Haruki Murakami: “I learned a lot about writing books from running every day.” Biography of Haruki Murakami Murakami description

One of the leading postmodern writers of our time, a winner of numerous literary awards and a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, the unusually productive author Haruki Murakami continues to delight fans with his works. Harukists around the world are eagerly awaiting the widespread availability of the book Killing Commendatore. In the seven years since the release of 1Q84, fans have re-read the author's previous works and chosen their favorites.

What is the best book by Haruki Murakami? The question is not an easy one. Perhaps, first you need to get acquainted with the work of this extraordinary Japanese, and only then choose your and only your best book by Haruki Murakami.

The Unexpected Writer

Haruki himself said that the desire to write arose as a joke on April 1, 1974, while watching a baseball match at Tokyo's Jingu Stadium. The desire was clear and distinct. Five years later, the novel “Listen to the Song of the Wind” appeared, which received an award. Then “Pinball 1973,” which the author also considered a breakthrough.

Both novels immediately gained many fans and were subsequently included in the “Rat Trilogy” by Haruki Murakami. “Sheep Hunt” is a novel that complements the trilogy and received another award. The author himself considered this work to be the beginning of his writing career. Then the fourth part appeared - “Dance dance dance” by Haruki Murakami. Not many years passed, and the novel saw the light of day and made a victorious march through literary platforms. With a circulation of 2 million copies, the reader was presented with “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami.

Prerequisites

The Russian translator of the works of the Japanese author, Dmitry Kovalenin, in his book “Murakamiology” confirms the belief that nothing will come from nothing. In the case of Haruki, the prerequisites were there.

The boy grew up in a family of teachers of Japanese literature, which could not but affect the formation of a passion for reading, because he often heard his parents discussing poetry and war stories of the Middle Ages at the table. It is no coincidence that he studied at the theater department and specialized in classical drama at the prestigious Waseda University. Although his studies did not please him, reading a huge number of scripts certainly did not pass without a trace. And the sudden inspiration to write was probably influenced by proximity and close communication with Buddhist philosophy thanks to my grandfather, the priest of his small temple.

And then travel to Italy and Greece, followed by the Center for the Study of Foreign Cultures and Literatures at Princeton. It was away from Japan, according to the author, that he felt a great need to write about Japan itself.

Now Haruki Murakami lives in his homeland in Tokyo. A passionate running fan since the age of 33, he has written as an essayist for the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. The essays with engaging humor are dedicated to all the runners of the Earth.

Rebellion of Youth

Next door to the Harukami family home there was a bookstore with inexpensive books that were rented out by foreigners. It was with her that the author’s passion for Western literature and jazz music began. For conservative Japan at that time, his passion for American culture was truly a rebellious act. The family did not approve of Haruka's addictions. It was then that his famous vinyl collection began, when the boy saved on breakfast to buy CDs with his favorite jazz.

The rebellion will also manifest itself in the story of marriage, when, contrary to tradition, Murakami gets married before he has yet found his feet on his own. His opposition to traditional family principles will result in the opening of a bar, which Haruki, according to him, opened only to listen to music.

Only after living for a long time away from his homeland will he discover a new traditional Japan in adulthood.

Translation activities

The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami translated into Japanese books by F. S. Fitzgerald and T. Capote, D. Irving and J. Salinger, all the stories of Carver and Tim O. Brien, and translated the fairy tales of Ursula le Guin and Chris Van Allsburg. His 2003 translation of Francis Scott Fitzgerald's The Catcher in the Rye became the best-selling book in the foreign literature category.

What is the best book from Haruki Murakami's early works?

How many readers - so many opinions. A very prolific author with more than 50 short stories and novels covering themes of music and food, the collapse of Japanese traditions, love and death. All “Harukists” have their own best book by Haruki Murakami. We will offer an overview, but the choice is still up to the reader.

Let's start with the novel, which (according to the author) became the creative starting point of the writer Haruki Murakami. Sheep Hunt, the third book in the Rat Trilogy, is considered by critics to combine Zen philosophy and jazz improvisation. This is the first book that the Russian reader read. The idea of ​​the main character Sheep capturing and empowering the essences of different people in order to completely absorb their power is borrowed from ancient Chinese legend. The interweaving and suspense, a style akin to Coppola's Apocalypse Now, absorbs the reader, as does the insidious nature of the Sheep.

The understatement seems to continue in “Dance Dance Dance” by Haruki Murakami. A mystical detective story that destroys our reality, a parallel world and dance as meaning. Dance at the limit, on the verge of ecstasy, with tears in the eyes. The whole world is a dance floor, we are all dancing... Stopped - death. Thinking is prohibited. The metaphor is impressive.

Iconic Novels

The novel “Norwegian Wood” by Haruki Murakami is noted by critics and readers as the closest to reality. It was this book, filmed in 2010, that ensured the financial well-being of the author. The strangeness of the rebel Tooru Watanabe's love with two such different women and the polygamous sexual revolution. The struggle of spirit and flesh.

“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami is compared to “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy not only for the number of volumes in the novel, but also for the detailed, as if under a microscope, study of self-knowledge and self-improvement of a person. The unhurried narration at the beginning, the growth of mystical phenomena as one reads “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami, is permeated with universal human values ​​of good and evil, knowledge of one’s self. The meaning of life with little glimpses of love, peace and truth.

It is impossible to ignore the works “Kafka on the Beach” and “One Thousand Eighty-Four” with their tremendous success among readers. When the first and second volumes of the novel “One Thousand Eighty-Four” hit the shelves at the end of spring 2009, the author’s admirers in Japan sold out the edition in one day. The third volume appeared a year later, and the millionth edition disappeared from the shelves in a week and a half.

Greater success is predicted for Haruki Murakami’s latest two-volume book, “The Assassination of a Knight Commander,” which will be published in 2017. A circulation of one million copies is expected, with additional printing as needed. The plot of the novel is a mystery, but the author says he has created a unified story that includes the perspectives of different people.

Jazz in Murakami's books

The book “Jazz Portraits” by Haruki Murakami stands out. A passionate jazz fan since his youth, he boasts a collection of 400,000 vinyl records, which he began collecting at the age of 15 after attending a live concert by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. It is natural that he prepared a gift for readers in the form of descriptions of 55 jazzmen of the 20th century, starting with Chet Baker and ending with Gil Evans. After reading or listening to the collection, everyone will want to hear the music of those whom Haruki Murakami so vividly described.

It’s significant that Murakami himself said more than once in an interview that if it weren’t for jazz in his life, maybe he wouldn’t have written anything...

Faithful family man

While still at university, Haruki Murakami met his future wife, Yoko. They participated in anti-war rallies together, opposing the Vietnam War. The two of them ran the Peter Cat jazz bar, traveled around Europe and lived in America. In his family life, Haruki is a true Japanese. You can hardly see photographs of Yoko, but she is always next to her husband and remains his first reader. In 2002, the couple founded the Tokyo Dried Cuttlefish travel club and, together with like-minded people, visit those corners of the world where the Japanese have not yet been. Yoko is interested in photography and then illustrates family reports in glossy magazines.

Instead of an afterword

Haruki Murakami's best book has apparently not yet been written. In an interview, Haruka calls Fyodor Dostoevsky his idol. The sixty-eight-year-old Japanese best-selling author said in this regard: “He became more productive over the years and wrote The Brothers Karamazov when he was already old. I'd like to do the same."

He himself doesn’t know when he wanted to become a writer. In an interview, Haruki Murakami said that he always believed that he could write books. He claims that writing is as natural to him as breathing. It is almost impossible to find any incriminating facts in the biography of Haruki Murakami. He did not have numerous affairs, connections with the criminal world and addiction to drugs. He simply wrote books because he liked it.

Childhood

Haruki Murakami was born on January 19, 1949 in Japan in the village of Kayako, near the cultural and historical center of the country, Kyoto. Like all Japanese, the writer behaves with restraint and avoids many answers, so the biography of Haruki Murakami contains only general information about his life.

Murakami's grandfather preached Buddhism and was even the abbot of the temple. My father was a school teacher of Japanese language and literature, and in his free time he also helped at the temple. In 1950, the family moved to the city of Asia, near the port of Kobe. Therefore, the boy spent his childhood in the port city. It was at this time that he began to become interested in American and European literature.

Student years and youth

An important stage in the biography of Haruki Murakami was his student years. In 1968, he became a student at the prestigious Waseda University. It is unknown for what reasons he chose to major in classical drama, because he had neither interest nor zeal for reading old scripts.

During his studies, he was frankly bored, but, as befits a hardworking Japanese, he successfully defended his degree in modern drama. During his student years, he took an active part in protests against the Vietnam War.

In 1971, Murakami got married. His wife was his classmate Yoko Takahashi. He still lives happily with her today. The spouses have no children. This is where the information about personal life in the biography of Haruki Murakami ends. He had no mistresses, and the writer was never involved in any curious scandals.

Blame it on jazz

Haruki Murakami was always delighted with jazz music, so he decided to turn his passion into a business. In 1974, the future writer opens a jazz bar in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The establishment was a success and generated good income for seven years. Then Murakami sold it. How did this happen? In the biography of Haruki Murakami, brief information about this is also present.

The bar functioned successfully, life slowly moved on and it seemed that nothing would change. But one day Haruki Murakami attended a baseball game, watching the game, he suddenly realized that he could write books. So suddenly the insight came to the writer that it was time to create. After that day, he increasingly began to linger in the bar after closing, sketching for future books. Sometimes a thought that comes suddenly can radically change your life. From the day the decision was made to write books, literature has become an integral part of the biography of Haruki Murakami.

Literature

In 1979, the world saw the first story by Haruki Murakami, “Listen to the Song of the Wind.” She was noticed immediately. This work received the Gunjoshinjin-se Prize, which is awarded to beginners, and the Noma Prize, which is awarded to writers by the literary magazine Bungei. This book is also known as the first part of the “Rat Trilogy” series.

As for the author, Murakami himself greatly underestimated his works. He considered his works weak: they could still be sold in Japan, but they would definitely not be of interest to foreign readers. But these were only the writer’s thoughts; the foreign reader did not agree with them. The works of Haruki Murakami quickly won the attention of visitors to second-hand bookstores in America and Europe. Readers were very impressed by the author's original style.

Time to travel

In 1980, the continuation of the “Rat Trilogy” series, “Pinball 1973” (story), went on sale. Two years later, the final part of the cycle was published - “Sheep Hunting” (novel, 1982). The 1982 work was also awarded the Noma Prize. It was from this period that Murakami's development as a writer began. He decides that the time has come to sell the bar and wants to devote himself entirely to literature.

For his first books, the author received decent fees, which allowed him to travel around Europe and America. His journey lasted several years. He returned to his homeland only in 1996. When Murakami left the Land of the Rising Sun, he managed to publish four collections of short stories:

• "Slow boat to China";
• "Great day for a kangaroo"
• “The mortal agony of a carousel with horses”;
• "Firefly, Burn the Barn and Other Stories."

In addition to stories, he also managed to publish a collection of fairy tales, “The Christmas of the Sheep,” and a fantasy novel, “Unstoppable Wonderland and the End of the World” (1987). The novel receives a prestigious award - the Prize named after. Junichiro Tanizaki.

When Murkami traveled to Italy and Greece, his impressions inspired him to write Norwegian Wood. The work played a key role in the biography and work of Haruki Murakami - this novel brought the writer world fame. Both readers and critics unanimously call this work the best in the writer’s work. A circulation of two million copies instantly spread across Europe and America.

The novel “Norwegian Wood” tells about the student life of the main character in the 60s. In those days, student protests were common, rock and roll was becoming more and more popular, and the main character was dating two girls at the same time. Despite the fact that the story is told in the first person, this is not an autobiographical novel at all, it’s just much more convenient for the author to write this way.

Teacher

In 1988, a new stage began in the biography of writer Haruki Murakami. He moves to London, where he decides to write a sequel to the series “The Rat Trilogy” - the novel “Dance, Dance, Dance” is published in the world.

In 1990, another collection of short stories with the entertaining title “Teletubbies Strike Back” was published in the Land of the Rising Sun. In 1991, Murakami was offered to become a teacher at Princeton University (USA). A little later he receives the degree of associate professor. While Murakami is engaged in teaching, eight volumes of the writer’s works are being published in Japan. The collection includes all the things written by the writer over the last decade of creative activity.

Only in a foreign country did the writer have the desire to tell the world about his country, its people, traditions, and culture. It is worth noting that he did not like to do this before. Apparently, only when you find yourself far from your native country do you truly begin to appreciate it.

In 1992, Murakami moved to California, where he continued his teaching career: he lectures on modern literature at Howard Tufts University. Meanwhile, in the writer’s country, a new novel, “South of the Border, West of the Sun,” is being prepared for release. This time the author attributed something from his biography to the main character. Haruki Murakami (photos of the writer are presented in the article) wrote a story about the owner of a jazz bar.

"Aum Shinrikyo"

In 1994, the novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” went on sale. It is considered the most complex in the writer’s work: it combines many different literary forms, which are flavored with a good dose of mysticism.

In 1995, in Japan, or rather in Kobe, there was an earthquake and a gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo sect. A year after the tragedy, Murakami returns to Japan, now living in Tokyo. Impressed by the tragedy in Kobe, he writes two documentaries - “Underground” and “The Promised Land”.

More books

Since 1999, Haruki Murakami begins to publish a book every year. A fruitful period begins in the biography of Haruki Murakami. Thus, in 1999, the novel “My Beloved Sputnik” was published, and in 2000, a collection of stories “All God’s Children Can Dance” was published.

In 2001, Haruki Murakami and his wife moved to the village of Oiso, which is located on the ocean shore, where they still live.

It is worth noting that Murakami’s works have been translated into 20 languages, including Russian. True, in Russia the author’s works are published several years (tens of years) late. Thus, only in 2002 did the novel “Wonderland Without Brakes” appear in Russian bookstores.

In 2003, Murakami visited Russia. While he was traveling, the novel Kafka on the Beach was published in Japan. It consisted of two volumes, was the tenth novel in the writer’s bibliography, and received the World Fantasy Award.

"Legends" and bestsellers

In 2005, the collection “Tokyo Legends” was published, which included not only new stories, but also those that the writer wrote back in the 80s of the last century. In 2007, the writer wrote a memoir, “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.” When he turned 33, he quit smoking and began running, swimming and baseball. From time to time, Murakami takes part in marathons. Constant exercise became the source of inspiration that spilled out in a kind of memoir. In 2010, this book was translated into Russian.

The year 2009 was notable for the release of a new trilogy - “1Q84”. Two parts of the book were sold out literally on the first day of sales. In this novel, the author examined such topics as religious extremism, generational conflict, and the discrepancy between reality and illusions. A year later, Murakami completed the third volume - another bestseller appeared in the world.

About everything in the world

The next book was published only in 2013. It was a philosophical drama, Colorless Tsukuru and the Years of Travel. Murakami writes about a lonely engineer who designed railway stations. Like all children, in his distant childhood he had friends, but over time they began to turn away from him one by one. Tsukuru cannot understand the reason for this behavior. His new girlfriend advises him to find old acquaintances and find out everything directly.

In 2014, another interesting collection was published - “A Man Without a Woman.” In these short stories, the main characters are strange men and real femme fatales, and the main theme is the relationship between them.

Besides writing

In addition to his writing activities, Murakami was involved in translating books by European authors. It was only thanks to him that readers in Japan discovered the works of Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and the translation of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye broke all sales records.

He created several photo albums and guidebooks, in which he expressed all his love and interest in Western culture. He created two volumes of the book “Jazz Portraits”, where he talked about 55 jazz performers.

Our days

In 2016, Murakami received the Literary Prize. G. H. Andersen. As they said at the award ceremony, he received the award:

"For its bold combination of classical storytelling, pop culture, Japanese tradition, fantastic realism and philosophical reflection."

Of course, it was expected that he would also be awarded the Nobel Prize, but so far this has not happened. In the meantime, he continues to write. In 2017, the novel “The Murder of the Commander” is published, and perhaps the writer will please with something in 2018, but for now it is a secret.

Perhaps the most important thing in the biography of Haruki Murakami was briefly mentioned. As you can see, writing for him really means living.

Haruki Murakami (Japanese: 村上春樹). Born January 12, 1949 in Kyoto. Japanese writer and translator.

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, in the family of a classical philology teacher.

Haruki Murakami's grandfather, a Buddhist priest, ran a small temple. My father taught Japanese language and literature at school, and in his spare time he was also engaged in Buddhist education. He studied classical drama at the Department of Theater Arts at Waseda University. In 1950, the writer’s family moved to the city of Asia, a suburb of the port of Kobe (Hyogo Prefecture).

In 1971, he married his classmate Yoko, with whom he still lives, no children. In 1974, he opened his own jazz bar, Peter Cat, in the Kokubunji area of ​​Tokyo. In 1977, he moved his bar to a quieter area of ​​the city, Sendagaya.

In April 1978, during a baseball game, I realized that I could write a book. Still doesn't know why exactly. In Murakami’s own words: “I just understood it - that’s all.” Murakami increasingly stayed after the bar closed for the night and wrote texts - with an ink pen on simple sheets of paper.

In 1979, the story “Listen to the Song of the Wind” was published - the first part of the so-called. "The Rat Trilogy". For her, he received the literary prize “Gunzo Shinjin-sho” - a prestigious award awarded annually by the magazine “Gunzo” to aspiring Japanese writers. And a little later - the “Noma Prize” from the leading literary magazine “Bungay” for the same thing. By the end of the year, the prize-winning novel had sold out a circulation unheard of for a debut - over 150 thousand hardcover copies.

In 1981, Murakami sold his bar license and became a professional writer. In 1982, he completed his first novel, Sheep Hunt, the third installment of the Rat Trilogy. In the same year he received another Noma award for him.

In 1985, the novel “Unstoppable Wonderland and the End of the World” was published, for which he received the Tanizaki Prize in the same year. In addition to the above-mentioned novel, this year a book of children's fairy tales, “The Christmas of the Sheep,” with illustrations by Sasaki Maki, and a collection of short stories, “The Deadly Heat of the Carousel with Horses,” were published.

In 1986, Murakami left with his wife for Italy, and later for Greece. Traveled to several islands of the Aegean Sea. A collection of short stories, “Repeat Raid on the Bakery,” was published in Japan.

In 1988, in London, Murakami completed work on the novel Dance, Dance, Dance, a continuation of the Rat Trilogy.

In 1990, a collection of short stories, Teletubbies Strike Back, was published in Japan.

In 1991, Murakami moved to the United States and took a position as a research intern at Princeton University, New Jersey. An 8-volume collection of works was published in Japan, which included everything that was written between 1979 and 1989. In 1992, he received the degree of associate professor at Princeton University. He completed and published the novel “South of the Border, West of the Sun” in Japan.

Having left Japan for the West, he, who spoke excellent English, for the first time in the history of Japanese literature began to look at his homeland through the eyes of a European: “I went to the States for almost five years, and suddenly, while living there, I completely unexpectedly wanted to write about Japan and about the Japanese. Sometimes about the past, sometimes about how things are now. It’s easier to write about your country when you are far away. Before that, I somehow didn’t really want to write about Japan. I just wanted to write about myself and my world,” he recalled in one of his interviews.

In July 1993, he moved to Santa Ana, California, and lectured on modern (post-war) world literature at William Howard Taft University. Visited China and Mongolia.

In 1994, the first 2 volumes of the novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” were published in Tokyo.

1995 - Volume 3 of Chronicles was published. Two tragedies happened in Japan at once: the Kobe earthquake and the sarin attack of the Aum Shinrikyo sect. Murakami began work on the documentary book "Underground".

In 1996 he published a collection of short stories, Ghosts of Lexington. Returned to Japan and settled in Tokyo. Conducted a number of meetings and interviews with victims and executioners of the “sarin terrorist attack.”

In 2000 he published a collection of short stories, All God's Children Can Dance.

January 2001 - moved to a house on the seashore in Oiso, where he still lives.

August 2002 - wrote the preface to “Wonderland Without Brakes,” published in Moscow.

In February 2003, he released a new translation of Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, which broke all sales records for translated literature in Japan at the beginning of the new century.

In June-July 2003, together with colleagues from the Tokyo Dried Cuttlefish travel club, I visited Russia for the first time - on the island of Sakhalin. In September I went to Iceland. At the same time, he began work on another novel, which was published in 2004 under the title “Afterglow.”

In 2006, the writer received the Franz Kafka Literary Prize. The award ceremony took place in the City Hall of Assembly in Prague, where the nominee was presented with a small Kafka statue and a check for 10 thousand dollars.

In 2008, in an interview with the Kyodo news agency, Murakami said that he was working on a new very large novel. “Every day now I sit at a desk for five to six hours,” Murakami said. “I’ve been working on a new novel for a year and two months.” The writer assures that he is inspired by Dostoevsky. “He became more productive over the years and wrote The Brothers Karamazov when he was already old. I'd like to do the same."

According to Murakami, he intends to create "a gigantic novel that would absorb the chaos of the whole world and clearly show the direction of its development." That is why the writer has now abandoned the intimate manner of his early works, which were usually written in the first person. “The novel that I keep in my head combines the views of different people, different stories, which creates a common unified story,” explains the writer. “So I have to write now in the third person.”

In 2009, Haruki Murakami condemned Israel for its counter-terrorism operation in the Gaza Strip. The writer said this in Jerusalem, using the platform provided to him in connection with the award of the Jerusalem Literary Prize for 2009: “As a result of the attack on the Gaza Strip, more than a thousand people were killed, including many unarmed citizens. To come here to receive the prize would be to give the impression that I support a policy of overwhelming use of military force. However, instead of not being present and remaining silent, I chose to speak.”

On May 28, 2009, the writer’s new novel “1Q84” went on sale in Japan. The entire launch edition of the book was sold out before the end of the day.

In September 2010, the Russian translation of Murakami’s book “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” was published. According to the author, this is a collection of “sketches about running, but not the secrets of a healthy lifestyle.” “To write sincerely about running,” says Murakami, “is to write sincerely about yourself.”

Bibliography of Haruki Murakami:

1979 - Listen to the song of the wind
1980 - Pinball
1982 - Sheep Hunt
1985 - Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World
1987 - Norwegian Wood
1988 - Dance, Dance, Dance
1992 - South of the Border, West of the Sun
1994-1995 - The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
1999 - My favorite sputnik
2002 - Kafka on the Beach
2004 - Afterglow
2009-2010 - 1Q84
2013 - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of wanderings

Film adaptations by Haruki Murakami:

1980 - “Listen to the Song of the Wind” - a film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Directed by Kazuki Omori
2004 - “Tony Takitani” (eng. Tony Takitani). The film is based on a story by Tony Takia from the collection Ghosts of Lexington. Directed by Jun Ichikawa
2007 - All God's Children Can Dance, directed by Robert Lowdgefall
2010 - “Norwegian Wood” - a film adaptation of the novel of the same name. Directed by Tran Anh Hung.

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. Is not it?

Murakami is full of physiological descriptions. He got up, walked, got there... Sat down, ate, went again... The main character does nothing significant for most of the story. 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 of 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 has easily run marathons, knows the value of movement. He understands how important it is sometimes to rest his head, swollen from thoughts, 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. It is possible to 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?..

Do 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...