During his lifetime, Haruki Murakami acquired the status of a classic not only of Japanese, but also of world literature. To this day he does not know the exact answer to the question of how he decided to become a writer; he claims that he initially believed in his own literary abilities. For Murakami, writing is as natural as breathing.
Childhood and youth
Regarding personal biography the writer, like a true Japanese, is reserved and evasive. Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Japan, near Kyoto, in the village of Kayako. The male part of the family was engaged in education in the field of Buddhism. Father taught at school Japanese and literature. My grandfather, a Buddhist priest, served as abbot of the temple. Haruka spent her childhood in the port city of Kobe. At the same time, interest in American and European literature and music came.
In 1968, the name Murakami appeared on the list of students at the prestigious Waseda University. Haruki chose to major in classical drama. Murakami did not feel any particular desire to read old scripts and was frankly bored during his studies. However, after graduating from the university, he successfully defended his degree in modern dramaturgy. As a student, he took part in protests against the Vietnam War.
In 1971, Haruki married Yoko Takahashi, with whom he attended school. Murakami turned his passion for jazz into business, opening the Peter Cat jazz bar in Tokyo in 1974. The establishment operated successfully for 7 years. One day, while sitting in the stadium watching a baseball match, Haruki suddenly realized that he could write books. Since then, Murakami increasingly lingered in the bar after closing, working on the first drafts of future works.
Literature
The first story, “Listen to the Song of the Wind,” published in 1979, was awarded the Gunjoshinjin-se Prize for Emerging Japanese Writers and the Noma Prize from the leading literary magazine Bungei. The book is known as the first part of the “Rat Trilogy”. Murakami himself, in relation to his first works, was of the opinion that they were weak and unworthy of the attention of foreign readers. Readers disagreed with this, noting the original style of the young writer.
In 1980, a continuation of the trilogy was published - the story “Pinball 1973”. Two years later, the final part was published - a novel called “Sheep Hunt”. The work was also awarded the Noma Prize. The development of Haruki Murakami as a writer began with this work. At this time, Murakami decided to sell the bar and focus on literary work. Writer's fees allowed him to travel around Europe and America.
Haruki returned to his homeland only in 1996. But even before leaving, he published four collections of stories (“Slow Boat to China,” “A Good Day for a Kangaroo,” “Firefly, Burn the Barn and Other Stories,” “The Deadly Heat of a Carousel with Horses”), a book of fairy tales, “A Sheep’s Christmas,” and a novel in the fantasy genre "Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World." The novel receives another prestigious literary award - the Junichiro Tanizaki Prize.
Traveling through Greece and Italy inspired Murakami to write the novel Norwegian Wood. The novel, which brought the writer world fame, is called by readers and critics the best in Murakami’s work. The publication sold two million copies and became a cult favorite in Europe and the USA.
Main character talks about his student life in the 60s, when student protests were spreading, rock and roll was gaining popularity, and he was dating two girls at once. The novel is narrated in the first person, but the author claimed that it is not autobiographical. It’s just that this kind of presentation is convenient for him.
In 1988, Haruki moved to London. There the writer added last pages continuation of the “Rat Trilogy” - the novel “Dance, Dance, Dance”. In Japan, in 1990, another collection of stories, “Teletubbies Strike Back,” was published. In 1991, Murakami accepted an offer to teach at Princeton University in the USA. Later he received the degree of associate professor. At this time, an eight-volume edition of the writer’s works, written over the past 10 years, was published in Japan.
Living in America, Murakami had a desire to talk about his native country and its people, something he had not liked to do before. As Haruki admitted in an interview, only after leaving your homeland can you truly appreciate it from afar. In 1992, Haruki Murakami moved to California, where he lectured on modern literature at Howard Tufts University. At this time, the novel “South of the Border, West of the Sun” arrived in the writer’s homeland. The hero of the story, like the author in his youth, is the owner of a jazz bar.
In 1994, the mystical novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” was published in Tokyo, combining different shapes and considered the most complex in Murakami's work. A year later, a sequel to the novel was released. The year 1995 in Japan will be remembered for the Kobe earthquake and the gas attack by radicals from Aum Shinrikyo. In 1996, the writer returned to Japan and settled in its capital. Impressed by the tragic events, Murakami wrote the documentary works “Underground” and “The Promised Land.”
In 1999, the novel “My Beloved Sputnik” was published, and a year later, the collection of short stories “All God’s Children Can Dance.” In 2001, the Murakami family settled on the coast, in the village of Oiso, where they still live.
Murakami's works have been translated into 20 languages, including Russian. In 2002, “Wonderland Without Brakes” was published in Russia, and in 2003 the writer himself visited the country. At the same time, his tenth novel, a two-volume set of “Kafka on the Beach,” was published in Japan. The novel was awarded the World Fantasy Award (WFA).
Almost every year Murakami releases a book. In 2005, the collection of short stories “Tokyo Legends” was published. It includes both new stories and those written back in the eighties. In 2007, a unique memoir entitled “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” was published. In 2010, the book was translated into Russian.
2009 is significant for the publication new trilogy"1Q84". The first two parts of the book sold out on the first day of sales. In the work, Murakami touched upon the themes of religious extremism and differences of views different generations, a combination of reality and illusion. The third volume of the work, published in 2010, also became a bestseller.
With some interruption, released in 2013 philosophical drama"Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of wanderings." This is a novel about the life of a lonely railway station design engineer. As a child, Tsukuru had friends. But over time, for unknown reasons, his friends turned away from him. And only a new friend convinces Tsukuru to find her friends and find out the reasons for the breakup. The bestseller has traditionally received enthusiastic responses from fans modern literature, broke the sales record once again, this time on the Amazon site.
In 2014, a collection of short stories, Men Without Women, was published. The main characters of the short stories are strange men and femme fatales, and main topic– relationships between them, losses and gains. Haruki Murakami translates into native language works of European authors. Thanks to him, the Japanese met Raymond Carver. Murakami's translation of The Catcher in the Rye has broken sales records for translated literature in Japan. beginning of the XXI century.
Personal life
Haruki Murakami has been married to the same woman for over 40 years. The writer's wife Yoko Takahashi is a singer and actress. There are no children in the family. At 33, Murakami quit smoking and became interested in swimming, baseball, and long runs (participates in marathons). Your interest and love for Western culture implemented in several photo albums and guidebooks.
It is known that Murakami is a big music lover. The writer published the book “Jazz Portraits” in two volumes. The essays are literary illustrations to an exhibition of paintings of musicians by film director and screenwriter Makoto Wada. In his books, Murakami spoke about his 55 favorites jazz performers. And his own record collection, according to unverified information, includes more than 40 thousand copies.
Haruki Murakami now
In 2016, the Japanese writer and translator was awarded Literary Prize name with the wording “For a bold combination of classical storytelling, pop culture, Japanese tradition, fantastic realism and philosophical reflections" It was expected that Murakami would be awarded and Nobel Prize according to literature. But in the end the prize went to the American singer.
The prophecies regarding the writer did not come true in 2017 either – the prize was given to another Japanese writer. In February 2017, Haruki Murakami’s next novel, “Killing the Commander,” was published; the initial circulation was 1 million copies. The book traditionally caused a stir among the writer’s fans.
Bibliography
- 1979 - “Listen to the song of the wind”
- 1982 - “Sheep Hunt”
- 1985 - “Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World”
- 1986 - “Repeated raid on the bakery”
- 1987 - “Norwegian Wood”
- 1992 - "South of the Border, West of the Sun"
- 1996 - "Ghosts of Lexington"
- 2000 - “All God's Children Can Dance”
- 2002 - “Kafka on the Beach”
- 2005 - “Tokyo Legends”
- 2009 - “1Q84 (One Thousand Hundred Eighty-Four)”
- 2013 - “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the years of his wanderings”
- 2014 - “Men without women”
- 2017 - “Murder of the Commander”
Quotes
How older man, the more there is in his life that cannot be corrected.
A world without love is like the wind outside the window. Don't touch it, don't breathe it in.
I don't like loneliness. I just don’t make unnecessary acquaintances. So that in people once again don't be disappointed.
Memory warms a person from the inside. And at the same time tearing him apart.
Moving with high efficiency in the wrong direction is even worse than not moving anywhere at all.
If you read the annotations of his books, each of them begins with the same phrase: this is the most (original epithet) book of the famous Japanese writer. And the author of these works bears the titles of the very best: the most widely read writer and the most un-Japanese Japanese.
Japanese names are not too familiar to the Russian-hearing ear. That's why writers' names are changed. Kenzaburo Oe becomes Podzaborom Oi, Abe Kobo - Aby Kogo. Mishima and Kawabata did not escape this fate, but the “translations” of their names are long and obscene. And only “Haruki Murakami” is unlikely to be remade - it already has roots familiar from childhood.
But they don’t read it because of them! And because of what? Typically, critics, burdened with the burden of thousands of volumes of world classics, like to pick apart a book piece by piece. They joyfully pounce on the text and cheerfully tear it to shreds, tightly pinning a label to each piece: this is the influence of Joyce, this is taken from Marquez, here is Dostoevsky, Kafka, Hemingway, and so on. The method is excellent, although pointless. In almost any book you can find allusions, alleles and parallels to the classics and delve into them endlessly. This method of text analysis can be called “relationship analysis.”
A fundamentally different approach is the analysis of mutual understandings. The writer somehow interacts with the world, trying to understand it. And he transfers this understanding to paper. Tracking moments, comparing them with each other and with one’s own point of view is, in my opinion, a very exciting task. Murakami's books are dedicated to her. He himself calls his work “sushi noir” - black sushi. These are sort of rancid, blackened rice balls. This is probably why people read Murakami, spit, but still read.
In his interviews, he says that he did not want to become popular. What he writes about people who have scattered their goals and lost their values. What is modern youth like?
Strange. It seems to me that it is young people today who know exactly what they want. And those who don’t know, read Murakami. And they are surprised to realize that they live like his heroes - thoughtlessly and aimlessly. This is what unites them into a kind of virtual sect. And if before their heads were pristine, now Murakami has settled there. There is something to talk about, something to discuss, but nothing else. Isn't it true?
Murakami is full of physiological descriptions. Got up, walked, got there... Sat down, ate, went again... The main character most of the narrative doesn't do anything significant. But we swallow it without understanding what prevents us from putting off reading or looking to the end.
It's simple: this text is a description dynamic meditation. The hero thinks not only with the help of thoughts, but also with the help of body movements. Raised in Zen culture, Murakami, who easily ran marathons, knows the value of movement. He understands how important it is sometimes to rest his swollen head and think with his body. Note that before almost every important decision, Murakami’s characters do exactly this.
The next point is that there is always a mystery. The hero necessarily does not understand something: the actions of others, their words, reactions. The circumstances into which the hero finds himself are mysterious. Again following Zen practices, Murakami explores cause-and-effect relationships here. And the reason definitely appears. Sometimes it is predictable, sometimes it is not, but it also always has its own reason. Murakami lets his hero swim through this sea of reasons until he finds the very, very, notorious beginning of everything. A beginning that no one needs and is no longer interesting.
Murakami is a master of interestingly describing the search for an uninteresting goal. Here again Zen shines through in all the cracks: the path is everything, the goal is nothing.
And his heroes themselves are interesting, by and large, only to themselves and their close circle. And even then the author always pretends that the hero is not particularly interesting to himself. And when a character suddenly commits a strange act, this is just a reason to reflect on the topic: how poorly I know myself... Don’t believe me! He knows everything. But he won’t admit it to you.
In fact, Murakami's heroes are internally consistent. And this is a sign of remarkable skill. But this integrity is presented through the perception of other characters: so a kind of mosaic, which is the task of the reader to put together. And readers love it and enthusiastically pounce on the toy slipped by the author, putting together several similar semantic “puzzles” during the book.
And here it is - a grandiose fiction, because of which Murakami is now read everywhere: he writes about worthless people. People squeezed by a world they do not understand, who could not achieve something significant, valued by the majority of those around them. The reader, who cherishes his unfulfilled ambitions, instantly accepts such a hero as “one of his own.” And it’s especially pleasant when such a nonentity suddenly turns out to be capable of something more. The prince was hiding in the toad! “We can do it too!” - readers think by inertia and continue to remain as they were, not paying attention to how hard and painstakingly the characters in Murakami’s books work on themselves.
Another Murakami point is women. Women for Murakami are the embodiment of mystery. Ladies for him are walking Zen, unknown and inexpressible. They are “Kami” - higher beings, goddesses. You can describe their manifestations, but there is no way to understand them to the point where even a slight predictability appears. Murakami fearlessly describes intimate scenes - with naturalness bordering on pornography. And at the same time he freezes, holding his breath, talking about a woman’s... ear! As if it were the most perfect creation of the gods in all respects.
Murakami's music plays constantly. The many years of his youth, when he was the owner of a jazz cafe, take their toll. All these countless compositions by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Charlie Parker, Elvis Presley and many, many others should, it would seem, create the appropriate mood and color the background of the narrative. But... I heard them, he heard them, but what about the young people raised on “scooters” and “Brilliants”? Young people who think the Beatles are mastodons and suck?
However, Russian muracamologists combed through all his books and compiled a list of the most frequently mentioned compositions. We collected it and put it on disk: “Soundtracks for Murakami’s books.” So now you can read and listen at the same time.
Anyone who has read Murakami... And Murakami?..
Did you know dear readers that Murakami is the first Japanese writer to become popular in Russia thanks to the Internet? Or more precisely, thanks to the orientalist Dmitry Kovalenin, who translated the famous “Sheep Hunt” and posted it on his website, where for more than a year (before the appearance of the paper version) this translation was available to everyone? And now a final question: did you know that Dmitry Kovalenin himself is a writer? Have you read his works? But didn’t anyone pay attention to the fact that Kovalenin’s own narrative style is not at all different from the style of Murakami translated by him?
I am far from thinking that Murakami does not exist, and that what exists is a global literary hoax. But it seems. A Japanese man has been writing a book for several years. A Russian has been translating it for several years. Talented translation is the creation of a new text. Remember what the Strugatskys, Mirer, Nora Gal and Igor Mozheiko did. Their translations were literature - unlike the interlinear translations of a legion of other translators. So it is here: Kovalenin created the Russian Murakami, whether we want it or not.
But what Murakami is really like, you and I will never know. Unless we learn Japanese...
Haruki Murakami is the same writer who discovered the Country rising sun for foreign eyes. The brilliant author writes not only about thoughts and feelings, but also about his homeland, people, culture and mentality. His books have become especially popular with us due to their special presentation and the opportunity to look at mysterious Japan from a new perspective.
If you like Murakami, then website offers 10 best books that are worth reading.
1. "Listen to the Wind's Song" (1979)
The writer’s famous novel, which opens the “Rats” series of works. At the center of the novel is the narrator and his friend Rat, who work, drink beer, think about opposite field and are waiting for something that should happen soon.
Join an epic paintball battle on a real military training ground. Feel like the hero of a movie or game.
2. "Pinball 1973"
The second novel in the “Rat trilogy”, which tells the same story about the narrator, who this time takes in two twins, and his companion the Rat. The main character goes looking for an antique slot machine, which he manages to find in an abandoned poultry farm.
3. "Sheep Hunt" (1982)
The third book in the “Rats” series, based on the Chinese legend about the transmigration of the soul of a Sheep into a person. In this story, it was the narrator who was chosen by the very person into whom the Sheep would move.
4. "A Good Day for a Kangaroo" (1983)
An excellent collection of stories where you will definitely meet the Sheep Man, the Grebe Bird and even seals who have an uncontrollable weakness for business cards.
5. “Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World” (1985)
At first it will seem to you that the two main storylines are not connected by anything. The even-numbered chapters tell of a strange city with high walls that prevent people from escaping. And in the odd ones, about a person who is able to use his brain as a key to encryption systems and data processing. This work is considered one of Murakami's best creations.
6. "Norwegian Wood" (1987)
The main character remembers his student years at Tokyo University, when two completely different girls: The beautiful but psychologically damaged Naoko and the bright and lively Midori. There is a 2010 film adaptation of this work of the same name.
7. "Dance" dance-dance"(1988)
A mystical detective story that is a continuation of “The Sheep Hunt” and the final book in the “Rat Trilogy.” According to the author himself, writing this work gave him a lot of pleasure, because he always dreamed of doing it.
8. “My favorite sputnik” (1999)
A novel about a lesbian relationship between student Sumire and a much older woman. Going with her to the Greek islands, Sumire disappears. According to Murakami, this is "a story about abnormal things happening to normal people."
9. "Underground" (1997)
A documentary novel dedicated to the terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. The entire narrative is very structured. 62 eyewitnesses retell to the author their view of the event without any literary embellishment.
10. “Kafka on the Beach” (2002)
This book was included in the list of the 10 best novels of 2005 according to The New York Times. The story centers on a teenager who runs away from home to escape his father's dark prophecy. Many plots are intertwined to be resolved in one mystical outcome.
Haruki Murakami was born in the ancient capital of Japan in Kyoto in 1949. His grandfather was a Buddhist priest, and his father taught Japanese language and literature at school. Myself future writer studied at Waseda University, majoring in classical drama. In 1971, he linked his fate with his classmate Yoko, with whom they are still together today. In 1974, he opened his own jazz bar, and four years later, at a baseball game, he realized that he had to write a book: “I just realized it - that’s all.”
1. Love of music
First workplace Haruki Murakami is a salesman in a music store. And this was not an accident, he really loved classics, rock and jazz. Many of his novels reflect the writer's tastes for certain artists and tunes.
2. Disc Collector
Haruki Murakami's favorite vacation spot is Boston, as it is "the most convenient city for finding jazz CDs." In total, his collection of discs exceeds 10 thousand copies.
3. Wake up early and have a tight schedule
Every day the writer gets up at four o'clock in the morning to start working on the translations he does for various publishers or to start working on his novel. Murakami goes to bed at 9 pm. “Maintaining such a schedule over a long period—six months to a year—requires an enormous amount of mental and physical energy. In this sense, writing great novel It's like survival training. Physical strength just as necessary as artistic inspiration.", Murakami said about his life schedule.
4. Favorite cats
Some may have noticed that cats are a constant presence in many of Murakami's books. Kirin is one of many cats that lived with him throughout his life. It was given to the writer by his friend, also a writer Ryu Murakami.
5. Passion for American literature
Murakami has repeatedly emphasized that he is a fan of The Great Gatsby. famous novel his beloved Francis Scott Fitzgerald. His favorite authors also include Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway.
6. Avid reader
Since childhood, Murakami has been an avid reader. According to his personal confession, the following novels most influenced his life and work: “ Deep sleep"Raymond Chandler, the aforementioned "The Great Gatsby", "The Catcher in the Rye" by Jerome Salinger, "The Castle" by Franz Kafka and "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
7. He doesn't care about money.
As the writer himself said, “You know, if you are rich, then it’s best not to think about money. The best things money can buy are freedom and time. I don't know how much money I make per year and I have no idea how much I pay in taxes. Moreover, I don't even want to think about it. It is a privilege to be an author read all over the world and to have sold millions of published books.”
8. Long Distance Runner
Since the age of 33, he has been a long-distance runner and participates in marathons around the world. Today, at the age of 69, Haruki is in an enviable physical fitness. While running, he often listens to music from Creedence Clearwater Revival, John Mellencamp or The Beach Boys.
9. He doesn't like everything Japanese.
Unlike many of his compatriots and even foreigners who like Japanese culture, Murakami doesn't like anime and manga. He also doesn't usually read his Japanese colleagues.
10. Fan of David Lynch and Woody Allen
Haruki Murakami would like to see some of his novels made into films by David Lynch and Woody Allen, the film directors he is. I wonder if anyone can imagine a Lynch adaptation of Kafka on the Beach or Runaway Wonderland and the End of the World. That would be amazing. The surreal style of both will no doubt mesh very well on the big screen.
11. First album
The Many Sides Of Gene Pitney was the first album that Murakami purchased in his life. He was 13 years old and did it in a used record store in Kobe. His love for music English began with Gene Pitney, who was a famous American singer, composer, musician and sound engineer.
12. Hates working under pressure
“I don’t like deadlines,” Murakami told The Guardian in 2014. “I will finish the work when I finish it, and not when it is required of me.” This is why Haruki Murakami only writes novels when he feels inspired and ready to do so; and he spends the rest of his time on translations.
Today Haruki Murakami is called a literary phenomenon and one of modern classics. A whole generation of readers grew up with his work, enraptured by stories full of contradictory feelings, as in the case of Norwegian Wood, a story so personal and contradictory that it is unlikely to ever be filmed.
For fans of the writer’s work and for those who are just about to read his book, .
Haruki Murakami, Japan, 01/12/1949 Haruki Murakami is the most famous living Japanese writers, author of one and a half dozen books translated into many languages of the world. Born in the ancient capital of Japan - Kyoto. My grandfather was a Buddhist priest and ran a small temple. My father taught Japanese language and literature at school, and in free time He was also involved in Buddhist education. Murakami studied at the faculty classical drama from Waseda University and ran a jazz bar in Tokyo. He married his classmate Yoko, with whom he still lives. He began writing at the age of 29 and has since published an average of a novel per year. Murakami was one of the first to open the eyes of hundreds of thousands of readers to modern Japan with its alternative youth subculture, not much different from a similar environment in Moscow, New York, London or Istanbul. His hero is a young slacker, preoccupied with finding a girl with ears unusual shape. He likes to eat thoroughly: he mixes green onions and veal fried with salted plums, adds dried tuna, a mixture of seaweed with shrimp in vinegar, seasoned with wasabi horseradish, grated radish, sunflower oil and flavored stewed potatoes, garlic and finely chopped salami. Without any particular purpose, he drives a car around the city and shares burning questions with readers: why is a Japanese Subaru more comfortable than an Italian Maserati, how do one-armed disabled people cut bread, and how miraculously “fat Boy George became a superstar”? With his creativity, Murakami destroys traditional Japanese values, such as the desire to live in harmony with the world around him, not to stand out from his environment and to be obsessed with his career. He happily breaks traditions, for which we are despised by many Japanese, adherents of ancient foundations and “correct” habits. “I like to waste my time. There are so many things in the world that I love - jazz, cats... Girls, maybe. Books. All this helps me survive.” He - the last romantic, with the sadness of unfulfilled hopes, looking at the cold barrel of a revolver in the hand of a mercenary and convinced of the power of good. He loves pop culture: “ Rolling Stones", "The Doors", David Lynch, horror films, Stephen King, Raymond Chandler, detective stories - everything that is not recognized by the intellectual community and highbrow aesthetes from enlightened bohemian circles. He is closer in spirit to the boys and girls from noisy disco bars who fall in love for one day , an hour and remembering their hobbies only while rushing on a roaring motorcycle. Maybe that's why he's more interested in a woman unusual ears, not the eyes. For he does not want to pretend and remains himself in any situation, with any person. This is how he was loved all over the world. This is how they love him in Russia too.S.V.