Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto 1949 after
WW2 that devastated Japan. But Kyoto remained relatively unscathed partly due its historic
value and partly because it had no military significance. He grew up in a house with two
literature teachers as parents. And in a city where people think they’re special because
the city was Japan’s continuous capital for 1100 years. In Japan Kyoto people are
considered pompous and mostly uptight and strict which meant the little Haruki couldn't
wait to get out of the stifling atmosphere. Growing up, he read a lot of western
literature, mainly American, Russian and French. He studied drama in Waseda
University in Tokyo. After graduation he opened a Jazz bar in Tokyo with his wife
Yoko and they decided not to have kids. In 1978 during a baseball game a divine message
came to him and told him to be a writer. A year later he published his
first novel, Hear the Wind Sing. It’s about a memory of a wild summer in
1970s with all the strange things like a girl without a little finger. In 1980 he
published his second novel, Pinball, 1973 about a man’s obsession with…? You guessed
it. A pinball. A real boy and his toy. In 1982 he published his longer novel, A Wild Sheep
Chase which propelled him as a serious novelist. It’s kind of detective story in the underground
world to find a sheep with a birthmark. These first three novels are often referred to as Rat
trilogy due to the character Rat appearing in all. In 1985 he wrote Hard-Boiled Wonderland and
the End of the World, a parallel narrative that takes the bizarre and surreal to an extreme,
well End of the World kind of extreme. His fame was growing so he felt uncomfortable with
the attention, so in 1986 he escaped Japan for some peace in Europe and then America. In 1987 he
published Norwegian Wood about a boy nostalgically remembering his relationships with two different
girls. This novel made him very famous and rich. In 1988 he wrote Dance Dance Dance,
a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase. It’s about a man trying to return to the past but
things have moved on and only dreams remain. In 1992 he wrote South of the Border, West of the
Sun about a boy and girl who meet again after many years and have to decide whether to rekindle
the past or continue with their current lives. In 1995 he moved back to Japan following the Kobe
Earthquake and published Wind-up Bird Chronicles. This is a big one that deals with real social
issues like war crimes committed by the Japanese in China but still has all the strange and
bizarre things, like a search for someone missing or sitting in a well or a body mark that has
special power. Here real is infused with surreal. In 1999 he wrote Sputnik Sweetheart
about a search for a missing person, unfulfilled love, and the struggle between
individual freedom and social conformity. A lot of the novel takes place outside Japan, namely in
Greece. In 2002 he wrote another big novel, Kafka On The Shore about a boy named Kafka escaping
from his tyrannical father, just like the real Franz Kafka who hated his father. Again, in this
novel, we have a character who can talk to cats. In 2004 he wrote After Dark about nightwork,
prostitution and dreams. Well night time. In 2010 he wrote 1Q84. The title is taken
from George Orwell’s 1984. In Japanese the letter Q and number 9 have the same
pronunciation, so you can read it as 1984. Two parallel worlds and a religious cult and
the journey of characters to find what’s real and what is not. In 2013 he wrote Colorless
Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It’s a about a man who has to confront
his past and old friends to understand the mystery of their rejection of him.
This novel became a best seller around the world. I personally liked this the least of
all his works. That says more about me I guess. In 2018 he wrote Killing Commendatore. It’s
about a painter who after divorcing his wife moves into another painter’s house, where he dives
deeper in history of Japanese invasion of China. In a sense it is somewhat similar to
Wind-up Bird Chronicles that deals with real socio-political issues. But has all the
surreal and bizarre, the hallmark of Murakami. He has also written 6 collections of short
stories, and 12 non-fiction books. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is
about his running habit. He wakes up at 4am, like the German philosopher Immanuel Kant
and writes for hours before going for a run. Underground another non-fiction book is
about the aftermath of the gas attack in Tokyo underground in 1995. He interviewed
the victims and witnesses to understand their experiences. He wanted to really
know how it felt to be there and then. Murakami has been writing for 40 years.
Non-stop. If writing is a battle, Murakami is a very disciplined, regimented and successful
soldier. His themes are wide-ranging from suicide, water well, death, consciousness, love,
loss of mother or lover, and life’s choices. Now I will tell you all about his writing
style and storytelling techniques. Music
He writes while listening to music so in his writing world or his imagined
world, he is like the kind of god that says let there be music. His characters obey. During an
interview with the New Yorker in 2018 he said: “I have learned so many things from music
about writing. I think there are three important elements: rhythm, harmony, and free
improvisation. I learned these things from music, not from literature. And when I started to write,
I tried to write as though I were playing music.” Also he used to run a jazz bar in Tokyo and has
a deep interest in the music as an artistic form. There is a lot of similarity between jazz
improv and Murakami’s free flowing writing. You will find music in nearly all of his
novels and even some of the titles come from song titles. Norwegian Wood for
one is from a Beatles’ song. Escape
Fundamentally Murakami’s writing is an escape from Japanese group culture for a more individualised
lifestyle. In the early days in japan, he was considered a black sheep or a punk in the literary
scene. He didn't fit in very well. He fled Japan and went to Italy where write Norwegian wood. Most
of his characters listen or read western music and literature. This escape is also apparent in his
settings, isolated locations in the mountains and forests. So deep down Murakami is trying
to run away from the socio-cultural constraint of being Japanese in a highly group-oriented
society with a strong Confucian hierarchy. Confucius, the Ancient Chinese philosopher,
who influenced Japan, promoted social harmony through hierarchical social institutions like
family, state and other group entities. This rigid structure can have a deep psychological impact
in a globalised world that promises all kinds of individual freedom. Kafka on the shore is a good
example. He runs away from his tyrannical father. Murakami once said that he finds it therapeutic
to create characters who are different from him. So Murakami is a man on the run from
social constraints and reality itself. He calls Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japan-born British
author, his best friend. The irony is that Murakami while living in Japan is running away
but Ishiguro while living in the UK is longing for japan. I discussed this in more detail in
my video on Ishiguro, which you can watch here. East meets West
He combines western writing style with Japanese sensibilities. He speaks English
and has translated the works of F Scot Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler and JD Salinger. The title of
his non-fiction book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running comes from a Raymond Carver’s short
story titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. He uses the American expressiveness
to liberate his Japanese characters. His characters are mostly Japanese but they
are very open with their feelings and thoughts. High and Low
Like the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, who combined crime genre to
tell deeper psychological stories, Murakami uses high culture of music, opera and literature
in whacky and low-brow environments. He says: “I think if you’re a fiction writer and you’re
too intelligent, you cannot write. But if you’re stupid, you cannot write. You have to find a
position in between. That is very difficult.” He has found a balance between the high-brow
and low-brow. So his readership is wide-ranging, there is something for everyone in his novels. Free-flowing
Murakami says: “I don’t research when I write novels, because imagination is my asset,
my gift. I want to work it fully.” His writing, characters and worlds he creates are all very
fluid. Most Japanese people don’t say what they feel or think. Japanese writers like Yasunari
Kawabata captures this the best. So you have to read between the lines. Murakami’s characters tell
you everything. They appear plain on the inside. Almost inside-out. Everything’s flushed out so
that they don’t have any inner soul or personage, it appears. In Japanese culture, there are two
selves: Hone which means the inner true self and Tatemae which means outside the house self
or social self. Japanese are considered very reserved and they rarely discuss their
true feelings and opinions in public. Murakami’s characters are very feline.
Free flowing. Murakami has a cat as a pet, so perhaps he gets his inspiration
from the pet. A cat is a free spirit. Search
In Murakami’s novels there is always someone or something missing. This search is in fact the
deeper search for meaning in life. Something lost. For thousands of years we believed in fixed
religious worlds and social structures. Now we feel dislodged, no longer anchored
down. Alienated from social conventions. A century ago people took refuge in nationalism
but now deep down we don’t care about nationalism either. But everything around us tells us to
conform and be conventional and follow rules. Murakami invites you to be free. He
touches a chord with our own search for something we are missing.
A meaning. A person. A purpose. How culture
Aristotle came up with a formula for storytelling in Greek tragedies.
Every tale has a beginning, middle and end, just like life itself, you’re born, you live and
then die. Murakami’s storytelling follows this convention for the most part. But his genius
is that he makes the journey or the process interesting. His endings are not very
strong or memorable. But you always know his style. His novels are a kind of lived
experiences. In that sense it’s very Japanese. The Japanese culture emphasizes on how more
than why. Western culture is outcome driven. While Japanese culture focuses more on etiquettes
and rules and the process. How to do something is as important as the outcome of it. Murakami’s
storytelling is addictive because he grabs your attention in the details. If you skim through
his novels you realize they’re quite cliched. Always boy meets girl or vice versa. Or someone
chases or being chased. But through exquisite details and storytelling he entertains us
to read on to find out how things are done. Cause
Murakami lacks a clear conviction. Some writers have some
deeper political or even ideological convictions like Dickens writing about the poor or Khalid
Hosseini writing about the weak and the suffering. Murakami doesn't seem to care about any cause
or even humans. In his novels humans and animals are almost on equal footings. Perhaps his
lack of a clear conviction prevented him to winning the Nobel Prize. I think Murakami is
interested in telling a good story, not promoting social causes like class or gender inequality
or any other issues such as the environment. He is simply trying to make sense of existence
in a complex and confusing world of ours. Small is big
If you have read Murakami, you will notice that as soon as you open a page you will feel right in
the scene. He has the ability to take you to that moment. This stems from the fact that he focuses
on the small rather than the big picture. In 1995 after the gas attack in Tokyo, Murakami tried to
find newspaper articles about how it felt to be in the moment inside the underground. To feel the
smell, the noise and the chaos but he couldn’t find anything concrete, so he went and interviewed
the people who were at the scene to write his book Underground to capture the smaller details. In his
novels, he grabs your attention by focusing on the small. It is often the case with Murakami’s novels
you remember a particular scene like fish raining from the sky or a man talking to cat but it’s
more difficult to remember an entire story. So his attention to details and focus on simple and
small is very unique and fresh. If you summarize his novels, they sound very bizarre and somewhat
dull. But it’s the focus on small things then makes his novels so mesmerizing. You feel like
in the moment. So the small is big for Murakami. Irrationality
One thing unique about Murakami‘s novels is that characters
make decisions not only based on reasonable rational logical way of thinking but more based
on things that are completely random. For example in his latest novel Killing Commendatore, a
woman divorces her husband because she had an unrelated dream. Or when the narrator decides
to quit painting, his agent doesn't ask why. In western culture the emphasis is on knowing the
reason behind every action that drives science and technology. But in life and especially in
human psyche, things often don't make sense. You can’t chose your family, country, language.
Even your job. You apply for 10 jobs, you get one. What if you chose the other job? You would meet
different people and would have a different life. In Murakami’s novels a small incident, painting or
a person that you meet can change your life in a way that you had never imagined. This randomness
is exciting. In Western crime fiction, you often hear detectives saying they hate coincidences.
Everything has to make sense or has to happen for a reason. But Murakami’s novels are full of magic,
unexplained randomness and that makes him unique. Just as I discussed in my video on Dostoevsky,
human behaviour is for the most part is irrational and often don't make
sense. And Murakami captures that. Lack of emotions:
In Murakami’s novels characters don't show their emotions. They’re mostly cool calm and
often very understanding of the other characters. In Japan you’re not meant to show your
emotions in public. For example in his last novel Killing Commendatore, when the man hear
his wife is having affair with somebody else, he doesn't get angry. He just leaves the house
without showing any sort of emotion. And then start driving around Tokyo for no reason while
listening to music. It’s very rare to find any Murakami character who is very hot-headed
or lose temper in the presence of others. Simple is beautiful (wabi sabi)
His writing style and language are very simple. He holds your hand all the way.
If you ask a Japanese for direction in Japan, they are most likely to walk with you
to the place or draw a map for you. Murakami does that in his novels, so you
don't have to go back in the book to see if you missed something. His characters, scenes
and settings are simple places. Wabi sabi is the Japanese concept of beauty in simplicity, like
a Japanese garden that has only rock and sand. Murakami doesn't do research so that liberates
the reader to not take things seriously. You can feel Murakami is enjoying the writing
process himself. And this in turn is passed down to readers to enjoy reading them. It’s like
when musicians performing. If they’re having fun, so will the audience. He says: “If you are
a reader and I’m a writer, I don’t know you, but in the underground world of fiction there is a
secret passageway between us: we can send messages to each other subconsciously.” Murakami dives into
his subconscious and finds things and brings them to us in the simplest way possible. It’s through
our shared subconscious that we find his writing so appealing because that’s also our subconscious,
lost in this bewildering and confusing world. Thank you for watching.
