Haruki Murakami fans discussion

There are often (always?) something about cats in HM’s novels/novellas/short stories. This thread is just about cats and HM.


For example, in our May/June 2025 Non-Fiction group read, Novelist as a Vocation, the title essay has:
“We (“we” being my wife and myself) lived a very frugal, Spartan life in those days. We had no TV or radio—not even an alarm clock. Nor was there any real way to heat our room, so when the nights were cold, we slept huddled together, clinging to our cats. The cats clung desperately to us as well.”

Reading the Meow (2025) is an annual literary event that multiple book review and blog sites participate in. The GR Japanese Literature Forum had a Cat Week last year as part of ReadingTheMeow2024. I thought it would be fun to identify cats, kittens, or other felines in the works of Haruki Murakami as a challenge to this group. So I used that as a kick off for exploring the cat theme.

r/Jack

HM had a website for Q&A around 2015.

One of the questions had to do with cats.
“ Novelist Haruki Murakami has opened Mr. Murakami’s Place, a mostly Japanese-language website where he is offering advice to readers. Fans of the author of “1Q84” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” can ask anything but frequently stick to Murakami’s areas of interest: literature, love and cats.

In a question asked and answered in English, Vivian wrote, “Do you think cats can understand how humans feel? My cat Bobo ran away when she saw me crying. At that time I feel like being left out by the entire world. Or they (cats) just wouldn’t care less?”

Murakmi replied, “I suspect that either you or your cat is extremely sensitive. I have had many cats, but no cat has ever been so sympathetic. They were just as egoistic as they could be.”
“

The 2015 article from the LA Times entitled “Haruki Murakami’s advice on love and cats”, is here:
https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketc...

You may not have read HM’s short story published in The New Yorker September 5, 2011 issue. It was titled “Town of Cats” and was translated by Jay Rubin.

Here is the link to the short story:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

HM was also interviewed by the New Yorker for the “This Week in Fiction” series by Deborah Treisman in August 2011 about the Town of Cats short story.
The interview is here:

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-...

There is an article read limit for the New Yorker. Many libraries have the New Yorker in their print or e-magazine collections.

Some cat stuff from Hear the Wind Sing:

When he was a kid, his parents had him go to a psychologist. There was a picture on the wall, “From the wall in front of me, a portrait of Mozart glared at me reproachfully, like a timid cat”
The the psych wanted to get his to talk, “Tell me about cats. Say whatever pops into your head.”
I pretended to think about it, then shook my head back and forth.
“Anything you can think of.”
“They’re animals with four legs.”
“So are elephants.”
“Cats are much smaller.”
“What else?”
“They live in the house, and they can kill mice if they want.”
“What do they eat?”
“Fish”
”
Finally, he writes about ‘Derek Hartfield’ (there is lots to say about Mr Hartfield, but that is another thing), “there were only three things he liked. Guns, cats, and his mother’s cookies.”

Excerpts From
Hear the Wind Sing
Haruki Murakami

So this is the nature of exploring cats in his writings …
Pick another of his works…

“Abandoning a Cat” by HM was published in the New Yorker Magazine, September 19, 2019. English translation is by Phillip Gabriel.
A quote from TNY story:
“We always had cats at home, and we liked them. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and cats and books were my best friends when I was growing up. I loved to sit on the veranda with a cat, sunning myself. So why did we have to take that cat to the beach and abandon it? Why didn’t I protest? These questions—along with that of how the cat beat us home—are still unanswered.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...
(Note: there is a story limit for free reading of TNY but many libraries have subscriptions and online availability.)

Back to The Rat Trilogy (+1), in Pinball, 1973:
Our narrator, “Boku”, is asked to translated am article:
“Title: Readers’ Questions on Science (Animals)
Length: From p. 68 (“Why does a cat wash its face?”)”

Soon after that he breaks for lunch: “From there I continued on to a pet shop, where I spent ten minutes playing with an Abyssinian cat, poking my finger through an opening in the front window. A typical lunch break.” (He likes to visit the pet store during the story, for stress reduction, I think.)

Back home the twins (if you ask who are the twins… need to read Pinball, 1973) ask him:
“Have you ever seen a cat die of blood poisoning?”
“No,” I answered.
“At the beginning its paws and tail get hard as a rock. At the end its heart stops. It takes a long time.”
I sighed. “But I hate to let it die.”
(This probably makes little sense but it has to do with a phone wiring panel that has assumed personhood.)

When Boku goes to J’s bar next, J tells home the story of his cat. (This fills out J’s character for us.)

So far in The Rat series we are 2 out of 2 for cats in the novellas.

In A Wild Sheep Chase, the is, of course, a cat, called “cat”, later in chapter 24 renamed “Kipper”.

Chapter 24 is titled One for the Kipper and I don’t know if that was an intention pun on Ronald Reagan. Reagan's first big role as an actor was playing ill-fated football star George Gipp in the 1940 film classic, Knute Rockne - All-American. In 1966 and 1970 he was elected governor of California. It could have been a side Americana reference for HM or something the translator threw in. A bit funny but to think on. Reagan was elected American president in 1980.

“Say now, we have to tell him about the cat," I launched a lifeboat.
"Cute cat, eh?" said the chauffeur, also relieved. The cat was anything but cute. Rather, he weighed in at the opposite end of the scale, his fur was scruffy like an “old, threadbare carpet, the tip of his tail was bent at a sixty-degree angle, his teeth were yellowed, his right eye oozed pus from a wound three years before so that by now he could hardly see. It was doubtful that he could distinguish between a tennis shoe and a potato. The pads of his feet were shriveled up corns, his ears were infested with ear lice, and from sheer age he farted at least twenty times a day. He'd been a fine young torn the day my wife found him under a park bench and brought him home, but in the last few years he'd rapidly gone downhill. Like a bowling ball rolling toward the gutter. Also, he didn't have a name. I had no idea whether not having a name reduced or contributed to the cat's tragedy.
"Nice kitty-kitty," said the chauffeur, hand not outstretched. "What's his name?"
"He doesn't have a name."
"So what do you call the fella?"
"I don't call it," I said. "It's just there."
"But he's not a lump just sitting there. He moves about by his own will, no? Seems mighty strange that something that moves by its own[…]”

Excerpt From
A Wild Sheep Chase
Haruki Murakami
This material may be protected by copyright.

There are multiple references to the cat in the novel. The cat needed a care taker before Boku and “the woman with three occupations” could go on the wild sheep chase. (We later know the woman as “Kiki” in Dance, Dance, Dance.) Maybe we should talk about women in HM works in another thread.

Ack! I forgot.
The name of Haruki and Yoko’s jazz cafe was “Peter Cat”.

The cafe in The Haruki Murakami Library at Waseda University is called "The Orange Cat".