How Haruki Murakami Became a Runner-Writer
From owning a jazz club and smoking sixty cigarettes daily to writing novels and running marathons.
On April 1, 1978, Haruki Murakami was watching a baseball game alone in the outfield of Jingu Museum in Tokyo. He had a beer in hand on this hot summer day. His team, the Yakult Swallows, was, as it had been, mediocre. Few fans showed up to support.
All was normal until the end of the first inning.
Dave Hilton, a transplant batter from America, struck the ball hard and hit a double. It was a rather ordinary play, but an epiphany struck Murakami out of nowhere as the ball flew in the air.
“ I think I can write a novel.”
He had never felt such a firm conviction before.
After the game, he went home and sat down to write, only to realize he didn’t have a decent fountain pen. He took a train to the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku and bought a five-dollar Sailor pen and a bundle of manuscript paper.
On that day, Murakami had owned a coffeehouse and jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat — named after his cat — for four years.
After graduating from Waseda University, he married Yoko Takahashi-whom he met at university-against his parents’ wishes. Murakami also opted out of the traditional corporate path. Instead, he had a brief stint at a record store, indulging in music. He then took out a big loan to open the jazz club with Yoko in 1974. The couple made cocktails and sandwiches until late into the evening, barely making ends meet.
Murakami had never written a book before, though he had always been an avid reader. Both of his parents were teachers and exposed him to books. While his father taught Japanese literature, Murakami was more interested in Western authors like Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky and American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald.
For the two months after the baseball game, Murakami went home after closing the club at midnight, sat at the kitchen table, and wrote until early morning. By autumn, he produced the first draft of Hear the Wind Sing -a tale of a nameless 21-year-old narrator, his friend called the Rat, and a four-fingered woman.
He submitted the 200-page novel to a new writer competition. Surprisingly, he won first prize, and a publisher offered to publish the book.
Murakami became intrigued after his initial success. He continued to run the bar during the day and write in his spare time. His second novel, Pinball 1973, was published the following year.
In 1981, Murakami and his wife closed down the jazz bar. They moved from Tokyo to a rural area in Chiba prefecture so Murakami could dedicate all his time to writing. His wife would read his work and give him feedback.
“She’s my first reader, so when I finish writing, I pass the manuscript to my wife, and she reads it and returns the draft with two hundred Post-its. I hate Post-its very much. She says, ‘You should rewrite these parts!’” he laughed as he said in a New Yorker interview.
As his lifestyle became sedentary, Murakami gained weight and smoked more than before.
“Sixty cigarettes a day. My fingers were yellow, and my body reeked of smoke. This couldn’t be good for me, I decided. If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to stay in shape.” he recalled.
At the age of 33, he took up running. A couple of years later, he ran his first 5K race, followed by a 15K race. He had since competed in over twenty marathons and an ultramarathon. He argued long-distance running made him the writer he was.
In his memoir (Amazon), he wrote about what he learned from running:
“How much can I push myself? How much rest is appropriate-and how much is too much? How far can I take something and still keep it decent and consistent? When does it become narrow-minded and inflexible? How much should I be aware of the world outside, and how much should I focus on my inner world?
To what extent should I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself?
He also quit smoking. It was like “a symbolic gesture of farewell to the life I used to lead.” he said.
Murakami developed a monk-like ritual over the following 30 years. He kept a daily routine almost without variation. When writing a novel, he would wake up at four in the morning and work for up to six hours. In the afternoon, he would run for 10km or swim for 1,500 meters, sometimes both. In the evening, he read, listened to music, and went to bed at nine.
“The repetition becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength,” he said. “In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”
Focus, he said, was the most crucial quality for a novelist. He said in his memoir:
The ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever’s critical at the moment. Without that, you can’t accomplish anything of value, while if you can focus effectively, you’ll be able to compensate for an erratic talent or even a shortage of it.
I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning. I sit at my desk and focus totally on what I’m writing. I don’t see anything else; I don’t think about anything else.
Murakami enjoyed the solo time required of a writer. “Concentration is one of the happiest things in my life,” he said. “If you cannot concentrate, you are not so happy. I’m not a fast thinker, but once I am interested in something, I am doing it for many years. I don’t get bored. I’m kind of a big kettle. It takes time to get boiled, but then I’m always hot.”
Originally published at http://1000leaps.com on August 10, 2023.
