New Interview with Haruki Murakami
Murakami speaks about his latest novel
Over the past few days, readers of the Mainichi newspaper have been treated to an interview with author Haruki Murakami. It was released in three instalments and seems to confirm that his next novel, published earlier this year in Japan, will reach English-speaking audiences in 2024.
The interview begins with a discussion of that new book, whose English title is The City and its Uncertain Walls. Murakami notes what fans had already realised – that it builds upon one of his breakthrough novels, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, as well as a novella that came before it.
Talking about why he did this, he says that the core idea of those earlier books, which is to say “the self in a walled city and the shadow” as a motif was something he “was not able to fully express.” This is “because [he] wrote it when [he] was young,” he claims.
Murakami goes on to talk more about his new novel but there are quite a few potential spoilers, so I won’t say any more here. (You can find the link below if you want to read everything.) I will say that it’s quite unusual that Murakami gives so much detail and insight! He’s usually very hesitant to talk at length about his work.
In the second part of the interview, Murakami talks more about the new novel, as well as Hard-boiled Wonderland and Norwegian Wood. The latter, of course, was his first and only novel in a purely realistic style. This brings about a discussion of the real vs unreal in his work. Murakami says:
In my case, I don't know why but from my first short story, elements nonexistent in the real world appear more and more as I work on a story. I know that in order to write realistically, you also have to include unreality. But writing it in an obvious fashion -- "This is unreality" -- is not good, and the real and unreal must be treated as equivalent.
He is quite candid in talking about his early development as a writer, moving from a “pop” style to a more nuanced one. They continue to discuss the new book and it is hinted that there is a metaphor for the covid pandemic hidden in it.
Part three of the interview continues by discussing nature and its relation to his book, as well as libraries. He carefully sidesteps the question of whether he’s put himself into this book (something he admitted doing in Novelist as Vocation) and goes on to talk about Truman Capote, whose work he has recently translated into Japanese.
I fell in love with Capote's writing in high school and read his books in English all the time. I was a child who loved reading books but because his writings were so wonderful I thought I would never be able to write.
They end by discussing changes to the Meiji Jingu Garden in Tokyo.
Here are links to the three parts of the interview. Warning: The first one contains some spoilers about his new novel.
· Part One
· Part Two