on the grass and looked over at the cloud we’d seen. It was gone. It had been hidden by the shade of the camphor tree’s leaves.

“So, is there room for me in your limited vision?” she asked.

“Everyone is welcome in, and everyone can leave,” I said. “That’s one of the best parts of a limited vision. Just wipe your feet when you come in, and close the door when you leave. That’s what everyone does.”

She laughed and stood up, brushing off a few pieces of grass from her cotton pants. “I’m gonna get out of here. It’s time.”

That feels like a pretty significant cut. This is Murakami exploring his main metaphor for the human condition/human interaction: We only ever encounter others within our self, fundamentally making human interaction limited.

I don’t think my rendering does the passage justice. Birnbaum’s is hilarious and reads really well. But it does leave that little bit out—the Librarian wants into his life, and he lets her in.

It also brings back the kind of throwaway plot detail of the Librarian’s husband and how he bit the dust, which was funny as a non-sequitur.

Birnbaum also makes another significant cut once the Librarian goes and Watashi is left on his own to think about everything:

I closed my eyes, I felt a ripple run through my mind. The wave went beyond sadness or solitude; it was a great, deep moan that resonated in my bones. It would not subside. I braced myself, elbows against the backrest of the park bench. No one could help me, no more than I could help anyone else.

I wanted a smoke, but I couldn’t find my cigarettes. … (391)

Damn. This is such an amazing translation that I’m kind of embarrassed to share my rendering of the scene. But it must be done. Here’s what the original looks like:

私はこの世界から消え去りたくはなかった。目を閉じると私は自分の心の揺らぎをはっきりと感じとることができた。それは哀しみや孤独感を超えた、私自身の存在を根底から揺り動かすような深く大きなうねりだった。そのうねりはいつまでもつづいた。私はベンチの背もたれに肘をついて、そのうねりに耐えた。誰も私を助けてはくれなかった。誰にも私を救うことはできないのだ。ちょうど私が誰をも救うことができなかったのと同じように。

私は声をあげて泣きたかったが、泣くわけにはいかなかった。涙を流すには私はもう年をとりすぎていたし、あまりに多くのことを経験しすぎていた。世界には涙を流すことのできない哀しみというのが存在するのだ。それは誰に向かっても説明することができないし、たとえ説明できたとしても、誰にも理解してもらうことのできない種類のものなのだ。その哀しみはどのような形に変えることもできず、風のない夜の雪のようにただ静かに心に積っていくだけのものなのだ。

もっと若い頃、私はそんな哀しみをなんとか言葉に変えてみようと試みたことがあった。しかしどれだけ言葉を尽くしてみても、それを誰かに伝えることはできないし、自分自身にさえ伝えることはできないのだと思って、私はそうすることをあきらめた。そのようにして私は私の言葉を閉ざし、私の心を閉ざしていった。深い哀しみというのは涙という形をとることさえできないものなのだ。

煙草を吸おうと思ったが、煙草の箱はなかった。… (579-580)

I didn’t want to disappear from this world. I closed my eyes and could clearly make out the palpitations of my heart. It was a tremendous, deep surge, something completely beyond sadness and loneliness, that seemed to be beating from the foundation of my own existence. The surge continued forever. I put my elbows on the back of the bench and endured it. No one would help me. No one could save me. Just as I couldn’t save anyone, either.

I wanted to cry out, but I couldn’t cry. I was too old for tears and had experienced too much. The world contained sadness that you couldn’t shed tears over. The type of thing that you couldn’t explain to anyone and that even if you did, no one could understand it. That sadness never changed shaped and instead just built up quietly in your heart like snow on a windless night.

When I was younger, I tried to put that kind of sadness into words. But no matter how many words I tried, I couldn’t communicate it to anyone, and I don’t think even to my self, so I gave up trying. That’s how I closed off my words and closed off my heart. Deep sadness can’t even take the form of tears.

I wanted to smoke, but I didn’t have a box of cigarettes. …

Ok, maybe not as bad as I thought, but not as good as “a great, deep moan that resonated in my bones.”

This section, too, feels very Murakami. It doesn’t necessarily fit in this book—since when is our data agent an aspiring writer?!—but it does sound a lot like the narrators in Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973, kind of struggling through loss and life, unable to really articulate what they’re going through. It seems pretty funny and telling/true that he reaches for his cigarettes after this.

But it also feels a bit too over the top perhaps from our otherwise relatively stoic data agent. So I can see why it gets the axe.

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I did. One final chapter! Hard to believe…

Escape

Posted on October 13, 2018 by Daniel

Murakami Fest 2018, Week 2.

Previous posts are here:

Chapter 38 is titled “Escape.” Boku reads dreams, searching for bits of the Librarian’s mind, until the light of morning erases the glimmers from the skulls (just like in the Hard-boiled Wonderland section!). The Librarian makes him coffee and then watches over him while he takes a nap. He then goes to the Gatehouse while the Gatekeeper is out burning beasts, steals the key, and then frees his Shadow from the subterranean room where he’s kept. The Shadow can’t walk, so Boku carries him and they make their way to the Southern Pool, which the Shadow believes is the only way out of the Town.

There are a handful of lines cut, but nothing all that dramatic. Just a trimming here and there, some of which comes naturally in the translation process. So it’s a little difficult to pick out a section to highlight, but the paragraph with the most cuts also happens to be the Shadow’s explanation of how he determined that the Southern Pool is the only exit from the town, so these feel like the weightiest cuts. Here’s Birnbaum’s official translation:

“At first, it was only intuition that told me the Town had an exit,” he says. “For the very reason that the perfection of the Town must include all possibilities. Therefore, if an exit is our wish, an exit is what we get. Do you follow me?” (385)

And here’s the original translation with my translation which, as usual, features Murakami’s extended explanation:

「俺がこの街に必ず隠された出口があると思ったのははじめは直感だった。でもそのうちにそれは確信になった。なぜならこの街は完全な街だからだ。完全さというものは必ずあらゆる可能性を含んでいるものなんだ。そういう意味ではここは街とさえもいえない。もっと流動的で総体的なものだ。あらゆる可能性を提示しながら絶えずその形を変え、そしてその完全性を維持している。つまりここは決して固定して完結した世界ではないんだ。動きながら完結している世界なんだ。だからもし俺が脱出口を望むなら、脱出口はあるんだよ。君には俺の言ってることわかるかい？」 (569-570)

“At first I just had a feeling the Town had a hidden exit. But soon enough I was convinced of it: the Town is a perfect town. Perfection as a concept always includes all possibilities. In that sense, this isn’t even a town, really. It’s something more fluid, more wholistic. It presents every possibility, changing constantly, thereby maintaining its perfection. In other words, this isn’t a fixed, complete world. It’s a world that completes itself as it moves. So if I want a way to escape, then a way to escape there is. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I’m not sure I get what the implication of this passage is, other than that perhaps a human self is self-complete, even as it changes and adjusts. It can never not be itself, which is what the Town is. Something like that?

Or maybe it’s just Murakami “completing” his novel by creating the explanation for an escape. The edited English version feels like a fine localization.

And then there were two (chapters)…

Embers

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Daniel

It’s a month delayed this year, but welcome to the eleventh annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

My calendar tells me it’s been almost a full year since I last blogged about Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, so I think I’ll use this year to try and knock out the last few chapters.

Here are the past entries in the fest:

I previously used the fest to look at Hard-boiled Wonderland back in 2013 and 2014. This week I’m looking at Chapter 37. You can see the rest of the entries in this series here.

Chapter 37 is titled “Lights, Introspection, Cleanliness.” Watashi is awakened on the couch by the Librarian when she sees that the unicorn skull is emanating lights (just like in the End of the World sections!). They have a couple beers and watch the skull, they talk about how Watashi feels oddly sensitive to small details around him in the world like snails and the way their clothes are piled on the floor. More talk about themselves. They sleep together again (maybe?) and then she falls asleep. Watashi gets up, inspects her kitchen and cooks breakfast while listening to the radio. After they eat, they get cleaned up and ready to head out and Watashi gifts the Librarian the unicorn skull.

There are actually a lot of heavy cuts in this chapter. Birnbaum (or his editor) does his usually thing and adds a space break to provide emphasis. They get rid of the first couple beers they drink; remove most references to the snail which Watashi has noticed and gets fixated on; and cut and adjust lines of dialogue so that it really trims the chapter down.

There’s some wordplay that kind of gets lost in translation. The two keep echoing 悪くない (Warukunai, Not bad, eh?). Birnbaum keeps the first instance but adjusts one in translation and cuts another altogether. This feels like a very Murakami-esque dialogue element, suggesting that, eh, the world ain’t so bad, even though I’ve been screwed over by a massive governmental agency that was experimenting with my brain. Sad to lose the other instances.

And there’s a phrase 清潔で使い道がない (seiketsu de tsukaimichi ga nai, clean and useless) that could be maintained more closely, perhaps.

But then Birnbaum’s prose is just killer in places, such as here:

As dawn drew near, sunlight gradually diminished the cranial foxfires, returning the skull to its original, undistinguished bone-matter state. We made love on the sofa again, her warm breath moist on my shoulder, her breasts small and soft. Then, when it was over, she folded her body into mine and went to sleep. (376)

I mean, damn. You can’t teach that! You can either write like that or you can’t.

Here’s the Japanese…and to be honest, I’m not really sure they have sex again. It seems to be highly suggested based on a clever space break actually provided by Murakami here. Here’s the Japanese:

夜が明けるにつれて頭骨の光は陽光に洗われるようにその輝きを徐々に失い、やがては元の何の変哲も無いのっぺりとした白い骨へと戻っていった。我々はソファーの上で抱きあいながら、カーテンの外の世界がその暗闇を朝の光に奪い去られていく様子を眺めていた。彼女の熱い息が私の肩に湿り気を与え、乳房は小さくやわらかかった。

ワインを飲みほしてしまうと、彼女はその小さな時間の中に身を折り畳むように静かに眠った。… (553)

As dawn began to break, the sunlight gradually washed away the skull’s brilliance, and it returned to its original, smooth, white bone with nothing at all unusual about it. We held each other on the sofa and watched as the darkness of the outside world was lifted by the morning light. Her breath was damp on my shoulder, and her breasts were small and soft.

After she finished the wine, she quickly curled up and quietly fell asleep. …

As you can see, Birnbaum takes a sentence from the subsequent paragraph and combines it with the previous paragraph to kind of complete the narration, whereas Murakami splits it up—in the next paragraph while she falls asleep, he’s wide awake and his attention is on the sounds of the day getting started.

抱き合う (dakiau, hug/embrace or couple, as in “sleep with”) here could easily be sleep with, I think, but it does feel a little strange that way when combined with the second half of the Japanese sentence, which is “watch the room grow lighter.” I mean…if that’s what he was doing, then the sex must not have been that good? What do you all think about this choice?

BOHE also make a very large cut of references to current events at the end of the chapter. Check out the English translation:

She was still getting dressed, so I read the morning paper in the living room. There was nothing that would interest me in my last few hours. (378)

There’s a lot missing in between those two sentences! Here’s the Japanese:

私は彼女が服を着ているあいだ居間のソファーに座って朝刊を読んだ。タクシーの運転手が運転中に心臓発作を起して陸橋の橋桁につっこみ、死んでいた。客は三十二歳の女性と四歳の女の子で、どちらも重傷を負った。どこかの市議会の昼食に出た弁当のカキフライが腐っていて、二人が死んだ。外務大臣がアメリカの高金利政策に対して遺憾の意を表明し、アメリカの銀行の会議はへの貸付け金の利子について検討し、ペルーの蔵相はアメリカの南米に対する経済侵略を非難し、西ドイツの外相は対日貿易収支の不均衡の是正を強く求めていた。シリアがイスラエルを非難し、イスラエルはシリアを非難していた。父親に暴力をふるう十八歳の息子についての相談が載っていた。新聞には私の最後の数時間にとって役に立ちそうなことは何ひとつとして書かれてはいなかった。 (557)

While she was getting dressed, I sat on the sofa in the living room and read the morning paper. A taxi driver had a heart attack while driving, ran into an overpass support, and died. Two passengers, a 32-year-old woman and a 4-year-old girl, both suffered serious injuries. The fried oysters in the bento lunches at a city council somewhere had gone bad and two people died. The Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed his regret over the United States’ high interest rate policies, U.S. banks were meeting to look into the interest rates for loans to Central and South America, Peru’s Finance Minister was criticizing America’s economic penetration into South America, West Germany’s Foreign Minister was insisting on a correction to the trade imbalance with Japan. Syria was criticizing Israel, Israel was criticizing Syria. There was a letter seeking advice about an 18-year-old son who was violent with his father. There wasn’t anything in the paper that seemed of any use to me in my final hours.

Pretty different! Remember that this book was written in 1985 and the translation released in 1991, so the project spans the fall of the Berlin Wall and very nearly the fall of the U.S.S.R. (which went in December 1991). I guess they make this cut because the information isn’t entirely necessary, but it definitely gives the text an entirely different effect.

I wonder if the reality of the current events detracts from the kind of cyberpunkish Tokyo vibe…which is really only present in the scenes with the old man scientist and the thugs. The rest just feels like Tokyo in the 80s. Personally, I like the original and all its breathlessness. It works.

But one of the most thematically notable cuts this chapter is much smaller. Here’s what happens when they see the skull shining:

I gently disengaged her from my arm, reached out for the skull, and brought it over to my lap.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she now asked under her breath.

“No.” For some reason, I wasn’t.

Holding my hands over the skull, I sensed the slightest ember of heat…

And here’s the original Japanese with my translation:

私は右腕を握りしめていた彼女の手をそっとほどいてからテーブルの上の頭骨に手をのばし、それを静かに持ちあげて膝の上に乗せた。

「怖くない？」と彼女が小さな声で訊いた。

「怖くないよ」と私は言った。怖くない。それはおそらくどこかで私自身と結びついているものなのだ。誰も自分自身を怖がったりはしない。

頭骨を手のひらで覆うと、そこにはかすかな残り火のようなあたたかみが感じられた。 (546-547)

I gently released my right arm from her grip, reached out for the skull on the table, and quietly set it on my lap.

“Aren’t you afraid?” she asked quietly.

“Not at all,” I said. I wasn’t afraid. Somehow, someway it was connected to my being. No one is afraid of their essence.

When I placed my hands over the skull, I could feel a faint warmth, like some sort of embers.

I imagine that an editor made a cut here and got rid of the 私自身, either because it felt awkward and unnecessary or it was too on the nose. It’s not an easy thing to translate well. I think translating it simply as “myself” doesn’t work because perhaps some of us are afraid of ourselves. I wondered if “my self” would work, but that strikes me as something that might confuse the reader and look more like a mistake. Any ideas on how you might address this?

Very interesting stuff this chapter, one that could serve as a microcosm of the translation of the whole novel. Three chapters left!

Skulls and Songs

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Daniel

Chapter 36 “Accordion” is a very short chapter in which Watashi seems to discover the secrets of the Town: it’s all part of himself. He and the Librarian are in the stacks, and she comes to the conclusion that the accordion and music might be the key to discovering the lost bits of her mind. Watashi plays random notes and chords and then stumbles upon the tune to “Danny Boy” while letting his thoughts drift out over the Town and its residents. The skulls light up with bits of the Librarian’s mind, and he begins to try and separate them for her.

There aren’t many changes in this chapter. A few minor adjustments and creative translations. The one major adjustment by Birnbaum (or his editor) comes, as usual, at the end of the chapter, but he takes the opposite of his usual approach and ends with the narrator’s thoughts rather than actions. Here is the official English translation:

She surveys the rows of softly glowing skulls before exiting the stacks. The door closes behind her. The flecks of light dance upon the skulls. Some are old dreams that are hers, some are old dreams of my own.

My search has been a long one. It has taken me to every corner of this walled Town, but at last I have found the mind we have lost. (370)

You’ll see that Birnbaum lops of the last line:

彼女はもう一度肯いて光り輝く頭骨の列を眺めわたし、それから書庫を出て行った。ドアが閉まると、僕は壁に持たれて頭骨にちりばめられた無数の光の粒をじっといつまでも見つめていた。その光は彼女の抱いていた古い夢でもあり、同時に僕自身の古い夢でもあった。僕は壁に囲まれたこの街の中で長い道のりを辿ってやっとそれにめぐりあうことができたのだ。

僕は頭骨のひとつをとり、それに手をあててそっと目を閉じた。 (544)

She nods once more, looks over the rows of brightly glowing skulls, and then leaves the stacks. When the door closes, I lean against the wall and stare endlessly at the countless flecks of light studding the skulls. The lights are old dreams she had, and at the same time they are my own old dreams. I’ve followed a long journey through the Town surrounded by a wall so that I can finally encounter them.

I take one of the skulls, place my hands on it, and gently close my eyes.

I had to borrow “flecks” for 粒 (tsubu, drops) because it was just too perfect. Birnbaum has typically corrected Murakami by cutting the narrator’s thoughts at the end of chapter, leaving things in media res. His translation of Watashi’s thoughts here are compelling, especially the creative rendering of the long journey, so I can go either way with this.

Murakami makes one adjustment to the Complete Works edition in this chapter, and as usual it is minor and curious, but it comes at such a critical time in the text. Here is a section of the official translation where the Librarian realizes the key:

“Do you have your accordion?” she asks.

“The accordion?” I question.

“Yes, it may be the key. The accordion is connected to song, song is connected to my mother, my mother is connected to my mind. Could that be right?”

“It does follow,” I say, “though one important link is missing from the chain. I cannot recall a single song.”

“It need not be a song.”

I retrieve the accordion from the pocket of my coat and sit beside her again, instrument in hand. … (367)

And here is my rendering of the original, to show you how Birnbaum is working:

「たぶん手風琴よ」と彼女は言った。「きっとそれが鍵なんだわ」

「手風琴？」と僕は言った。

「筋がとおってるわ。手風琴は唄に結びついて、唄は私の母に結びついて、私の母は私の心のきれはしに結びついている。そうじゃない？」

「たしかに君の言うとおりだ」と僕は言った。「それで筋がとおっている。たぶんそれが鍵だろう。でも大事なリンクがひとつ抜けている。僕には唄というものをひとつとして思いだすことができないんだ」

「唄じゃなくてもいいわ。その手風琴の音を少しだけでも私に聴かせてくれることはできる？」

「できるよ」と僕は言った。そして僕は書庫を出てストーヴのわきにかかったコートのポケットから手風琴をとりだし、それを持って彼女のとなりに座った。(283-284)

“It might be the accordion,” she says. “That must be the key.”

“The accordion?” I say.

“It makes sense. The accordion is linked to songs, songs to my mother, and my mother to the fragments of my mind. Right?”

“Yes, what you say is true,” I say. “It makes sense. It must be the key. But there’s one big connection missing: I am unable to recall a single song.”

“It doesn’t have to be a song. Can you just play the sounds of the accordion for me a bit?”

“I can,” I say. Then I leave the stacks and take the accordion from the pocket of my coat hanging by the stove. I bring it and sit next to her.

As you can see, Birnbaum makes a few minor cuts and adjustments, but nothing major. Here is what Murakami chooses to edit in the Complete Works edition:

「たぶん手風琴よ」と彼女は言った。「きっとそれが鍵なんだわ」

「手風琴？」と僕は言った。

「筋がとおってるわ。手風琴は唄に結びついて、唄は私の母に結びついて、私の母は私の心のきれはしに結びついている。そうじゃない？」

僕は書庫を出てストーヴのわきにかかったコートのポケットから手風琴をとりだし、それを持って彼女のとなりに座った。 (540)

“It might be the accordion,” she says. “That must be the key.”

“The accordion?” I say.

“It makes sense. The accordion is linked to songs, songs to my mother, and my mother to the fragments of my mind. Right?”

I leave the stacks and take the accordion from the pocket of my coat hanging by the stove. I bring it and sit next to her.

I guess the lines about him not being able to recall a song isn’t that important? But it does add to the suspense, to the stakes of this scene a little. It emphasizes how much he’s searching for this music within himself. The cuts don’t really make the chapter all that much more efficient. But they are pretty characteristic of some of the minor tweaks that Murakami has made throughout. I can imagine him rereading the text and muttering, “Well why did I do that? I guess we don’t need that bit.”

Four more chapters to go.

Murakami Fucks First

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Daniel

Welcome to the Tenth 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:

Today I’m looking at one last section of a conversation between Murakami and Anzai Mizumaru, a special pamphlet included with the essay collection Uzumaki neko no mitsukekata.

In this section, they’re talking about the types of customers at sushi restaurants:

村　客の立場から見て、寿司屋で僕がいちばん好きな客っていうと、やっぱり不倫のカップルですね。男が四十代後半から五十代、女が二十代後半っていう感じ。ひそひそっと隅っこで意味ありげな話なんかしてね。いかにも寿司屋らしくていいですよ。サマになるし。だいいち静かだし。

（オガミドリ）へへえ。

村　「これからやるんだな」ってカップルって、雰囲気でわかりますよね。

水　もちろんわかるね、ふふふ。

村　でも僕は個人的には、寿司を食ってからやるよりは、やってからゆっくり食べる方がいいですね。

水　そんなのいないよ、普通は食べてからやるもんだよ。

村　そうかなあ、僕が変なのかなあ。でもさ、やってる最中にこの女はさっきトロとあなごとウニを食ったな、なんて思い出すと感興がそがれませんか？お腹の中にそういうのが入っているのかしら、とかさ。ちょっと生臭くない？

水　そんなこと、誰も思わないよ。それにさ、終わってから寿司食べたりしたら、その方が逆に生々しいよ、ちょっと思い出したりしてさ（笑い）。それじゃブニュエルの世界だよ。

村　でもさ、終わったら腹減りませんか？

水　減らないよ。あとは寝るだけだよ。セックスしたあとで寿司食うなんて、そんな奴いないよ。村上君くらいだよ。

Mura: As a customer, my favorite sushi restaurant customers are definitely the adulterous couples. The ones where the men are in their late-40s to 50s and the women are in their late-20s. They sit in the corner and seem to be whispering conversation laden with meaning. That seems just like a sushi restaurant. So fitting. Mostly because it’s quiet.

(Ogamidori: Hehe)

Mura: You can tell the couples that are going to go do it when they leave.

Mizu: Of course you can, haha.

Mura: But personally, doing it and then taking your time to eat is better than eating sushi and then doing it.

Mizu: No one does that. Usually you eat and then do it.

Mura: You think? Maybe I’m weird. But look, doesn’t it turn you off when you realize right in the middle of doing it that this woman was just eating fatty tuna, anago, and uni? That all of that is in her stomach? It’s not a little too fishy for you?

Mizu: Nobody thinks that. And conversely it’s fishier to eat sushi after you finish, thinking about what you did (laughs). That’s like something out of Buñuel.

Mura: But don’t you get hungry when you finish?

Mizu: Nope. I just go to sleep. Nobody goes to eat sushi after having sex. Only you!

This brings to mind a lot of Murakami’s fiction. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (in which characters have a massive dinner—not sushi—and then have sex; and in which the pleasure of taste and sex are both dulled in the End of the World), “The Second Bakery Attack” (in which a couple wakes up in the middle of the night with “an unbearable hunger”), “Nausea 1979” (in which a character becomes nauseous and is unable to keep down food for months at a time, possibly due to his many affairs with the wives of close friends).

There must be some other connections with novels, I just haven’t reviewed them recently. Sex and food are tightly linked as physical pleasures and sustenance in Murakami’s works.

So it’s funny to learn that Murakami is on team Fuck First! This is a term coined by advice columnist Dan Savage (also here, NSFW!). I have to say I’d agree with him. It makes me queasy to do anything too athletic on a full stomach, although I wouldn’t say that sushi in particular makes me feel weird. Usually it’s pretty light fare, so it might be the ideal Fuck After cuisine. Mexican food, on the other hand, is not.

(I was unable to find an image of a 不倫カップル at a sushi restaurant, but I did manage to find this interesting blog post where the writer seems to overhear a couple similar to the one described by Murakami. Worth a read.)

Thus ends Murakami Fest 2017! I’ll be out of the country for the announcement this year, although I’ll be on European time, so perhaps I’ll manage to watch somehow. If not, this will be the first time in 10 (?) years that I’ve missed the announcement live. If he ends up winning this year (unlikely since Dylan won last year), you will hear the やれやれ I emit over the Belgian lambic/French wine/British bitter/Scottish Scotch/Irish dry stout/whatever it is I happen to be drinking during the announcement as it echoes around the world.

Sushi Counter

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Daniel

Welcome to the Tenth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

I’ve finished my quick look at some of the essays in Uzumaki neko no mitsukekata and now for the last two weeks I’ll take tidbits from the extra pamphlet included with the text. Take a look:

Murakami has a short conversation with his illustrator Anzai Mizumaru (neé Watanabe Noboru of Yoru no kumozaru fame) about sushi restaurants. The conversation seems to be recorded by “Ogamidori-san” (also of Yoru no kumozaru fame), who also chimes in at a few points.

The first chunk of the interview is about what they like to order, which is only mildly interesting, but then they get into the restaurants themselves:

村　しかしね、水丸さん、寿司屋は味も大事だけど、客層って大事ですよね。

水　そうそう。客層は大事だよ。たとえば小さい子供なんかが隣で生意気にウニばっかり頼んだりしていると、ちょっとむかっとするよね。

村　蹴飛ばしてやりたいですね。それからけばけばした「光り物」糸の女の人が多いとけっこう疲れますよね。香水なんか強いと、ナマものの微妙な味が死んでしまうね。あれはちょっとなんとかしてほしいよな。

水　青山の「海味」の後ろの席でカウンターが空くのを待っているときなんかさ、ちゃらちゃらした「光り物」糸女の背中見ていたりすると、それだけで頭くることあるよね。

村　だんだん腹が立って来たな（笑い）。それから寿司屋によっては、煙草を吸う人が多いですね。あれも辛いですよ。カウンターはできたら禁煙にしてもらいたいと思う。苦しくて苦しくて、何度も途中で出てきた。

水　寿司屋のカウンターでタバコは遠慮するべきだと僕も思う。迷惑だよ。携帯電話も嫌だね。

Murakami: But Mizumaru-san, the food at sushi restaurants is important, but the clientele is also important, isn’t it.

Mizumaru: Yeah, yeah. The clientele is critical. Like, I get annoyed when there’s a bratty little kid next to me who keeps ordering uni.

Mura: I’d want to punt him out of there. And I get worn out when there are hordes of gaudy, “bejeweled” women. The delicate flavor of raw fish just disappears when their perfume is heavy. I wish they’d do something about that.

Mizu: When I’m waiting on the back seat at Umi in Aoyama for the counter seats to open up, staring at the backs of these “bejeweled” women as they jingle and jangle, that’s enough to get to me.

Mura: I’m starting to get angry (laughs). And depending on the restaurant, there are a lot of people who smoke. That’s also tough. I wish they’d make the counter seats no smoking. There’ve been a number of times when I’ve gotten up and left because it was so, so awful.

Mizu: I also think people should hold off on smoking at sushi counters. It’s a nuisance. I also can’t stand cell phones.

The essays were written from 1994-1995 and published as a collection in 1996, well before the no smoking movement (and even the smoking etiquette movement) gained momentum in Japan. On my first visit in 2002, they still had smoking cars on shinkansen. They may still have them, actually.

I tried to track down a photo of someone smoking at a sushi counter, and the best I could do was find this tweet which includes screen grabs from the 1974 drama 『傷だらけの天使』 (Kizu darake no tenshi, Injured Angels):

Actor Atsushi Watanabe deftly chows down on some sushi with a cigarette between the fingers of the same hand. Ahh, those were the days. Ha.

Back next week with one more excerpt from this interview.

Peter Cat

Posted on September 18, 2017 by Daniel

Welcome to the Tenth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

The final essay in the collection Uzumaki neko no mitsukekata is 「猫のピーターのこと、地震のこと、時は休みなく流れる」 (“Peter Cat, Earthquakes, Time Flows Ceaselessly”). This feels more like an essay than any of the others I’ve read, and that’s mostly because the large majority of it details Murakami’s first cat Peter rather than a section of his time in America. He uses one page at the end to discuss returning to Kobe to give a reading (one of his few public readings in Japan) to benefit the 1995 earthquake. It’s an interesting end to a mostly uninteresting collection.

I believe this may be the source of the title as well. I haven’t read all the essays, so I can’t say for certain, but as we’ll see shortly, Peter is a 虎猫 (toraneko, tabby), another way of saying Uzumaki neko:

猫に名前をつけるというのは、英国の先人も述べておられたとおり、なかなか難しいものである。僕は学生時代、三鷹のアパートに住んでいたときに、一匹の雄の子猫を拾った。拾ったというか、アルバイトの帰り、夜中に道を歩いていたら勝手にうしろからにゃあにゃあとついてきて、僕のアパートの部屋にいついてしまったのである。茶色の虎猫で、長毛がかかって頬がふわふわしたもみ上げみたいな感じになっていて、なかなか可愛かった。けっこう性格のきつい猫だったが、僕とすっかり意気投合して、それから長いあいだ二人で一緒に暮らすことになった。

この猫にはしばらくの間名前をつけていなかったのだが（名前を呼ぶ必要もとくになかったので）、ある日ラジオの深夜番組−確か『オールナイト・ニッポン』だったと思うな−を聞いていたら、「私はピーターという名前の可愛い猫を飼っていたのですが、それがどこかにいなくなってしまって、今はすごくさびしい」というリスナーからの投書があった。それを聞いて、「そうか、じゃあ、この猫はとりあえずピーターという名前にしよう」と思ったのである。それだけのことで、名前に関してとくに深い意味はない。

このピーターはすごくしっかりした猫で、僕が大学の休みで帰省しているあいだは野良猫として、そのへんでなんとか自活して生きていて、僕が帰ってくるとちゃんとまたうちの飼い猫になった。そういう生活を僕らは何年にも渡って続けていたわけである。僕がいないあいだ、彼が一体どこでどんなものを食べて暮らしていたのか、僕にはよくわからなかった。しかしあとになって行動を観察しているうちに、彼が食料源の多くを略奪と野生動物の捕獲に頼っていたらしいことがだんだん判明してきた。そのようにして、学校が休みになって僕が帰省するごとに、ピーターはますますたくましくワイルドな雄猫に育って行ったわけだ。

その当時、僕が住んでいたところにはまだ武蔵野の面影が色濃く残っていて、まわりには野生動物なんかもけっこうたくさんいた。ある朝ピーターがなんかをくわえて持ってきて、僕の枕元にはなり出すので、「やれやれ、おまえまたネズミを捕まえてきたのかよ」とぶつぶつ言いながらよく見ると、それは小さなもぐらだった。実物のもぐらなんかみたのは僕も生まれて初めてである。きっとピーターはもぐらの穴の前で夜中じゅうじっと待ち受けていて、出てきたところをすかさずばしっと捕まえたのだろう。そして首をくわえて、「ほら、どうですか」と得意げに僕に見せに来たのである。もぐらには気の毒だと思ったけれど、そこに至るまでのピーターの苦労を思うと、やはり「よしよし」と頭を撫でて、何か美味しいものを与えてやらないわけにはいかなかった。

当時、猫を飼うことの問題点といえば、僕の経済状況が往々にして逼迫していたということだった。飼い主がろくに飯を食べる金もないのに、猫が食べるものなんてあるわけない。僕には当時経済的計画性というものが全くなかったので（今でもそれほどあるとは思えないけれど）、全くの無一文状態が一ヶ月のあいだにだいたい一週間くらい続くことになった。そういうときは、よくクラスの女の子に頼み込んでお金を借りた。僕が金がなくて腹を減らせていると言っても、「知らないわよ。そんなことはムラカミくんの事業自得でしょうが」と相手にもされないのがおちだが、「金がなくて、うちの猫に食べさせるものもない」と言うと、多くの人は同情して「しょうがないわねえ」と言いながら、ちょっとくらいは金を貸してくれた。とにかくそんなことをして、猫と飼い主と二人で必死に貧困と飢餓を耐え忍んだものである。ちょっとしかない食べ物を猫と文字どおり奪い拾ったこともある。今考えても情けない生活だった。楽しかったけど。 (220-224)

The naming of cats, as one of our British predecessors stated, is a difficult matter. During my college years when I was living in an apartment in Mitaka, I found a kitten. I say found, but I was walking along the street at night on the way home from my part time job when he came up behind me meowing and followed me all the way back to my apartment. He was a brown tabby with long hair and fluffy cheeks that made it seem like he had sideburns; he was pretty cute. He was somewhat fierce, but we got along right away, and from then on the two of us lived together for a long time.

I didn’t give the cat a name for a while (I didn’t really need to call him by name), but one day I was listening to a late night radio program—I think it was “All Night Nippon”—and a listener called in and said, “I had a cute cat named Peter, but he’s run off somewhere and I’m really sad.” I heard that and thought, “Ah, well, I’ll name this cat Peter for now.” That’s it, his name doesn’t have deep meaning.

Peter was an incredibly clever cat; while I returned home during university vacation, he managed to survive on his own in the area, and when I got back he was my cat again. We lived that way for a number of years. I didn’t really know what he was eating to survive when I was gone. However, later on as I observed his behavior, it gradually became clear that he relied on stealing and hunting wild animals as his major sources of food. As we lived this way, Peter became stronger and grew into a wilder cat each time university vacation rolled around and I went home.

At that time, traces of Musashino were still relatively pronounced, and there were a lot of wild animals in the area. One morning Peter came in with something in his mouth and dropped it by the bed, so I grumbled, “Great, have you caught a rat?” but when I looked over it was a mole. It was my first time ever seeing an actual mole. Peter must’ve camped out at the mole’s hole the entire night and then pounced on it the second it came out. And then he took it by the neck in his mouth and proudly brought it to show me: “Check this out. Whaddya think?” It was too bad for the mole, but when I thought of the effort that Peter went to, I said, “Good kitty,” pet him on the head, and felt obligated to give him some sort of tasty snack.

At the time the problem of having a cat was that my financial situation was tight every now and then. If an owner doesn’t have money to eat well, of course there won’t be anything for a cat to eat. I had zero financial plan back then (I don’t think I have that much of one even now), so each month there was usually a week or so when I was flat broke. During those times I would often ask girls in my class to borrow money. If I told them I had no money and was hungry, they’d always end up saying, “Whatever. You get what you deserve, Murakami” and wouldn’t pay attention to me, but if I said, “I don’t have any money to feed my cat,” most of them would sympathize, say, “I guess I have to,” and lend me a little money. That’s how a cat and his owner were somehow able to stave off poverty and starvation. Sometimes I literally stole a meager amount of food with my cat. When I think back, it was a pathetic life. But it was fun.

This essay is sweet. Murakami has a true affection for cats, and it comes through here. It’s also interesting to read about what his college life was like and how poor he was…although he came from a well-to-do family and attended a private university, so I wonder how true to life this is. He didn’t get along well with his father, so he might have mostly been on his own during this time, but we do know that he was visiting home.

The rest of the essay is worth tracking down if you’re into cats, and this is a very easy reading collection, so I’d recommend it to intermediate students. It’s also nice because the essays are in chronological order and build on each other as Murakami lives through this time in the U.S.

It also goes to show how much publishable material you can put out if you set it in your mind to journal every day. This is good advice to all aspiring writers. Take down details of events and conversations, what you did and where you went. You never know what kind of work you could turn it into later.

For the last two weeks there’s an (I hope) interesting supplement that came with the book. I’ll hopefully take something from it. Otherwise I’ll dig back through the essays.

Wandering and Belonging

Posted on September 11, 2017 by Daniel

Welcome to the Tenth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

We’re continuing on with Murakami’s essay collection Uzumaki neko no mitsukekata. This week I’m looking at 「小説を書いていること、スカッシュを始めたこと、またヴァーモントに行ったこと」 (Shōsetsu o kaite iru koto, sukasshu o hajimeta koto, mata Vaamonto ni itta koto, Writing a novel, starting squash, going to Vermont again), a very short essay.

The title basically says it all. Murakami gives another long account of his daily writing routine (go to bed at 9pm, wake up at 5am to write, exercise, have lunch, and then take the afternoon to run errands, relax, or work on other writing projects), talks about how he’s taken up squash, and then visits Vermont with a friend (and talks about the Japanese association of Vermont with curry).

Murakami gives a pretty interesting account of living and writing abroad and notes where he wrote his past novels:

しかし日々こういう内向的な生活を送っていると、正直なところ、自分が外国に住んでいるという実感があまり湧いてこない。いうまでもなく家の中では女房とずっと日本語で会話しているし（英語に上達するためには夫婦でも英語で会話しなさいとよく忠告されるけど、そんなことできないよ）、外に出てすれちがう人がみんな英語を話しているのを耳にして「あ、そうだ、そうだ、ここはアメリカだったんだ」と改めて実感することもしばしばである。毎日机に向かってこせこせと小説を書いているのなら、結局のところ世界中どこにいても同じじゃないかという気がしてくる。

よく「アメリカで書いているのと、日本で書くのとでは、できる小説がずいぶん違うでしょう？」と質問する人がいるけれど、どうでしょうね、それほどのこともないじゃないだろうか。人間というのは、とくに僕くらいの年配になると、生き方にせよ書き方にせよ、よくも悪くも、場所によってガラッと大幅に変われるものではないからだ。とくに僕の場合は「外国に住んでいるから、外国を舞台にした作品を書く」というわけではないのだし。

それに僕はこれまで長いあいだ引っ越しマニアな放浪、非定着の人生を送ってきたので（とくに望んでやっていたわけでもないのだが）、他の人に比べて場所の移動というものがあまり気にならない身体になってしまったみたいだ。考えてみれば、これまでに僕が書いた長編小説はそれぞれぜんぶ違う場所で執筆された。『ダンス・ダンス・ダンス』という小説の一部をイタリアで書いて、一部をロンドンで書いたけれど、どこが違うかと訊かれてもぜんぜんわからない。『ノルウェイの森』はギリシャとイタリアを行ったり来たりしながら書いたけれど、どこの部分をどこの場所で書いたかなんてもうほとんど覚えていない。スコット・フィッツジェラルドは『グレート・ギャッツビイ』の大部分を南フランスで書いたが、ここきわめて優れたアメリカ小説について、執筆された場所を今更気にする人もいないだろう。小説というのはそういうものではないか。 (97-100)

However, as I spend days living this introverted life, I have to say that I’m not overwhelmed with the sense that I’m living in a foreign country. Needless to say, I talk with my wife in Japanese in the house (people often tell me, speak English with your wife to improve, but I can’t do that), and I often realize once again, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, I’m in the U.S.” when I go out and hear people I run into speaking English. If you’re sitting at a desk obsessively writing a novel, in the end I’ve come feel like it doesn’t matter where you are.

People often ask me “The novels you can write in the U.S. and the novels you write in Japan, they must be very different, right?” But I’m not sure, I don’t think they are that much. People, especially once they get up to about my age, don’t suddenly change, whether it’s the way they live or the way they write, for better or worse. And for me especially, it isn’t like I decide to set my work in a foreign country because I’m living in a foreign country.

Besides, I’ve lived a wandering, unattached, moving-obsessed life for a long time (not that I really wanted it that way), so compared to other people my body has become unconcerned with change of place. When I think about it, all of the full-length novels I’ve written to this point were written in different places. I wrote one part of the novel Dance Dance Dance in Italy and one part in London, but I wouldn’t have any idea how they differ if asked. I wrote Norwegian Wood while traveling back and forth between Greece and Italy, but I can hardly remember which part I wrote where. Scott Fitzgerald wrote most of The Great Gatsby in the south of France, but now nobody cares about where this superlative American novel was written. Fiction is that kind of thing.

Pretty interesting. I don’t think I knew that he lived in London. (And, ugh, my translation feels stilted on reread.)

And Murakami is still thinking about the organization-individual dynamic, this time finding the benefit of belonging:

アメリカの大学に所属していて嬉しいことのひとつは、体育館やその他の体育設備がこのようにとても充実していて、しかもそれほど混んでいないことである。東京近郊の民間スポーツ・クラブの混雑と会費の高さを思うと、これはまさに天国と言ってもいいだろう。プールだって時間さえ選べばほとんどの場合二十五メートル・プールの一レーンが一人で好きなだけ使える。僕はこれまでの人生においてどこの組織にも所属してこなかったので、こういう「所属することの喜び」は楽しめるうちにたっぷりと楽しでおこうと思う。アメリカに在住する日本人の大部分は学校に通って熱心に英語を勉強し、せっせと美術館や博物館を訪れるのだが、それに比べてスポーツ・ジムを積極的に利用する人はそれほど多くないという統計が何かに出ていた。もしそれがほんとうだとしたら、これはいささかもったいないことではないか。しかしそう言われて考えてみたら、ケンブリッジに住むようになってから美術館に行ったことなんてたった一度しかない（有名なボストン美術館。大きな声では言えないけれど、

あまり面白くなかった

）。 (101-102)

One of the nice things about belonging to an American university is that the gym and other fitness equipment is top notch, and on top of that not all that crowded. When I think of the crowd and costs of municipal sports clubs in Tokyo, it makes me think I’m in paradise. Take the pool here. Pick a time and in most cases you can use a lane of a 25m pool all to yourself as long as you want. I haven’t belonged to any organization in my life so far, so I’m planning to enjoy the “joy of belonging” as much as I can. There was a statistic that came out somewhere saying most of the Japanese living in the U.S. study hard and industriously visit museums, art or otherwise, but that in comparison there aren’t many who actively use the gyms. Assuming this is true, I feel like it’s a bit of a waste. But it does make me think back and realize that since I’ve lived in Cambridge, I’ve only been to the art museum one time. (The famous Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I shouldn’t say this loudly,

but it wasn’t that great.

)

Murakami gets pretty creative with the text here and actually gives that final clause in a smaller font. Pretty nice. It was tough to recreate in html. I’ve done the best I can. Let me know if you know how to fix it so that I can modify the font size without making it a separate <p>.

I’ve said it once already, and I’ll say it again: Murakami writes well for the Internet age. In many ways he was the first blogger…a writer who interacted with readers and played around with his text. The content, too, is nice and light. These are pretty fun reads.

Vermonters

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Daniel

Year Ten! Goddamn. When I began this exercise I was living in a very small room in Tokyo, working at a translation company, using Japanese every day. Today I’m sitting here in my modest Chicago apartment (cool breeze coming in off the lake through my living room windows), working during the week at a Japanese office but using the language very little. My reading group, writing for the Japan Times, and translation exercises here are my main connections to the language. Consistency matters, so we continue, even if my feelings about Murakami have shifted over the years and are as different as my living conditions then and now.

Thus, without further ado:

Welcome to the Tenth Annual How to Japanese Murakami Fest!

This year I’m (lazily) looking at essays from the collection 『うずまき猫のみつけかた』 (Uzumaki neko no mitsukekata, How to Find Tabby Cats). This is a spiritual successor to 『やがて哀しき外国語』 (Yagate kanashiki gaikokugo, Foreign Languages, Sad in the End [?]), which Murakami wrote while he was in Princeton. He wrote and published the essays in Uzumaki neko in the magazine SINRA from the spring of 1994 to the fall of 1995. He was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and working (I think) as a writer in residence at Tufts University.

The essays are chronological and read a lot like extended blog posts. I’m not quite sure which essay generated the title, as I haven’t read the whole collection. I’m picking out essays here and there to read, and it seems like cats figure somewhere in most of them, but never as the central character.

The first essay I’m looking at is from the summer of 1994 and is titled ダイエット、避暑地の猫 (Daietto, hishochi no neko, Diets, Summer Resort Cats). Murakami is back in Tokyo briefly, suffering from the heat, before he returns to Boston and then takes a summer trip to Vermont. Here are some passages:

今更あれこれと言い立ててどうなるというものでもないけれど、今年の日本の夏は本当に暑かった。死ぬほど暑かった。いくら用事があったとはいえ、わざわざこんな時期に日本に帰ってきて馬鹿だった。何をする気も起きなくて、しょうがないから毎日ビールばかり飲んでいた。

ある暑い日の午後、新宿のデパートの展示会場に永沢まことさんのトスカナの絵の個展を見にいって、そこにあった宮本『世にも美しいダイエット』美智子さんのパネルを読んでいたら、「年をとって酒を飲むのはろくなことではない」というようなことが−もちろんもっと丁寧な表現で−書いてあった。それで「確かにそうだな、僕もビールを飲むのを少し控えなくてはな」とそのときは思ったのだけれど（この人の説明にはすごく納得力がある）、一歩外に出たらもう暑くて暑くて、とにかく冷たいビールを飲むことしか考えられない。というわけで、いや、やはり飲んでますね。今年の夏は僕はおおむねキリンのラガービールを飲んでいた。とくに銘柄の好みが保守的なわけではないのだが、日本に帰ってくるたびにわけのわからない見慣れないビールが次から次へと酒屋の棚に並んでいるし、暑くてどれにしようかいちいち考えるのが面倒だったからだ。 (064)

I don’t mean to over-insist, but summer in Japan was hot. Hot enough to kill a man. I was pretty dumb to schedule a return trip to Japan during this period, even if I had things to take care of. I wasn’t motivated to do anything so I gave in and drank beer every day.

One hot afternoon, I went to see Makoto Nagasawa’s solo exhibit of Tuscany paintings at a Shinjuku department store, and I read a panel displayed there for Michiko “A Beautiful Diet” Miyamoto that read “Drinking alcohol isn’t great for you as you age,” of course expressed in much nicer language. I thought to myself at the time, “That’s true, I should cut back on the beer” (her explanation was really persuasive), but I took one step outside and it was so damn hot that all I could think about was having a cold beer. So, of course, I drank. This summer I mostly drank Kirin Lager. I’m not really a stickler about the brand I drink, but when I was back in Japan, there were so many unfamiliar beers on the shelves of liquor stores and it was so hot that trying to consider all of them was a chore.

It’s interesting to see Murakami’s take on beer. This was in 1994, right after the laws were changed to allow smaller breweries. I don’t know much about Miyamoto. It must’ve been a short-lived fad diet, although Murakami sees similarities between her and himself:

僕らのようにどこにも属していない人間は自分のことはとにかく一から十まで自分で護るしかないわけだし、そしてそのためには、それがダイエットであるにせよ、フィジカル・ワークアウトであるにせよ、自分の身体をある程度きちんと把握して、方向性を定めて自己管理して行くしかない。 (65)

People like us who don’t belong anywhere have to protect ourselves in every way, and in order to do that, you have to have a somewhat firm grasp on your body to manage yourself and determine your direction, whether it’s through a diet or through physical fitness.

There are some sections that read similar to Hard-boiled Wonderland and some of his political speeches about “individuals versus the system” and how the system generally wins.

And here’s one final passage with an unflattering look at the ladies in Vermont:

ヴァーモントには素敵なカントリー・インが数多くあって、そのような旅館を泊まり歩くのも楽しみのひとつである。まあなにしろアメリカだから、トスカナみたいに目から鱗が落ちるほど料理がおいしいとは言えないけれど、素材は新鮮だし、空気が美味くて知らず知らずお腹が減るので、ご飯は楽しく食べられる。ただし、ヴァーモントは乳製品とメイプル・シロップとが名産品なので、おいしいおいしいといって食べていると、これは確実に「世にも美しくない」ことになってしまう。実際にヴァーモントで出会った女の人の八十五パーセントまでは完全な「トド体系」であった。みんなで揃ってよくこんなに肥れるよなあと感心してしまう。腰のまわりなんか布団を巻いて歩いているんじゃないかというくらいむくむくしている。アメリカも方々をまわったけれど、こんな肥った人が多い地方も初めてである。みんなに宮本さんの本を読ませてあげたいと思ったくらいである。あって、毎日昼御飯を抜いていたのだが、それでも食事はけっこうヘビーだった。旅行するのは楽しいだけれど、トシを取ってくると、毎日外食を続けることがだんだんきつくなってくる。 (73)

There are many pleasant country inns in Vermont, and hopping around between these lodgings is also fun. It’s the United States, so the food isn’t going to blow you away like it might in Tuscany, but the ingredients are fresh, and the air is clean, and before you know it you’re hungry and can enjoy eating the meals. However, Vermont is known for dairy products and maple syrup, so while they’re delicious, you definitely end up “Not Beautiful.” About 85% of the women I actually met in Vermont were total “walruses.” I was impressed that everyone was able to get so fat. They’re so ponderous when walking around it looks like they have futon strapped to their waists. I’ve been all over the U.S., and this is the first time I’ve seen this many fat people. I wanted to make them all read Miyamoto’s book. This the case, I went without lunch every day, but even so the food was fairly heavy. Traveling is fun, but it gets harder and harder to eat out repeatedly as you get older.

Ha. What gives with the body shaming, Murakami? Maybe we can chalk this up to a 1990s lack of political correctness? Murakami doesn’t seem to realize that not everyone can/could just up and run a marathon like he does/did. Or maybe he does and attributes his fitness to a strength of character, which borders on paranoia at times. “This is what I do to maintain my independent sense of self, to maintain my direction and focus.” If there’s a weakness to this system of beliefs, I think it’s a tendency to see oneself (or the system) as flawless. I think most artists need a good portion of this attitude in order to complete any project, but too much of it can perhaps lead to an inability to self-correct…which is maybe what we’ve seen recently with Murakami.

This collection, on the other hand, seems to be one of those side projects that Murakami takes on between larger fiction projects. It’s necessarily more casual than his other work. We’ll see more next week!

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Tag Archives: Haruki Murakami

The End of the World

Window Seats

Escape

Embers

Skulls and Songs

Murakami Fucks First

Sushi Counter

Peter Cat

Wandering and Belonging

Vermonters