This week, I take a look at Murakami’s famous origin story with the help of writer and translator Matt Schley. We looked at ten different accounts of the day that Murakami was inspired to become a writer:

• 1980.07.29 – A 対談 with Murakami Ryū titled Walk, Don’t Run
• 1980.10.05 – NUMBER – デイヴ・ヒルトンのシーズン (Dave Hilton’s Season) re-published in 村上春樹雑文集 (Murakami Haruki Miscellany)
• 1990.05.21 – Supplementary text to the 村上春樹全作品 (Murakami Haruki Complete Works) (Note: I cited this as 1991 in the episode, but I’ve since learned the first volume of the collection was published in May 1990)
• 1992.11.17 – “The Sheep Man and the End of the World” – Una’s Lectures in the Humanities at Berkeley, cited from Jay Rubin’s Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words
• 2001.10.12 – Mainichi Shinbun
• 2007.10.15 – What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• 2013 – Swallows Crew Essay
• 2015 – Novelist As a Vocation/Introduction to Wind/Pinball
• 1981.06 Checkmate – 二つのことを両立させるのは難しいけど、自分で決めたことだから (It’s difficult to balance both [writing and running a jazz cafe], but that’s what I chose)

Thanks again to Matt. Check out his translation of Soda Kazuhiro’s Why I Make Documentaries: On Observational Filmmaking available via Viaindustriae Publishing.