Haruki Murakami for Beginners
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1949. He grew up in Kobe, then moved to Tokyo where he attended Waseda University and studied drama. After completing college, Murakami opened a small jazz bar, which he and his wife ran for seven years. His first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won the Gunzou Literature Prize for budding writers in 1979. The novel’s success led to Murakami selling his jazz club and turning into a full-time writer.
Writing Style
Murakami’s writing style is distinct and contains elements of magical realism. The common themes in his work are repetitive. His books center around a male character that goes through metaphysical borders in order to discover the truth about himself and the world.
As Sam Anderson wrote in the New York Times, “The signature pleasure of a Murakami plot is “watching a very ordinary situation (riding an elevator, boiling spaghetti, ironing a shirt) turn suddenly extraordinary (a mysterious phone call, a trip down a magical well, a conversation with a Sheep Man).”
Murakami’s work is heavily influenced by his love for Western music, film, and literature.
The Norwegian Wood
“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
The Norwegian Wood follows Toru and Naoko, both college students whose mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. While Toru adapts to campus life and the loneliness he feels, Naoka finds the pressures of her life unbearable and retreats further into her own world. A coming of age story of a young man’s first love with a blend of the music and mood of the sixties.
The Norwegian Wood, ironically for its massive popularity, is not an accurate representation of Murakami’s style. The author himself stated that the book was his attempt at writing “normally”.
“She’s letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you’re in big trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood also happens to be the first book I read by the author and also the one I struggled the most with. However, I was interested in the conversations between the characters, it was unlike any other I’d read later on by the author.
Killing Commendatore
The Killing Commendatore follows the life of a portrait painter in his thirties in Tokyo who’s recently divorced. He finds himself taking residence in the mountain home of a famous artist Tomohiko Amada. He discovers a painting in the attic of the house and this event sets off the many other mysterious circumstances.
The book is Murakami’s homage to The Great Gatsby and has many parallels in the form of a Mr. Gatsby-inspired character (Menshiki) who lives across the hill from the protagonist. When the protagonist starts hearing a strange bell-sound in the middle of the night — he seeks help from Mr. Menshiki and together they open a dark pit in the ground that they believe could’ve possessed a monk. The act becomes a catalyst for many strange occurrences that happen later on.
“As I gazed at my reflection I wondered, where am I headed? Before that, though, the question was Where have I come to? Where is this place? No, before that even I needed to ask, Who the hell am I?” ― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore
The Killing Commendatore focuses on the quiet life of the narrator, World War 2 in the city of Vienna, ideas that take the form of characters from a painting, dark holes, feelings of loneliness, isolation, vivid portraits, and most of all, detailed descriptions of routine activities of the narrator.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It’s when you can’t even feel pain anymore that you’re in real trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
The narrator Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. Coincidentally, all their names contained a color. The two boys were named Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’ and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only one in the group with a last name with no color in it. For reasons unknown to him, his friends cut off all ties with him and since that day, he is unable to form intimate connections with anyone. Later, Tsukuru meets a woman, Sara, who tells him that the time has come for him to find out what happened all those years ago.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
This non-fictional account is an autobiographical look of Murakami’s life as a writer and avid marathon runner. It dives deeper into the purpose of routine in a writer’s life, the importance of physical fitness, and the life-lessons the author gained over the course of his writing career.
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself.”
Murakami writes that the very nature of writing is a lonely task that he balances with his running.
“That’s the way I’ve always lived. I quietly absorb the things I’m able to, releasing them later, and in as changed a form as possible, as part of the story line in a novel.”
Murakami, I’ve found, is uncomfortable to read.
He is not the epitome of what literature should be like. His writing is a reflection of his own preconceptions of the world. He possesses a complex and vivid imagination that creates dreamlike worlds with metaphors and ironies taking physical space.
Murakami is known for his recurring literary tropes. One important aspect of his writing leaves even the most dedicated reader perplexed is his depiction of women. The female characters in a typical Murakami novel serve as a portal for his solitary protagonists.
As the author himself explains in “Art of Fiction, 2004 Interview” that women were mediums that cured loneliness and provided emotional relief to the lead.
His obsession with female anatomy and in-depth sexual encounters can be uncomfortable to most readers. In his most famous work, Kafka on the Shore and Killing Commendatore, there are instances where the narrators sexually abuse their female counterparts albeit in their dreams.
In Murakami’s fiction where reality and dreams often merge, it really begs the question of why he would include such themes? Why over time has his portrayal of women not improved?
One piece of Murakami fiction is perhaps a defense and also stands out as his potential for writing complex three dimensional female characters. Sleep, is a short story that follows the life of a housewife who slowly spirals out of control as she stays awake for a period of 17 days.
“I’ve finally come to realize Murakami doesn’t write to please anyone, sometimes it feels like he doesn’t even write to please himself. He writes because he needs to; he needs to free his mind of these thoughts that’ve made a home in his mind.” — Faroukh Naseem, @Theguywiththebook on Instagram.
Murakami is a master of his own craft — however questionable at times; he has managed to create a voice that cannot be related with any other. The reader ventures into the depth of the psyche of the characters viewing their good, bad, and ugly sides. The world in Murakami’s fiction is filled with characters you would have difficulty liking — which only adds to the allure of his fiction.
In the article “‘Things are not what they seem’: How Haruki Murakami blurs the lines of reality in his novels”, Shireen Quadri writes,
“Murakami’s world is like a portal to an alternate, parallel universe where things have their own way of happening, where reality and unreality collide in exuberant and elegant bursts, somewhere beyond time and space, not hamstrung by worldly reason or logic.”
Step into a Murakami novel and you’ll lose sense of time. Reading his words can feel like daydreaming. The serenity of daily life is incorporated in his words. The conversations in between characters are charming and intrusive.
For a beginner to Murakami’s work, I would suggest picking up one of his short stories’ collections. These would be: “Men Without Women”, “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, “The Elephant Vanishes” or “After the Quake”.
My favorite short stories by Murakami are Kino from “Men Without Women” and Sleep, from “The Elephant Vanishes”.
If you enjoy his short stories, you can proceed to read the novels. As much as Norwegian Wood is famous, I’m afraid it is not a good example of his work, and rather it’s the exception as it does not include a lot of Murakami’s familiar tropes. Killing Commendatore, Kafka on the Shore, and IQ84 are better left for when you’ve read plenty of his work as they are the lengthier novels.
I would suggest picking one of these: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage South of the Border West of the Sun, After Dark, or Sputnik Sweetheart.
If you’re not much of a reader, watch these movies inspired by Murakami’s work, “Drive my Car” and “Burning.”
Most of all, remember that Murakami is not for everyone. His writing is not easy to understand or to like. For all his charm, Murakami does include spooky and uncomfortable truths about our world. So, if you find him to not be your cup of tea, that’s a valid opinion and there is no need to read what you dislike.
