Haruki Murakami and Modern Japan

• Born in January 12, 1949 in Kobe
• Father was a Buddhist Priest- also fought in China during college years
• Mother was the daughter of an Osaka merchant
• Both parents were teachers  of Japanese literature
• Murakami was as a youngster a voracious reader (mostly of Western literature)
• Remembers little about jr. high and high school other than the fact that his teachers used to beat him a lot
  • didn't study
  • played mahjongg
  • girls
  • jazz cafes
  • cinemas
  • smoking
• He had a "remarkably unremarkable" upbringing

Formative Years

• Heard Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in 1964 and was forever hooked on jazz
• Failed his first set of entrance exams for college
  • became a "ronin"
  • spent 1967 studying/napping in Ashiya public library
  • decided, after reading Truman Capote's The Headless Hawk that he would change from Law to Literature
• Went to Waseda University and joined the drama department
  • lived in a private dorm with other university students
  • attended few classes ("When I was high school I didn't study.  But when I got to college, I REALLY didn't study."
  • Spent most of his time reading screenplays in the Waseda library, going to Jazz clubs and drinking beer.
• Was more or less in the middle of the turbulent 60's protests
  • 1968 Anti-War Day Protests
  • 1969 Waseda student strike that put an end to classes for 5 months - riot police were finally brought in to resolve the deadlock
• Married his college sweetheart in 1971 against his parents' wishes
  • She was a Kanto-ite
  • He hadn't graduated yet
  • He was going out of the correct order of things (job, wife, home, child)
  • They moved in with Yoko's father
• Opened a jazz bar ("Peter Cat") in Kokobunji, Tokyo in 1974
  • Parents again worried, this time about going into the water trade (mizu-shobai)
  • Took HM 7 years to get his undergraduate degree

Murakami the Writer

• Inspired to write his first novel (Hear the Wind Sing) while watching a baseball game.
• Wrote nights after the bar closed and submitted the novel to an emerging writers contest (1979) in Gunzo magazine
• He has a certain short, declarative style that came about
  • He had little time to work on writing at that point
  • He wrote first in (simple) English and then translated to Japanese

Success

• Called the first post-postwar writer in Japan
  • completely at home with elements of American pop culture
• His works make up a psychological history of post-postwar Japan
  • 60's student movements
  • 70's Big Chill
  • 80's moneymaking
  • 90's re-emergence of idealism
• He leaves Japan in 1986 and lives in Greece and the US.
• Norwegian Wood becomes a bestseller in Japan in 1987.
• HM’s work is translated into several languages.
• He teaches at Princeton and Tufts.
• He returns to Japan as a home and a writing subject
  • Writes about AUM
  • A book of fiction about the great Hanshin Earthquake

Outside Links:

My Dinner with Murakami (youtube)

Haruki Murakami Website from China

Haruki Murakami Website from UK

Interview with Haruki Murakami in Salon

Interview about HM's running and writing

Interview with HM in Dalkey Archive Press

An early interview

Jazz Bar

His 60's Experience

Inspired to write his first novel ("Hear the Wind Sing") while watching a baseball game

His writing is deemed “pop” by the Japanese literary establishment

Hanshin Earthquake Page