Walking the Scenes of Hear the Wind Sing
Exploring Murakami’s world
by Kunio Nakamura
Haruki Murakami wrote Hear the Wind Sing at the age of 29 in 1978. In the following year, his memorable debut work won a new-writers prize awarded by Gunzo, a Japanese literary magazine. In the introduction to Wind/Pinball: Two Novels, he says he was watching a baseball game at Jingu Stadium in Tokyo when “it suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.” Murakami was running a jazz bar called Peter Cat near the ballpark at the time. Every night, he would come home late from work and sit down at his kitchen table to write for a “few hours before dawn.”
The story takes place in Kobe in the summer of 1970. The protagonist is a college student back from Tokyo in his hometown in western Japan during a summer break. He narrates, in first person, bits and pieces of what he experiences during a period that “begins on August 8, 1970, and ends eighteen days later.” The protagonist and “the Rat,” a friend from a well-to-do family, often hang out at J’s Bar, a place tended by a Chinese man called “J.” The protagonist meets a girl who is missing the little finger on her left hand.
When Murakami submitted this story for consideration for the literary award, he titled it “Happy Birthday and White Christmas,” which is also on the front cover of the novel’s Japanese edition. The idea for the title is said to have come from a line in Truman Capote’s short story “Shut a Final Door”: “Think of nothing things, think of wind.”
Murakami’s literature has its roots in Kobe. Taking a walk in the town would be a good way to find hints for understanding his works.
J’s Bar / Kobe
Haruki Murakami grew up in the Kobe area, a port town with many Western-style houses and wealthy residential areas.
J’s Bar appears in Murakami’s early trilogy: Hear the Wind Sing; Pinball, 1973; A Wild Sheep Chase. The place, named after the Chinese owner, doesn’t exist. But there is a bar in Kobe that fits the image perfectly. Half Time was, in fact, used as J’s Bar in the film version of Hear the Wind Sing, made by Kazuki Omori in 1981.
At this bar, “the Rat and I had spent the whole summer as if possessed, drinking enough beer to fill a twenty-five-meter pool.” In one scene at the bar, the film actually shows peanut shells covering the whole floor “to a depth of two inches,” just as the two had done in the novel. Murakami was apparently dumbfounded to learn the director went that far to recreate the atmosphere of J’s Bar. By the way, Half Time has a jar on the counter, always filled with two inches’ worth of peanuts. Many Murakami fans continue to visit the place.
A Park with a Monkey Cage / Ashiya
Murakami went to a junior high school in Ashiya, located just east of Kobe and sandwiched between mountains to the north and an inland sea to the south. It’s a trend-setting city with rich culture.
On the day the protagonist met the Rat, three years earlier, the two caused a traffic accident while riding in the Rat’s “shiny black Fiat 600.” It happened in “a park with a monkey cage.” Such a place actually exists in Ashiya, and it’s called Uchide Park. They were “flying down the road” — at 80 kilometers, or about 50 miles, per hour, according to the original Japanese version — and “went merrily crashing through the park fence, bulldozed the azaleas, and wrapped ourselves around one of the stone pillars.” There are no monkeys in the park at the moment, however.
The novel says “Fiat 600,” but the vehicle used in the film was a Fiat 500. Cars like that are said to have been a common fixture on the streets of Kobe back then. Many young people apparently dreamed of driving one.
An Old Library / Ashiya
Behind Uchide Park, the place with the monkey cage, sits a Western-style stone building. It’s the Uchide branch of the Ashiya city library, and the novel refers to it as “an old library.” Murakami used to spend a lot of time there when he was a boy. He says it was his favorite library.
Incidentally, a stack of pancakes doused with Coke is probably the most well-known among the dishes that appear in Murakami’s works. Pancakes are “the Rat’s favorite food,” the author writes in Hear the Wind Sing. The Rat “out and out despised” wealthy people, though “his family was loaded.” His way of eating pancakes — pouring “a bottle of Coke over the top” — represents a cynical depiction of how the twisted rich spend their days. The Rat’s concoction is said to have been inspired by crêpe suzette served by a patisserie named Henri Charpentier, located near the library. Murakami reputedly used to go there with girls on dates when he was a student.
A Small Record Shop / Kobe
One day, the protagonist finds a girl “passed out on the bathroom floor” at J’s Bar. It turns out “her left hand had only four fingers.” A week later, he runs into her again at a record shop, where she works. A local record store with a good selection of classical music albums at the time would be a Yamaha outlet in Kobe’s Motomachi shopping district. The protagonist buys three records for 5,550 yen: Summer Days by The Beach Boys, an album for Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto number 3” played by Glenn Gould, and The Musings of Miles by Miles Davis. She walks to the shelves to fetch the records for him “like a well-trained dog.”
“California Girls” by The Beach Boys is mentioned often in Hear the Wind Sing. Some girl asks a radio DJ to dedicate the song to the protagonist. Scenes of a DJ talking to listeners and taking requests are reminiscent of American Graffiti, a movie about adolescent life in California in the 1960s. It was directed by George Lucas when he was young, before he went on to create Star Wars, one of Murakami’s favorites. American Graffiti has had a big influence on Hear the Wind Sing.
An Ocean View from the Stone Steps of a Warehouse / Kobe
After leaving a small restaurant near the port, the protagonist and the girl with a missing pinky “strolled along the quiet street past the row of warehouses.” They “sat on the stone steps of one of the warehouses,” and look at the ocean in twilight, while listening to the sound of the waves. The two walk for half an hour to the girl’s apartment, “pausing every so often to look back at the harbor.” Having cried, she is “in a surprisingly good mood.” They do some shopping at several stores as they climb up a slope.
Murakami grew up in Ashiya City, and went to Kobe High School. Naturally, he has abundant memories of the Kobe area. The novel rarely refers to actual cities, though, even in detailed descriptions of what appears to be Kobe or Ashiya. I recommend you read the story and use your imagination as you take a stroll around Murakami’s former stomping grounds.
(translation: Matt Kamata)
Originally published at ignition.co.
