Who We're Reading When We're Reading Murakami

A fascinating work, which is both a homage to Haruki Murakami and an analysis of the process of how an author becomes the person his/her readers enjoy. Murakami now, of course, is one of the greatest authors currently writing, but it wasn't always this way. The transition from obscure Japanese misfit to international brand is a large function of the translators/editors/publishing houses/agents with whom Murakami worked. There's also a large element of luck involved too. What's fascinating is how, when we, as English readers, read Murakami, the text — and sometimes even the title — is very different to the Japanese original. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is, for example, some 25,000 words shorter. Are we therefore reading Murakami or his team? Email records are commonplace now, but in Karashima's meticulously put together work, he demonstrates that much of the making of Murakami is now lost, or memory is faulty, owing to the absence of such records a generation ago. Further, implicitly, how new/current authors are marketed is a potential large question mark function of social media. Throughout this work, it is pleasing to see Murakami depicted as a thoroughly humane and humble person, even with the fame he now has.

By David Karashima