Haruki Murakami fans discussion

This thread for general discussion of The Rat Trilogy.
Hear the Wind Sing (1979) - “kitchen table” novella
Pinball, 1973 (1980) - “kitchen table” novella
The Wild Sheep Chase (1982) - HM considers this his first real novel.

The “+1” is Dance Dance Dance (1988) which occurs 4 and a half years after The Wild Sheep Chase. We had a discussion of this novel in 2015/2016 and I included the topic in this folder. Please note that the old thread has spoilers.

Here is a discussion article, “Early Murakami: Why You Should Read The Rat Trilogy” from Books & Bao: https://booksandbao.com/murakami-why-...

I started new topic for Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball,1973, and Dance Dance Dance.
The topic thread for The Wild Sheep Chase starts with comments from our group read in 2016.

It was my good luck that I did not read the Rat Trilogy before I had read 1Q84. By the end of the trilogy I was happy to see the end of, The Rat character.
That said I agree with the Books and Bao Comments. They and I beg the question: If you do not already care about Murakami and his beginnings, why read these books?

ETA Murakami refereed to these as his "Kitchen Tables Books". Meaning this is where he was when writing them.

Please note, Murakami says he was deeply inspired, if that is the right word by Raymond Carver. A man who was always struggling with money, his life and getting by, such that he could only write after work and only had the Kitchen table as a desk.
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“These early Murakami novels provide a chance to appreciate some Murakami-esque themes that now define him: lonely young men looking for their place in the world; personal trauma; loss; disappearing women; boredom; magical realism; sudden decision making; opposition to society; wells; ominous encounters; quests.”
Ollie Poole / December 2020, books&bao article referenced above

In the peer reviewed journal New Voices in Japanese Studies, A. K. Byron, University of Sydney, asserts that the Rat Trilogy “sees Murakami address the concept of shutaisei—the question of individual agency and subjectivity at the centre of Japan’s student activist movement in the late 1960s.” Furthermore, “Examining the trilogy’s central characters through the lens of shutaisei”, he goes on to “argue that a commitment to political and historical awareness can already be found in Murakami’s early works.”

“Rethinking the Rat Trilogy: Detachment, Commitment and Haruki Murakami’s Politics of Subjectivity, by A. K. Byron, University of Sydney” in volume 9 of the journal.
The article can be downloaded free at http://doi.org/10.21159/nvjs.09.

Where does the “Rat” get his name from?
In Japanese his nickname is Nezumi (ネズミ) (Rat) and has connotations that are different from how a westerner might take the nickname.

Nezumi Is a zodiac animal sign. I don’t know if this was any influence on HK but here is some general background.

Key Takeaways
* The Japanese Zodiac has twelve animal signs, each representing different years and traits.
* People born in each Zodiac year inherit personalities of the animal representing that year.
* Each Zodiac animal portrays unique traits, like Rats are charming and Dragons are energetic and honest.

Rat (nezumi)
Born 2008, 1996, 1984, 1972, 1960, 1948, 1936, 1924, 1912.

People born in the year of the Rat are charming, honest, ambitious, and have a tremendous capacity for pursuing a course to its end. They will work hard for their goals. They are easily angered but maintain an outward show of control. (Jack’s note: this needs further research… there is a Sheep (hitsuji) Zodiac animal also)

Been a while since I read them... and I can't be totally sure I read all three, but I definitely found Pinball to be my LEAST favorite Hurakami novel... and considering I don't really even remember the other two, I can't say they were my favorites either...

So interesting that some of his books (eg The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore) are some of my favorite ever books, while some of the others I could absolutely do without (eg Pinball and Killing Commandatore).

These are early works and only foreshadow themes and methods of his polished style. I think HK felt that The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was his finest work, when it was published.

I think these are some additional themes or influences to consider:

Japanese society, the social context, what is Murakami saying about it. What is the expected social contract? How does that set up for conflict in his stories? The narrator, Boku, seems to exist on the fringes of that context.

Western influences on his stories and writing? Fitzgerald, Chandler, Dostoevsky, Camus,… Are they apparent? How does this interact with the Japanese context?

The individual and individual agency. For example, what agency does Boku, the narrator of Nezumi trilogy + 1 have or believes he has. Does it change and how through the 4 books?

What are the impacts or lessons of the 1960s student protests/riots/(failed) revolution?

The banality of evil and the far right?

Suicide and its impact on the individual and society.

Reality vs the paranormal? What is the role of imagination?

What is the symbolism of wells?

One begins to feel there is something meta about this conversation.
Pretend for a moment you have never heard of any given writer.
A copy of one of their books arrives before you absent any context. You have only the content of that book upon which to decide to finish reading it, or to continue reading that writer.

Had I only read the first of The Rat books, absent my intro, 1q84, I do not think any of the rest would have mattered to me.

The many questions what is more or less obscure to any non Japanese , or contemporary reader-

That is some one with no prior knowledge of the interesting language/vocabulary add ins, or fore knowledge of Japanese political events; Needs something compelling in the contents of our hypothetical read to motivate them to care about, seek out, or allow these new inputs to influence their opinion/reaction.

I can't answer what I think is your question, why should you personally read Murakami Haruki. I can offer what Alison Fincher, my friend and a mentor on Japanese literature, wrote about three reasons for reading Murakami. I will provide a link to her podcast on HM at the end of this post.

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#1: Murakami is really important to Japanese literature in Japan. Yes, even in Japan, lots of people don’t like him—as we’ll discuss (Jack: in her podcast). But columnist Kaori Shoji (a woman, for the sake of what follows) explains that “generations of Japanese owe him for showing [them] a world outside the archipelago, for writing about jazz and beer and summer afternoons spent swimming laps at the pool, for dedicating an entire book to marathon running as a pleasurable hobby, for girls who enjoy sex and own up to their sexuality, for boys who are clumsy about relationships and bafflingly knowledgeable about coffee”.

[#2:] The second reason you might want to listen (Jack: to her podcast) today: Murakami changed the way non-Japanese people think about Japan. One German critic commented that Murkami shows German readers “a Japan they never knew… no kimono, no refined Eastern aesthetics, no proud Japanese spirit closed off in mysterious darkness…” And that same observation applies to virtually every non-Asian audience.

#3: Murakami is vitally important to the growth of Japanese literature in translation. I mentioned in an earlier episode that contemporary fiction translated from Japan is way more popular in English than fiction translated from almost any other language. Murkami was a key part of the growth to that number of works in translation.
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There is a lot of interesting detail in her podcast and discussion of both plus and minuses in HM's works. She also talks about the Japanese context of his writing. A point that I am interested in learning more about.

The podcast is here, look for Episode 28: Haruki Murakami:
https://readjapaneseliterature.com/po...