Haruki Murakami, the Genius of the Eternal Candidate for the Nobel Prize of Literature
Murakami is one of Japan’s highly regarded contemporary writers, whose best-sellers are translated into more than 40 idioms worldwide. For instance, in the first week of its release, his novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage sold about a million copies in his home country. His writing can’t be assimilated to a specific narrative style due to the ease with which he fluctuates between fiction, essay, and reportage, but if we are forced to approach him to a description, then Murakami is an expert novelist of magical realism.
Early on, with the launch of Norwegian Wood, people advocated Murakami would become an eternal Nobel Prize in Literature candidate, a status that stuck with the novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Despite not yet having this prestigious award associated with his name, Murakami has been pointed out year after year as one of the favorites to win the award.
However, the Japanese author has always considered himself a “novelist by chance”, intriguing many fans on how he is naturally able to transform his life experiences into meaningful and layered stories.
Building the Protagonists
At the center of his vaguely described worlds, we always find an introverted protagonist who is sensitive to the environment that surrounds him/her. It is difficult for these characters sui generis to fit in the metropolises where they feel pushed into, even if it is always by their own conscience. Suddenly, we find ourselves reading extensive and boring monologues, which induce a certain fascination and anxiety in us.
Sumire (from Sputnik Sweetheart) or Hajime (from South of the Border, West of the Sun) are perfect examples of a wandering demand by the protagonists for their own identity. Both feel an immeasurable inner emptiness, which can’t be filled with the comfort and carefreeness of the modern world, being that only in the writing of the perfect book or in the satisfaction of an irrefutable carnal desire (respectively), can there reside the reason that fills a fraction of that void that accompanies them throughout the story.
The complexity of the characters is what fascinates those who read Murakami’s novels because to some extent there is always something with which we feel a vile connection. However, the author, with all his mastery, makes a point of distancing us from these characters, attributing them characteristics and defects — many of them related to the characters’ sexual life — in which we prefer not to recognize ourselves.
The Influence of Music in his Narrative
The novel Norwegian Wood owes part of its success to the fact that Murakami was inspired by the homonymous The Beatles song for its title. It is not a unique case because Dance Dance Dance also lends its title to the song of the Beach Boys and this reveals that much of the inspiration comes from his eclectic musicality. He himself describes the influence of the First Art in his life, in a very eloquent quote, in the book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage:
Our lives are like a complex soundtrack, full of all kinds of enigmatic writing, musical notes, and other strange signs. It is practically impossible to interpret them correctly, and even if we can interpret them, and transpose them to the correct sounds, there is no guarantee that people will understand or appreciate their meaning.
His narratives are soundtracks waiting to happen, but that is something we no longer need to worry about because there was already someone who took the trouble to compile the more than 3000 songs that belong to the author’s vinyl collection and that can be found on Spotify and throughout Murakami’s works.
We indeed find other authors who base their writing on music, regardless of what separates Murakami from the rest is not only his healthy obsession — just google up his mural of vinyl — but also the extension of his musical knowledge. Jazz, Folk, Pop, and Classical Music influence is so overwhelming that he ended up publishing a book with several conversations he had with Seiji Ozawa, one of the most important leading orchestral conductors in the world.
A Hypothetically Magical Universe
Murakami’s magical realism is not limited to the characters, also covering the world where they are inserted. He navigates between seemingly distinct worlds, without resorting to a complex vocabulary or to abstract narratives. Everything is questionable in his universes, but it’s up to the readers to look for the answers within themselves. There is no hypothesis that the stories he tells are unfinished, because what he seeks to do — and it ends up getting through with his crude writing — is to encourage people to go beyond his words. It is easy for him to tell a story through a book and finish the subject, but he does it in a way that it is up to the readers to complete the story the way they think most convenient.
What also facilitates this mental identification is the vague form society is portrayed. Although all of his novels take place mostly in Japanese cities, we hardly visualize any uniquely Japanese particularity, such as geishas, kimonos, Buddhist temples, and tatami-lined rooms. There is a preference for the modern and western world, where jeans are worn, Western cigarettes are smoked and plastic food is eaten. In a way, his worlds end up looking familiar to the point that we don’t feel the need to challenge them.
This description allows the writer to fit sublime fantasy elements that end up being an integral part of those realities. Through these, the author dissolves not only the boundaries between cultures and places but also between reality and dreams. Of all his novels, the ones that best illustrate this merger are Kafka on the Shore, 1Q84, and A Wild Sheep Chase. In these, the fantastic elements are so hidden in the narrated reality that the reader can’t disclose their dimension and how surreal it would be if they were to encounter them in the real world. Can we risk that we are facing a Kafka of modern times? I strongly believe so.
The Person
Rare is the work where there is not at least one biographical reference by Murakami, added by others in a footer — translated, I mean. As a general rule, these references serve to associate certain events in the novel with the life of the author. For example, in his youth, Murakami used to give some Jazz concerts to help with household bills and later decided to invest in a Jazz bar, in which he wrote his first two novels, a future he that dictated to the character Hajime (South of the Border, West of the Sun).
Other examples are Kafka Tamura (Kafka on the Shore) and Tengo (1Q84), two characters who aspire to enjoy worldly life but end up being pushed out of the status quo by the circumstances of life. This is a clear reflection of Murakami’s youth because, while most Japanese societies finished their studies, he entered the job market and after some time got married — his life took the opposite course of the rest of the community.
In addition to these occasional events, the vast majority of his protagonists also share his passion for music and his penchant for written narration. But for him, focus and talent are useless if they are not worked on, and for that, he considers that physical resistance is extremely important to be a novelist.
Being literal about the saying “healthy body, healthy mind”, Murakami states that if after one week, writing 3 to 4 hours a day, we feel tired, then we can forget any intentions of creating a novel. Following the thread of thought, one question arises: so why does Murakami manage to create success after success? Because he is an avid marathon runner, of course! He himself started running after beginning his career as a writer — perhaps because he came to that conclusion — and, as expected, he started to instill that sporting mentality in his characters. However, the sport they tend to prefer is swimming because they consider it to be a more complete modality and that requires coordination of the 3 traits that, according to the author, makes a successful writer: focus, talent, and endurance.
Undoubtedly, the interest of the fans of this novelist from the country of the rising sun goes beyond the famous works he creates and for the most curious, I challenge you to start reading a novel by Murakami and not feel inspired by the story within it and think of him as worthy of a Nobel Prize in Literature.
