Haruki Murakami looks back

over 40 years of literary

endeavors

Best-selling Japanese author Haruki Murakami recently sat down for an

interview with Kyodo News in April on the 40th anniversary of his debut novel
"Hear the Wind Sing." This is Part 1 of the three-part interview, in which he
speaks about his latest work "Killing Commendatore," the evolution of his writing
style, and the growing presence of violence in social media.

Murakami: Exactly 40 years ago in May I received the Gunzo Award for New
Writers. I believe the award ceremony was on May 8. It was held at the Dai-ichi
Hotel in Shimbashi in Tokyo.

Q: You have been a professional writer for 40 years. Even Natsume Soseki's
writing career only lasted for around 10 years. That's a remarkable
achievement, isn't it?

Murakami: I had a turning point every 10 years. And at each point, my writing
style and the type of stories changed. I was never bored with writing. There was
always a new goal. I think that was a good thing.

Q: I'd like to hear more about one of your novels, "Killing Commendatore,"
which has just come out in paperback.

Murakami: The first thing I had was the title. It comes, of course, from Mozart's
opera "Don Giovanni," but I was attracted by the strange, restless resonance of
the words "Killing Commendatore" ("Kishidancho Goroshi") and I wondered if I
could write a story set in Japan with that title. This is where it all began.

Q: So it started with just the title?

Murakami: It was also the case with "Kafka on the Shore." I first came up with
the title, then I started thinking of what kind of story I could create, and then I
start writing. That's why it takes a lot of time. I think "Norwegian Wood" was
probably the only book where that was not the case. It didn't have a title until
the very end.

Q: I believe that "The Garden in the Rain" was also a potential title [for
Norwegian Wood]...

Murakami: And, this time for "Killing Commendatore," I wondered if I could

include somewhere elements of the story "Nise no Enishi" ("Fate Over Two
Generations") from (18th century writer) Ueda Akinari.

Q: You're talking about a story from the collection "Harusame Monogatari

(Tales of the Spring Rain)," the one that involves digging up a "sokushinbutsu"
-- the Buddhist monks who observed asceticism to the point of death and
entered mummification while still alive, right?

Murakami: I have seen several mummies on my travels in the northeastern

Tohoku region. I also read a book that I happened upon in a used bookstore in
Kyoto, which explained how mummies are made, and so forth.

Q: "Ugetsu Monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain)," another collection of

Ueda's stories, also appears in "Kafka on the Shore," doesn't it?

Murakami: I like Akinari, especially the story "Nise no Enishi." It's about finding
out that a self-mummified monk had become a good-for-nothing guy after he is
dug up and resuscitated. Ueda Akinari was cynical about the world, and so he
wrote such perverse stories. They are not your usual supernatural stories.

Q: Hmm, I see.

Murakami: My father's home is a Buddhist temple of the Jodo-shu (The Pure

Land School) in Kyoto. Sure enough, when he died, a priest of the school recited
a Buddhist sutra. I spoke to the priest and found out that his temple's grounds
had Akinari's tomb, and I asked him if he'd show it to me. A crab was engraved
on it. When I asked why, he told me that Akinari -- always the cynic -- asked as a
dying wish that his tomb be engraved with something that could only walk
sideways.

Q: What a fascinating story.

Murakami: The temple apparently took care of Akinari to some extent in his later
years.

Q: There's an overlap between "Killing Commendatore" and Akinari's "Nise no

Enishi." When the protagonist from "Killing Commendatore" begins digging in
the thicket of the house he lives in, "a hole" from the past appears.

Murakami: The theme of my stories tends to become naturally about exploring

the unconscious or subconscious...the bottom of the conscious mind. As we
delve deeper into the conscious mind, we find all the way at the very bottom a
grotesque world of dark creatures. Ultimately, we can only depend on our
instincts to figure out what to pull out from this darkness, right? We have no
choice but to sharpen all facets of our awareness and surrender ourselves to
our instincts. We cannot depend on logic or on previous examples because, in a
sense, that would be dangerous.

In "A Wild Sheep Chase," it was "Sheep Man". In "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," it
was the other world through the well. In "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End
of the World," it was "INKlings." And now we have "the Commendatore."

Q: I read the book eagerly awaiting the Commendatore's appearance. Since

he's just around 60 centimeters, he's very cute.

Murakami: If he were too big, it would be difficult to work with him and he would
appear menacing. Since he's small, he's compact, and it's easy to focus our
attention on him and handle him. Everything becomes proportionally smaller.
He is a presence but separate from daily life.

Q: "Kafka on the Shore" had non-humans like Kentucky Fried Chicken's mascot
Colonel Sanders and Johnnie Walker. But it is the first time that a non-human
appears so frequently and moves the story along.

Murakami: That's true that there hasn't been one like the Commendatore who
appears many times throughout the story.

Q: The Commendatore calls himself "an Idea." In short, a notion.

Murakami: "That's exactly right, but I don't think it's feasible to ascribe only one
definite meaning to him. I thought about this after I finished writing the novel,
but I think the Commendatore is a composite of the main characters' alter egos.
He is perhaps like a mirror reflecting the different sides of each character. Along
with that, he may also be a historical link or a messenger from the past.
However, all of these are possibilities and even I don't know what is correct. We
can only leave it up to the readers to think about.

Q: You have also written that (the Commendatore) is a somewhat neutral

concept.

Murakami: I won't say that he is a good being but he is not a bad one. He is, I
believe, a "guide" who has gone way beyond those types of values. And he is not
something that is visible to everyone. He can only be seen by those who can see.

Q: The Commendatore's language is distinctive. He uses "aranai" (translated as

"negative" in English versions of the book, but in Japanese is formed from
"aru" -- to be and "nai" -- not.) Although he is speaking to only one person, he
always calls the person "shokun (my friends)."

Murakami: Translators really had a hard time deciding how to translate those
words.

Q: The protagonist, constantly referred to as "my friends," believes that the

Commendatore may not possess the concept of the second-person singular.
And "aranai" is the negative form of "aru," implying that the Commendatore is
a conceptual being.

Murakami: That's right. It also feels a bit like a translation of a German

philosophical work. "Aranai" seems like the German words "nicht sein" (not be).
I've done translations for a long time, so I am used to fashioning words in
various ways. Perhaps that's why they appear in my mind quite naturally. The
resonance of a word is very important to me. It may also be because I am quite
influenced by music.

Q: You do a lot of translations and frequently go overseas. You've lived abroad

for a long period as well. But all of your novels are set in Japan, including
"Killing Commendatore."

Murakami: It could be because I have an interest in exchanging "the interior"

and "the exterior." For example, in this novel, the Commendatore -- who is
supposed to be a westerner -- appears wearing Japanese-style clothes from the
ancient Asuka period from the sixth to eighth century. That makes readers
wonder and become intrigued by the dissonance. It wouldn't be a story if he
appeared wearing exactly the type of clothes Don Giovanni would wear.

Q: That's probably true.

Murakami: When I first started, there were many novels set in foreign countries.
But I wasn't very attracted to them. I was more interested in what one might
describe as the work of exchanging meanings, or a bartering of spirituality. It
was almost impossible to do that with the established literary style, so it was
necessary to rearrange the literary vocabulary.

Q: And those works set in Japan are later translated into foreign languages.

Murakami: I think it shows the possibility that an "Idea" or "concept," as

embodied by the Commendatore clad in ancient Japanese clothes, can move
across cultures despite their differences. On the other hand, even if you have
the same concept, meanings may differ depending on the type of soil they are
rooted in. While I am writing, I am interested in how they diverge and overlap.

(The interviewers are critic Yutaka Yukawa and Kyodo News senior feature writer
Tetsuro Koyama)

Role of storytelling is to help

readers feel sensations of
reality: Murakami

Best-selling Japanese author Haruki Murakami recently sat down for an

interview with Kyodo News in April on the 40th anniversary of his debut novel
"Hear the Wind Sing." This is Part 2 of the three-part interview, in which he
speaks about his latest work "Killing Commendatore," the evolution of his writing
style, and the growing presence of violence in social media.

Q: As the title states, the Commendatore is killed in this novel. The

Commendatore is killed at the beginning of the opera "Don Giovanni" and
murdered again in your novel.

Murakami: I think it is the first time the word "kill" appears in the title of one of
my books. "Norwegian Wood," for example, has a few characters who commit
suicide, but these are people killing themselves. In that story, death, actual
killing, has a very important meaning.

Entering "the end of the world" in "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the
World" is the same thing as death. When the protagonist in "Kafka on the Shore"
walks into the deep forest, he is walking into the world of death.

Q: In "1Q84", the leader of a cult convinces the female protagonist Aomame to

kill him. He tells her that she must do so in order to keep her love Tengo alive.
In "Killing Commendatore," the Commendatore himself tells the protagonist to
kill him in order to save Mariye, a girl who goes missing. And the protagonist
sticks a kitchen knife into his little heart.

Murakami: Obviously I'm referring to stories, but the physical sensations that
arise during a murder are important. In "Kafka on the Shore," Johnnie Walker
kills cats with a scalpel. The physical sensation of slashing is crucial as if it's
actually tangible.

Q: Could you go into more detail?

Murakami: The act of killing is rebirth in a mythological sense. Something is

killed, and something is reborn. There are the mythological stories of patricide. A
new being is born by killing something. That is a story that appears often in
mythology. For example, a new bud grows out of a dead body. There are stories
like that in Japan's "Kojiki" ("Records of Ancient Matters)".

Q: It's about death and rebirth.

Murakami: In the real world, we cannot kill flesh and blood people but people
can experience "killing" vicariously through stories like "Killing Commendatore."
This is a crucial role of a story, and in this particular story, "killing" the
Commendatore that embodies the "Idea" is a necessary symbolic act.

Q: Is this common in your other stories?

Murakami: Ever since I started writing my novels, I have strongly aspired to

trigger physical responses in my readers through my words. For example, many
people said they really wanted to drink beer after finishing "Hear the Wind Sing."
As its author, that made me very happy.

Q: Was that also the case with "Norwegian Wood"?

Murakami: In "Norwegian Wood" I wrote about physical sensations that occur
during sex as realistically and straightforwardly as possible. I was disliked and
criticized a lot because of that but realism that is tangible to the readers is
extremely important to me. I couldn't write a story without it. Generally
speaking, I feel that there are fewer modern Japanese novels that realistically
describe physical sensations, unlike Raymond Carver's stories, all of which I
translated. I have learned little by little from such writings.

Q: In "Killing Commendatore," the knife pierces the Commendatore's thin body

until it comes out through his back. His white clothes and the protagonist's
hands are soaked in blood.

Murakami: I think it is important that the physical sensation of holding the knife,
stabbing the other person, and feeling the splatter of blood can be conveyed to
the readers directly through the story--only as a simulation, of course. Some
things can only be brought to life through descriptions of physical matters.

Q: The protagonist of this novel is an artist who paints oil portraits.

Murakami: As I had never done an oil painting, I wrote the novel by reading
about painting in books. A few painters later told me when I asked that there
were no mistakes in the novel. Paintings and stories both have the same basic
principle of creating something from zero.

Q: The protagonist lives in a house belonging to famous Japanese-style painter

Tomohiko Amada. During his studies in Vienna, Austria was annexed by Nazi
Germany. Around the same time, Amada's younger brother Tsuguhiko served in
the military during the Sino-Japanese war for the fall of Nanjing. Those two
experiences are written about in the novel.

Murakami: The plot moves forward greatly when the Commendatore is

unearthed from the property where the protagonist lives. It's a story about
excavating and resurrecting the past.

Q: You said that the Commandatore may be "a historical link", "a messenger
from the past."

Murakami: However deep you dig a hole to try to hide something, there's always
a time when that something comes out. We live shouldering history and
however hard we try to hide it, it will come out in the open. History, I believe, is a
collective memory that we must bear.

Q: Mr. Murakami, you were born after the war in 1949.

Murakami: It was a period when people still held vivid memories of killing each
other, led by their national logic. I continue to be acutely conscious of the fact
that, even now, war is not something far and remote. When people believe they
are standing on firm ground today, they may find it is only soft mud.

Q: Do you think the capacity for violence that people had during the war still
exists in modern society?

Murakami: I believe that a world of mysterious creatures in the deepest recesses

of our minds, which I have gingerly and carefully treated in my writings, is
gradually and quietly working its way through the internet, via social media, into
the open.

One cannot help noticing in our daily lives, some indications of violence that lurk
in the deepest, darkest recesses of our minds. Sometimes I fear that something
from the past is resurrecting.

Q: What role should an author take upon himself in such a society?

Murakami: We novelists craft our stories freely. But the principle of natural
ethics must exist within that freedom. It is the responsibility of novelists to
provide concepts that will become basic standards, however weird and cruel the
description of evil is.

Q: "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" is a

collection of interviews with victims of the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo
subway system perpetrated by the AUM Shinrikyo cult.

Murakami: When I was writing it, I felt that I must as a novelist create a story that
would defeat the one that Shoko Asahara (leader of AUM Shinrikyo) told his
followers. At the time when AUM was active, religion was powerful. But I believe
that nowadays, social media rather than religion has a greater power to diffuse
ideas and concepts more directly and strongly. I'm not saying that social media
itself is evil, but we must not forget that this type of power still exists.

Q: Might you say Killing Commendatore is a story about fighting against that
type of power?

Murakami: The violence in social media appears as fragmented pieces, lacking

connectivity to each other. I personally believe that a story is better the longer it
is. That's because at least it is not fragmented. There must be an axis of value
consistent throughout. And it must stand the test of time.
Q: That's the power of stories.

Murakami: Only novels can make people feel through words that they went
through actual experiences. Depending on whether or not people experience
those stories, their thoughts and ways of seeing the world should change. I want
to write stories that will penetrate the heart. I have a lot of hope in the power
that novels hold.

(The interviewers are critic Yutaka Yukawa and Kyodo News senior feature writer
Tetsuro Koyama)

Forgiveness comes only after

you go through a dark place:
Murakami
 

Best-selling Japanese author Haruki Murakami recently sat down for an

interview with Kyodo News in April on the 40th anniversary of his debut novel
"Hear the Wind Sing." This is Part 3 of the three-part interview, in which he
speaks about his latest work "Killing Commendatore," the evolution of his writing
style, and the growing presence of violence in social media.

Q: In "Killing Commendatore," a mysterious wealthy businessman with the

unusual name of Wataru Menshiki appears. His name means "avoiding colors"
so many people have been reminded of "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His
Years of Pilgrimage."

Murakami: That's right. I hadn't realized that. Menshiki is an homage to Gatsby

in Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

Q: Gatsby lives in a place where he can see Daisy's house, whom he loves. Like
him, Menshiki lives in a mansion in the mountains in Odawara's outskirts
where he can see the house where Mariye, presumably his daughter, lives.
Murakami: Gatsby worked his way up from poverty to a life of glitz that attracts
attention because that's his goal. In contrast, Mr. Menshiki lives an ordinary,
calm life. Their personalities and characters differ. I only borrowed a setting
from Gatsby.

Q: Menshiki comes to ask the protagonist to paint his portrait. He says that
having his portrait painted is "an exchange." An exchange of parts with each
other. The protagonist makes an exchange with his dead younger sister
Komichi, and Mariye feels similarly about such interactions. The word
"exchange" made an impression.

Murakami: Since there are a limited number of characters, the story wouldn't
stick unless they give each other something. The person who actually made the
pit in the property appear is Mr. Menshiki. Without him, there would be no story
in the first place.

Q: That's right. Because Menshiki is the one who called the workers to have it
dug.

Murakami: In that sense, communication has a very important meaning in this

story. There was not that much communication among the characters in some
of my novels in the past. They were accumulations of relationships between two
people. The characters were pretty much isolated and many of them did not
even have names. But as I continued to write, I was gradually able to write about
multiple interactions. "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" is a
novel where multiple people interact with each other.

Q: "Killing Commendatore" has a limited number of characters but is

characterized by the multiple communications among them.

Murakami: It is quite an important point that different people come little by little
to offer each other something of themselves. Before "Norwegian Wood," many
of my novels do tend to ignore function of communication. But since then, I feel
that I have created worlds where people cannot live without communication.

Q: I think one of the main characteristics of "Killing Commendatore" is that it's

written in the first-person narrative form, which we haven't seen in your work
in a long time.

Murakami: I started out writing first-person narratives but gradually moved to

the third-person narrative.
Q: Your earlier works, which are written in the first person, are impressive. But
"After the Quake," a collection of stories with the 1995 Great Hanshin
Earthquake as the backdrop, is told in the third-person narrative.

Murakami: "1Q84" is a long novel told in the third person. And once I finished
writing it, I wondered again what I could create with a first-person narrator.

Q: Is there something that can be done in the first person that is difficult in the
third-person narrative?

Murakami: A monologue is easier to narrate in the first person. A first-person

point of view can be written simply and unaffectedly, and readers can identify
with the "I" easily. If readers can do that, it makes me happy as an author.

Q: I see.

Murakami: "The Great Gatsby" is also a first-person narrative. So is Raymond

Chandler's "The Long Goodbye," which I like, and J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the
Rye." They are all books that I have translated. I wonder why.

Q: At the beginning of "Killing Commendatore," it says that the protagonist and

his wife have both signed and sealed their divorce papers but that they "ended
up making a go of marriage one more time."

Murakami: Murakami: The main point of the novel is that the protagonist, after
going around in the dark, comes back to where he was to start over, just like a
Japanese religious experience called tainai meguri. I wanted to indicate that at
the outset, both to the readers and to myself.

Q: This is the first novel that you write a conclusion at the beginning, isn't it?

Murakami: Yes. Until now, in many of my stories, if you lost something, you did
so forever. But I decided from the start that this would be about restoration. So
it was important to me to add that announcement at the beginning of the book.

Q: And you write at the end, "I will not become like Menshiki" and "That is
because I am endowed with the capacity to believe."

Murakami: Mr. Menshiki does not know whether the young girl Mariye is his
daughter or not.

Q: Perhaps he doesn't really want to know.

Murakami: Either to create ties with the outer world or not, he cannot decide
exactly. He does not know himself whether he is committing to something or
not. He seems to think that he grasps everything but in reality doesn't really
understand. He keeps his balance and coolly wanders in his own limbo.

Q: The protagonist is not like that.

Murakami: The main difference between the protagonist and Mr. Menshiki is
that the former loves his wife. His feelings for her don't change even after she
leaves. He thinks that he would want to start again from the beginning if she
returns. He seeks that kind of commitment.

Q: What makes him do that?

Murakami: It is love, of course, but more than that, the trust is important.
Perhaps that is what Mr. Menshiki lacks.

Q: There is a scene where the protagonist enters the deepest abyss of his mind
after killing the Commendatore. Of all such abysses that you've written about,
this seems the darkest.

Murakami: I believe that there is no restoration without going through the most
profound darkness. Accepting someone who has returned is forgiveness.
Forgiveness is an emotion that emerges for the first time only after one goes
through a very dark place and comes out on the other side.

Q: I felt the protagonist's loneliness, which accompanies physical acuteness as

he made his way through the darkness.

Murakami: The sense of forgiveness is beyond distinctions like "goodness",

"evil", "light" or "darkness". To obtain it, it is necessary to kill the "concept" of the
Commendatore with his own hands. Only by doing so does one get
"forgiveness," I feel.

Q: Your books, as is the case with "Killing Commendatore," have been

translated into multiple languages and read by people in many different
countries. What is it about your books, do you think, that attracts readers
throughout the world?

Murakami: What surprises me when I go overseas is that there are many young
readers from their teens to their 20s. This is clear when comparing them to
Japanese readers. I believe that foreign readers, including these young people,
are seeking some type of freedom.
My writings are not written in the so-called literary fashion but are plain and
free. To put it another way, it should be handy and useful as a good tool. That
characteristic probably doesn't get lost even when my books are translated.

If you learn the tricks, you can use them to freely cut out meanings from things
in your surroundings or emotions. Recently I feel that foreign readers are
perhaps seeking that universal sense of freedom. Of course, this is only an
opinion based on my intuition.

(The interviewers are critic Yutaka Yukawa and Kyodo News senior feature writer
Tetsuro Koyama)