As a Casual Harukist

A newly released novel by Haruki Murakami sends me straight to a bookstore. As a modest but devoted “Harukist,” I reflect on the pleasure of reading Murakami in Japanese, the distinctly Japanese geography of his fiction, and the curious resemblance between his writing method and my own approach to blogging.

An interview about Haruki Murakami’s new book appeared in the morning newspaper on the third.

That was how I learned that the book had been released the day before yesterday.

So yesterday, I promptly went to Yurindo bookstore at Yokohama Station.

I had expected to find towering stacks of copies laid out on a display table. Instead, there was only one sample copy, along with cards saying, “Please take this card to the register.”

It felt rather lonely somehow, but perhaps the book was selling so quickly that this system saved the staff from having to keep restocking the display.

I took one of the cards to the register, but afterward I thought that perhaps I should simply have gone there empty-handed and said to the clerk, “The new Haruki Murakami, please.”

I found myself thinking that I still had some way to go before becoming properly Haruki-like.

I immediately read the first two or three pages.

As always, once I begin reading a Murakami novel, I start feeling that it would be a shame to finish it. So I stopped after only those few pages.

But even so, it was remarkable.

In the interview, Murakami himself mentioned that he was seventy-seven, yet there was nothing in the freshness of the opening that suggested his age.

I later realized that the words printed on the band wrapped around the book were only its opening lines. And that was exactly right: beyond those lines, I could not have written even a single additional character.

I therefore intend to proceed more carefully than usual, making sure not to read too quickly.

Still, Haruki Murakami really is extraordinary.

One of the good things about having been born Japanese must surely be that I can read Haruki Murakami in Japanese.

Musashisakai, a place name that appears in the table of contents, happens to be where I lived when I was newly married.

I am very much looking forward to seeing how it is portrayed.

I have always thought that Murakami uses the Japanese language extremely well. He also writes with a very domestic and distinctly Japanese sense of geography.

For example, there is that scene in which Aomame gets off the elevated expressway near Sangenjaya, slightly toward Shibuya. Unless you have actually driven there, it would be almost impossible to understand the geography of that description.

This is a use of place and language that only a Japanese reader can fully appreciate.

It makes me think that Murakami is not deliberately writing in pursuit of a Nobel Prize.

And that is exactly as it should be.

In the interview, he said:

“My style is to write without making a plan, picking up whatever emerges naturally as I go along.”

My blog is written in much the same way.

Reading that gave me a little confidence that perhaps this way of writing is perfectly all right.

Perhaps writing does not always begin with a destination; sometimes it begins simply by picking up what appears along the way.

・・・

	Harukist An informal Japanese term for a devoted reader or admirer of Haruki Murakami. Murakami is one of Japan’s best-known contemporary novelists, widely read both in Japan and abroad. His fiction often combines ordinary urban life with surreal events, dreams, music, loneliness, memory, and parallel worlds. The term Harukist is used mainly in Japan to describe people who are especially enthusiastic about his books and distinctive literary style. 村上春樹の熱心な読者、ファンを指す日本独自の呼び方。村上春樹は日本を代表する現代小説家の一人で、日常的な都市生活に、幻想的な出来事、夢、音楽、孤独、記憶、並行世界などを織り交ぜた作風で、日本国内外に多くの読者を持つ。「ハルキスト」は、とくに彼の作品や独特の文体を愛好する人々を指して日本で使われる。 towering stacks Large piles of books or other objects stacked high. うず高く積まれた山 restock To replace goods that have been sold or removed from a display. 商品を補充する empty-handed Without carrying or bringing anything. 手ぶらで freshness A lively, youthful, or newly created quality. 瑞々しさ、新鮮さ book band A strip of paper wrapped around a Japanese book, usually containing promotional text. 本の帯 distinctly Japanese Clearly characteristic of Japan or Japanese culture. いかにも日本的な sense of geography An understanding of the locations of places and how they relate to one another. 地理感覚 in pursuit of Trying to obtain or achieve something. 〜を求めて、〜を目指して as it should be In exactly the way something ought to be. それでよい、そうあるべき

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