Haruki Murakami
Haruki Murakami | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 12, 1949 Kyoto, Japan |
| Occupation | Author, Novelist |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Genre | surrealist, non-fiction |
| Website | |
| http://www.harukimurakami.com/ | |
Haruki Murakami (村上春樹, Murakami Haruki; born January 12, 1949) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described by the Virginia Quarterly Review as "easily accessible, yet profoundly complex."
Biography
Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 but spent most of his youth in Kobe. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest; his mother was the daughter of an Osaka merchant. Both taught Japanese literature.
Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers for his Western influences. Japanese literature often puts emphasis on beautiful language, which can result in stiff, restricted composition, while Murakami's style is relatively free and fluid.
Murakami studied theater arts at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was in a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe from Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the jazz bar "Peter Cat" in Kokubunji, Tokyo[1], which he ran from 1974 until 1982. Many of his novels have musical themes and titles referring to a particular song, including Dance, Dance, Dance (from The Steve Miller Band), Norwegian Wood (after the Beatles' song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).[1].
"Trilogy of the Rat"
Murakami wrote his first fiction when he was 29. He said he was suddenly and inexplicably inspired to write his first novel (Hear the Wind Sing, 1979) while watching a baseball game. In 1978, Murakami was in Jingu Stadium watching a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that Hilton hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized he could write a novel. He went home and began writing that night. Murakami worked on it for several months in very brief stretches after working days at the bar (resulting in a fragmented, jumpy text in short chapters). After finishing, he sent his novel to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, and won first prize. Even in this first work, many of the basic elements of Murakami's mature writing are in place: Westernized style, idiosyncratic humor, and poignant nostalgia.
His initial success with Hear the Wind Sing encouraged him to keep writing. A year later he published Pinball, 1973, a sequel. In 1982 he published A Wild Sheep Chase, a critical success, which makes original use of fantastic elements and has a uniquely disconnected plot. Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, and A Wild Sheep Chase form the "Trilogy of the Rat" (a sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance, was later written but is not considered part of the series), centered on the same unnamed narrator and his friend called "the Rat." However, his first two novels are unpublished in English translation outside Japan, where an English edition with extensive translation notes was published as part of a series intended for English students. According to Murakami (Publishers Weekly, 1991), he considers his first two novels "weak," and was not eager to have them translated into English. A Wild Sheep Chase was "the first book where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story. When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing."
Wider recognition
In 1985 he wrote Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a dreamlike fantasy which takes the magical elements in his work to a new extreme.
Murakami achieved a major breakthrough and national recognition in 1987 with the publication of Norwegian Wood, a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. It sold millions of copies among Japanese youth, making Murakami something of a superstar in his native country (to his dismay). The book was printed in two separate volumes, sold together, so that the number of books sold was actually doubled, since the entire book was released in two separate books, creating the million-copy bestseller hype. One book had a green cover, the other a red one. In 1986, Murakami left Japan, traveled throughout Europe, and settled in the United States.
Murakami was a writing fellow at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. During this time he wrote Dance, Dance, Dance and South of the Border, West of the Sun.
An established novelist
In 1994/1995 he published The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This novel fuses his realistic and fantastic tendencies, and contains elements of physical violence. It is also more socially conscious than his previous work, dealing in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchuria (Manchukuo). The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is frequently cited by critics as Murakami's best work[citation needed]. It won him the Yomiuri Prize, awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.
The processing of collective trauma soon took a central position in Murakami's writing, which had until then been more personal in nature. While he was finishing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Japan was shaken by the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack, in the aftermath of which he returned to Japan. He came to terms with these events with his first work of non-fiction, Underground, and the short story collection after the quake. Underground consists largely of interviews of victims of the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system. While perpetrators and events behind the attack are not the focus of the book, the picture of Japanese society that Murakami paints is shocking.
English translations of many of his short stories written between 1983 and 1990 have been collected in The Elephant Vanishes. He has also translated many of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese.
In 2006, Murakami became the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize from the Czech Republic for his novel Umibe no Kafka (Kafka on the Shore). Murakami told reporters, "In a way, reading Franz Kafka's works served as a starting point for me as a novelist." In September of 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège.
Recent work
The succinct Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999. Kafka on the Shore was published in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005. The English version of his latest novel, After Dark, was released in May 2007. In late 2005, Murakami published a collection of short stories titled Tōkyō Kitanshū (東京奇譚集, translates loosely as "Mysteries of Tokyo"). A collection of the English versions of 24 short stories, titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, was published in August 2006. This collection includes both older works from the 1980s as well as some of Murakami's most recent short stories (including all five that appear in Tōkyō Kitanshū).
Murakami has recently published an anthology called Birthday Stories, which collects short stories on the theme of birthdays by Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Claire Keegan, Andrea Lee, Daniel Lyons, Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux, and William Trevor, as well as a specially written story by Murakami himself.
Criticism and influence
Murakami's fiction, often criticized for being "pop" literature by Japan's literary establishment, is humorous and surreal, and at the same time reflects an essential alienation, loneliness, and longing for love in a way that has touched readers in the US and Europe, as well as in East Asia. In addition, Murakami's writing has also been criticized because of his portrayal of Japan's obsession with capitalism. Through his work, he was able to capture the spiritual emptiness of his generation and explore the negative effects of Japan's work-dominated mentality. His writing criticizes the decrease in human values and a loss of connection between people in Japan's capitalist society.
In 2006, Murakami became the sixth winner of the Franz Kafka Prize, which has been awarded in past years to Nobel Prize In Literature winners Harold Pinter and Elfriede Jelinek.
Murakami was awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for Fiction for his collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman but, according to the Kiryama Official Website, Murakami "declined to accept the award for reasons of personal principle".
Murakami was mistakenly congratulated for receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature 2006 on the homepage of a city library in his native Ashiya, but this was the library's error. [2]
Films and other adaptations
Recently, director Jun Ichikawa adapted Murakami's short story Tony Takitani into a 75 minute feature. The film has played at various film festivals and was released in New York and Los Angeles on July 29, 2005. The original short story (as translated by Jay Rubin) is available in the April 15, 2002, issue of The New Yorker, as a stand-alone book published by Cloverfield Press, and part of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Knopf.
Murakami's work has also been adapted for the stage, in a 2003 play entitled The Elephant Vanishes, co-produced by Britain's Complicite company and Japan's Setagaya Public Theatre. The production, directed by Simon McBurney, adapted three of Murakami's short stories and received acclaim for its unique blending of multimedia (video, music, and innovative sound design) with actor-driven physical theatre (mime, dance, and even acrobatic wirework).[2][3]. On tour, the play was performed in Japanese, with translating supertitles for European and American audiences.
On Max Richter's 2006 album Songs from Before, Robert Wyatt reads passages from Murakami's novels.
In 2007, Robert Logevall adapted "All God's Children Can Dance" into a film.
Bibliography
Novels
| English | Japanese | ||
| Year | Title | Year | Title |
| Hear the Wind Sing | 1979 | 風の歌を聴け Kaze no uta o kike | |
| 1980 | Pinball, 1973 | 1980 | 1973年のピンボール 1973-nen no pinbōru |
| 1989 | A Wild Sheep Chase | 1982 | 羊をめぐる冒険 Hitsuji o meguru bōken |
| 1991 | Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World | 1985 | 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド Sekai no owari to hādoboirudo wandārando |
| 2000 | Norwegian Wood | 1987 | ノルウェイの森 Noruwei no mori |
| 1994 | Dance Dance Dance | 1988 | ダンス・ダンス・ダンス Dansu dansu dansu |
| 2000 | South of the Border, West of the Sun | 1992 | 国境の南、太陽の西 Kokkyō no minami, taiyō no nishi |
| 1997 | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | 1992-1995 | ねじまき鳥クロニクル Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru |
| 2001 | Sputnik Sweetheart | 1999 | スプートニクの恋人 Supūtoniku no koibito |
| 2005 | Kafka on the Shore | 2002 | 海辺のカフカ Umibe no Kafuka |
| 2007 | After Dark | 2004 | アフターダーク Afutā Dāku |
| Tokyo Mysterious Story Collection | 2005 | 東京奇譚集 Tōkyō Kitanshū | |
Selected short stories
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Appears in |
| 1980 | 中国行きのスロウ・ボート "Chūgoku-yuki no surou bōto" |
"A Slow Boat to China" | The Elephant Vanishes |
| 貧乏な叔母さんの話 "Binbō na obasan no hanashi" |
"A 'Poor Aunt' Story" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | |
| 1981 | ニューヨーク炭鉱の悲劇 "Nyū Yōku tankō no higeki" |
"New York Mining Disaster" | |
| スパゲティーの年に "Supagetī no nen ni" |
"The Year of Spaghetti" | ||
| 四月のある晴れた朝に100パーセントの女の子に出会うことについて "Shigatsu no aru hareta asa ni 100-paasento no onna no ko ni deau koto ni tsuite" |
"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" | The Elephant Vanishes | |
| かいつぶり "Kaitsuburi" |
"Dabchick" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | |
| カンガルー日和 "Kangarū-biyori" |
"A Perfect Day for Kangaroos" | ||
| カンガルー通信 "Kangarū tsūshin" |
"The Kangaroo Communique" | The Elephant Vanishes | |
| 1982 | 午後の最後の芝生 "Gogo no saigo no shibafu" |
"The Last Lawn of the Afternoon" | |
| 1983 | 鏡 "Kagami" |
"The Mirror" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman |
| とんがり焼の盛衰 "Tongari-yaki no seisui" |
"The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes" | ||
| 螢 "Hotaru" |
"Firefly" | ||
| 納屋を焼く "Naya wo yaku" |
"Barn Burning" | The Elephant Vanishes | |
| 1984 | 野球場 "Yakyūjō" |
"Crabs" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman |
| 嘔吐1979 "Ōto 1979" |
"Nausea 1979" | ||
| ハンティング・ナイフ "Hantingu naifu" |
"Hunting Knife" | ||
| 踊る小人 "Odoru kobito" |
"The Dancing Dwarf" | The Elephant Vanishes | |
| 1985 | レーダーホーゼン "Rēdāhōzen" |
"Lederhosen" | |
| パン屋再襲撃 "Panya saishūgeki" |
"The Second Bakery Attack" | ||
| 象の消滅 "Zō no shōmetsu" |
"The Elephant Vanishes" | ||
| ファミリー・アフェア "Famirī afea" |
"A Family Affair" | ||
| 1986 | ローマ帝国の崩壊・一八八一年のインディアン蜂起・ヒットラーのポーランド侵入・そして強風世界 "Rōma-teikoku no hōkai・1881-nen no indian hōki・Hittorā no pōrando shinnyū・soshite kyōfū sekai" |
"The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler's Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds" | |
| ねじまき鳥と火曜日の女たち "Nejimaki-dori to kayōbi no onnatachi" |
"The Wind-up Bird And Tuesday's Women" | ||
| 1989 | 眠り "Nemuri" |
"Sleep" | |
| TVピープルの逆襲 "TV pīpuru no gyakushū" |
"TV People" | ||
| 飛行機―あるいは彼はいかにして詩を読むようにひとりごとを言ったか "Hikōki-arui wa kare wa ika ni shite shi wo yomu yō ni hitorigoto wo itta ka" |
"Aeroplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as if Reciting Poetry" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | |
| 我らの時代のフォークロア―高度資本主義前史 "Warera no jidai no fōkuroa-kōdo shihonshugi zenshi" |
"A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism" | ||
| 1990 | トニー滝谷 "Tonī Takitani" |
"Tony Takitani" | |
| 1991 | 沈黙 "Chinmoku" |
"The Silence" | The Elephant Vanishes |
| 緑色の獣 "Midori-iro no kemono" |
"The Little Green Monster" | ||
| 氷男 "Kōri otoko" |
"The Ice Man" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman | |
| 人喰い猫 "Hito-kui neko" |
"Man-Eating Cats" | ||
| 1995 | めくらやなぎと、眠る女 "Mekurayanagi to, nemuru onna" |
"Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" | |
| 1996 | 七番目の男 "Nanabanme no otoko" |
"The Seventh Man" | |
| 1999 | UFOが釧路に降りる "UFO ga kushiro ni oriru" |
"UFO in Kushiro" | after the quake |
| アイロンのある風景 "Airon no aru fūkei" |
"Landscape with Flatiron" | ||
| 神の子どもたちはみな踊る "Kami no kodomotachi wa mina odoru" |
"All God's Children Can Dance" | ||
| タイランド "Tairando" |
"Thailand" | ||
| かえるくん、東京を救う "Kaeru-kun, Tōkyō wo sukū" |
"Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" | ||
| 2000 | 蜂蜜パイ "Hachimitsu pai" |
"Honey Pie" | |
| 2002 | バースデイ・ガール "Bāsudei gāru" |
"Birthday Girl" | Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman |
| 2005 | 偶然の旅人 "Gūzen no tabibito" |
"Chance Traveller" | |
| ハナレイ・ベイ "Hanarei Bei" |
"Hanalei Bay" | ||
| どこであれそれが見つかりそうな場所で "Doko de are sore ga mitsukarisō na basho de" |
"Where I'm Likely to Find It" | ||
| 日々移動する腎臓のかたちをした石 "Hibi idō suru jinzō no katachi wo shita ishi" |
"The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" | ||
| 品川猿 "Shinagawa saru" |
"A Shinagawa Monkey" |
Translators of Murakami's works
Murakami's works have been translated into many languages. Below is a list of translators according to language (by alphabetical order):
- Catalan - Albert Nolla
- Chinese - Lai Ming-zhu (Taiwan), Lin Shao-hua (Republic of China), Ye Hui (Hong Kong)
- Czech - Tomáš Jurkovič
- English - Alfred Birnbaum, Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel(USA), Theodore W. Goossen (Canada)
- Danish - Mette Holm
- Dutch - Elbrich Fennema, Jaques Westerhoven
- French - Corrinne Atlan
- German - Ursula Gräfe, Nora Bierich, Sabine Mangold, Uwe Hohmann
- Hebrew - Einat Cooper
- Hungarian - Erdős György
- Icelandic - Uggi Jónsson
- Indonesian - Jonjon Johana
- Italian - Giorgio Amitrano, Antonietta Pastore
- Korean - Kim Choon Mie
- Lithuanian - Milda Dyke, Irena Jomantienė, Jūratė Nauronaitė, Marius Daškus, Dalia Saukaitytė, Ieva Stasiūnaitė
- Norwegian - Ika Kaminka, Kari and Kjell Risvik
- Polish - Anna Zielinska-Elliott
- Portuguese - Maria João Lourenço
- Romanian - Angela Hondru, Silvia Cercheaza, Andreea Sion, Iuliana Tomescu
- Russian - Dmitry V. Kovalenin, Ivan Sergeevich Logatchev, Serguei Ivanovich Logatchev
- Spanish - Lourdes Porta, Junichi Matsuura, Fernando Rodríguez-Izquierdo y Gavala
- Swedish - Yukiko Duke, Eiko Duke, Vibeke Emond
- Thai - Noppadol Vatsawat, Komsan Nantachit, Tomorn Sukprecha
- Persian - Gita Garakani
- Bulgarian - Ljudmil Ljutskanov
References
External links
- Haruki Murakami Official Website
- exorcising ghosts - Haruki Murakami Resources
- http://www.murakami.ch
- Haruki Murakami Official Dutch Website
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - By Matthew Chozick - Literary Encyclopedia
- Featured author in The New York Times
- VR Panorama of Haruki Murakami in Prague receiving the Franz Kafka Award
- Complete Works
- Interview referenced in short story.
- The Internet Movie Database entry for Tony Takitani
- Special Edition book of Tony Takitani from Cloverfield Press
- Limited edition book of Sleep from Kat Ran Press
- Condalmo (discussion of Murakami works)
- Review of Murakami's After The Quake
- Short Stories
- Where Murakami Ends and Radiohead Begins: A Comparative Study
- The Mysterious Disappearance of the Strangely Beautiful Woman - A Murakami parody.
- "The reception of Murakami Haruki in Taiwan," Yale University
Interviews
- Interview with Laura Miller in Salon, December 1997
- Interview with Sinda Gregory, Toshifumi Miyawaki, and Larry McCaffer, Center for Book Culture
- Interview with Roland Kelts, Metropolis Magazine
- Interview with Matt Thompson in The Guardian, May 26, 2001
- Interview with Velisarios Kattoulas, Time Asia, Nov. 25, 2002
- An interview with Roland Kelts, The Japan Times: Dec. 1, 2002
- An interview with Richard Williams in The Guardian, May 17, 2003
- A Conversation with Philip Gabriel, translator of KAFKA ON THE SHORE, Random House
- An interview from the magazine A Public Space