Haruki Murakami Archives - Where to Kim?

Review: First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami

Kim — Mon, 05 Jul 2021 14:00:00 +0000

In First Person Singular, Murakami gives you a first person’s perspective as he takes you on a trip down memory lane.

Location: Japan (Kobe, Tokyo)

First Person Singular synopsis

The eight masterful stories in this new collection are all told in the first person by a classic Murakami narrator: a lonely man. Some of them (like With the Beatles, Cream and On a Stone Pillow ) are nostalgic looks back at youth. Others are set in adulthood–Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova, Carnaval, Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey and the stunning title story. Occasionally, a narrator who may or may not be Haruki himself is present, as in The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. Is it memoir or fiction? The reader decides. The stories all touch beautifully on love and loss, childhood and death . . . all with a signature Murakami twist.

Book review

 3/5

Haruki Murakami’s new short story collection First Person Singular is part story, part autofiction. In some stories it is clear that he is the one experiencing it, as he explicitly says, and in others it is less obvious. The latter are older memories and could be attributed to anyone. I almost said “could happen,” but maybe not, it is after all a book by Murakami.

The stories show chance encounters of people who start a conversation and sometimes discover that they have something in common, for example an interest in music, sports or literature. Through these brief encounters, the author shares wisdom about life as the characters are about to go their separate ways again. People come into your life and can leave just as suddenly. There doesn’t need to be a meaning behind the encounter, just the comfort of temporary companionship, even if there is nothing connecting your lives.

Who or what is at the center?

The first story, Cream, goes a step further by not even letting the supposed encounter happen. Instead, we are treated to a meditation on circles: what does it mean when a circle has many centers but no circumference? I don’t know what Murakami (or the rest of the world) means by this, but to me it seems like all people are at the center of their own borderless lives and as such there are many centers, just as Murakami himself is at the center of this book. You don’t have to agree with me, but that’s the meaning it has for me.

This story ends with the life lesson that you don’t always need to know what is happening or what something is about. You don’t have to worry about unexplained, illogical events; it’s not about the principle or the intention. I graciously applied this wisdom as I wondered why I had to read the story The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection.

In On a Stone Pillow you read how an object has the power to bring back memories and in Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova a fantasy becomes a dreamlike reality. With the Beatles is a story about fleeting memories and a critical message disappearing. In Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey, the monkey contemplates love as he gives the author a body scrub and tells him over a beer that he values the memory of having loved. That doesn’t keep him from stealing the name of his love interests though.

Let’s discuss

Unsurprisingly, in the next story, Carnival, you wonder what the name of the ugly woman with the powerful personality is that draws people in. Central to this story is the question of what external characteristics such as beauty and ugliness tell about a person. When you include the last story, First Person Singular, in the consideration, it raises the question of whether these two stories are meant to start a discussion or whether they are expressing an opinion about outer beauty and people who dress up to appear different. The man in First Person Singular who “secretly” dresses in a suit and tie – a misrepresentation of him as a person – is compared to someone who crossdresses. In a bar, a woman confronts him about his behavior. He is a first person singular who would not be there if he had chosen a different direction in life. So how is he supposed to present himself?

Final thoughts

As always, Murakami has a pleasant writing style (and so does the translator). You’ll finish this short story collection before you realize it. While there are interesting aspects to many of the stories, most of them are not memorable. They are, however, mundane and easy to read. Murakami gives you a first person’s perspective as he takes you down memory lane.

Interested?

Get your copy of First Person Singular from Amazon.

Book details

Title: First Person Singular
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translator: Philip Gabriel
Language: English
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Pages: 256
ISBN (13): 9780593318072
Publication date: 6 April 2021

About the author

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages, and the most recent of his many international honors is the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

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Review: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Kim — Mon, 09 Mar 2020 15:00:00 +0000

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Marukami is a really good book with an interesting story. There, I’ve said it, am I now allowed to join the sheeplessnessclub?

Location: This book is set in Japan and more specifically in Tokyo, Sapporo and the fictional Junitaki township north of Asahikawa in Hokkaido.

A Wild Sheep Chase Synopsis

His life was like a recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running the world, and the upshot is another singular masterpiece from Japan’s finest novelist.

Book review

 4/5

“The sheep goes away leaving only an idea. But without the sheep there is no expelling the idea. That is what it is to be ‘sheepless.'” So that’s what happens when you’re left with the shadow of a sheep, a sheep bigger than life itself. I guess that is why I sometimes lack inspiration or action, because of my sheeplessness.

But what is the purpose of the pure white sheep with a brownish star on its back that started this wild sheep chase? The sheep has a monumental plan to transform humanity and the human world and does so by entering a person’s body. An act that is often seen as a blessing of the gods. The sheep is the one with the big plans, bringing down institutions and creating chaos and order. If you doubt the power of sheep, then remember Genghis Khan, because one sheep can transform the world. So let’s stop viewing sheep merely as a source of wool and meat.

The first part of the book takes place in Tokyo. Then the journey starts as the main character is sent to Hokkaido to chase a certain sheep. A sheep that might not exist and yet is the invisible driver behind change. Everyone involved sees it as a wild sheep (or goose) chase, but what can you do when more powerful people (the institutions) want something from you? “You hold the ball, you had better run for the goal. Even if there turns out not to have been any goal.”

Apparently there were 5000 sheep in Hokkaido in 1978, which is quite impressive as I hardly saw more than a few cows and some wild horses at a horse reservation on my trip to Kyushu (another part of Japan, I know). But I was often wondering where the Japanese hide their livestock farms.

The main character and his girlfriend with the beautiful ears head to the Dolphin Hotel in Sapporo (Hokkaido) to start their chase. They’re not very inspired researchers, but find a clue eventually and take the train to Asahikawa. Via the Shiogari Pass, they reach the fictional Junitaki township. As the main character reads more about the history of this township, we learn more about the Ainu, the original inhabitants of Hokkaido, and how one Ainu helped settlers found Junitaki.

Then the hiking starts as they make their way towards the person in the cabin that supposedly holds all the answers. A beautiful mountain hike with autumn foliage. I would have liked to join them, despite the cold weather. Especially when the author wrote: “We were totally alone. As if we’d been dropped off at the edge of the world.” It feels like you’re exploring the Hokkaido of the 1980s together with them. Before all the blogs wrote about the destination and when there were still many places to discover. Where can you go these days that no one has gone before you?

The cabin provides the main character with his much-needed sabbatical. It functions like a quiet retreat which also proves dangerous as we get to the surreal part of the book. This left me with some sad thoughts about my reflection in the mirror: when my reflection copies what I’m doing, it shows her lack of free will. And because there is another world with another me on the other side of the mirror, this must be quite upsetting for the other me’s (or perhaps for myself).

I enjoyed this book because of the meaning of the sheep and the allegory with the real world, yet I didn’t find it as exciting as I hoped. This was mainly because it was hard to connect to the characters. While I found the driver and the representative of the Boss fun to read about, the main character and his girl were like blank pages to me. I liked the part where they were exploring Hokkaido, as this motivated me to go out and visit new places too.

My appreciation of the concept and execution wins over the lack of fleshed-out characters. It was a really good book with an interesting story.

Translated from Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum.

Questions for reflection

An interesting discussion between the main character and his driver about naming animals, objects and people left me thinking:

Can a given name affect someone’s will and limit freedom?
Do you treat someone differently because of their name?
Does a name based on a function or purpose provide extra stimulation or increase the likelihood of success?
If so, can I now call someone who is driven to take over the world a sheep? And those that failed the ‘sheepless’?

Interested?

You can buy your copy of A Wild Sheep Chase from Amazon.

The post Review: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami appeared first on Where to Kim?.

Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami

Kim — Mon, 02 Mar 2020 15:00:00 +0000

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami is a book of growth, about a person gaining color and facing his past.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Synopsis

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.

Book review

 4/5

The story takes place in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Finland. It describes a physical journey to discover a hidden past, but more than that it describes a personal journey. One of growth and a second coming of age.

After losing his friends, Tsukuru loses the will to live. He survives, but barely, and his body still shows the signs of nearly starving to death. He can’t shake the thought that he did perhaps really die when his four friends rejected him. That the young man he was ceased to exist and only the shell remains.

Jealousy is what makes him want to live again. A jealousy that “was not a place he was forced into by someone else, but a jail in which the inmate entered voluntarily, locked the door, and threw away the key.” With the prison being his own heart, as hard as a stone wall. A place he calls the very essence of jealousy.

He experiences growth but is still haunted by what happened in the past. His new girlfriend points that out to him and helps him revisit his past and find out what happened over sixteen years ago. “You can hide memories, but you can’t erase history.” Throughout the book, Lazar Berman’s performance of Years of Pilgrimage makes appearances. A passage from this recording kickstarts his memories of his friends.

The main character, Tsukuru Tazaki, grew up in Nagoya. His friends all have names with colors in them, and he is the only one without a colorful name so he feels left out. Hence Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. His group of friends is called the ‘circle’. As Tsukuru leaves Nagoya to study in Tokyo, he is the first to step outside the circle and without him, the circle slowly falls apart.

Tsukuru experiences strange (sexual) dreams in which the girl Shiro (from his circle of friends) and Haida (a new friend who also has a colorful name) make an appearance. At one point he is not sure whether it actually happened or not. When people keep leaving his life he thinks he is fated to always be alone. And until he comes to terms with what happened in the past, he probably will.

At one point Haida tells Tsukuru an extraordinary tale about something his father experienced in Oita on Kyushu Island. A story of life and death and what in life is worth living for. “You should be able to handle what life sends your way. You need to use the thread of logic, as best you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that’s worth living for.”

When Tsukuru finally travels to Nagoya and later to a lakeside cabin in Finland, he begins to understand what happened in the past. He won’t get his sixteen lost years back and there are a lot of might-have-beens but now he has a chance for the future. Even though the book has an open ending, it seems to me that he will find something worth living for.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is a book of growth, about a person becoming stronger and facing his past. At first Tsukuru travels alone but later others join his pilgrimage. It was nice to follow his journey from the start until his new beginning. Tsukuru is not a perfect person and he never will be. It is inspiring to see how he takes the first step and moves from inaction to action to make something of his life. In a sense, his pilgrimage gives him color.

Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel.

Questions for reflection

This is the first book I read by Haruki Murakami and a very inspiring one at that. For me it was less about the surreal parts of the novel but more about the questions:

How do you give your life color?
What actions can you take yourself and where do you need the help or nearness of others?

Something to reflect on after finishing the book.

Interested?

You can get your copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage from Amazon.

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