Haruki Murakami at MIT, October 6, 2005

Last night, Haruki Murakami — author of numerous novels including Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and most recently Kafka on the Shore — made a rare public appearance in Cambridge. This event was presented by the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, who will also bring poet Anselm Berrigan; on Thursday, October 20.
When I arrived to the lecture hall around 6:15 for the 7:00 reading, I secured one of the last seats in the room. When the seats filled up, the diverse crowd — many of who had traveled from outside Massachusetts for the rare chance to see the author who they read either in Japanese or in one of a number of translations, — spilled on to the floor, out of the room and out of the building onto Mass Ave.
As 7:00 approached, MIT police officers entered the hall — which lacked air-conditioning due to a broken cold-water pipe — and ordered that everyone leave who didn’t have a seat. “Boos” flooded the room which slowly emptied. The process of clearing the fire walkways overlapped with the beginning of the lecture.
Haruki Murakami apologized for his appearance — he wore a “stupid t-shirt” because he didn’t know that the air-conditioning system would be broken — and then added “We should have used Fenway Park.”
He proceeded to tell an anecdotal story centered on a train ride in Tokyo: He had overheard three younger people — a “very beautiful girl,” an “okay” girl and a boy — in a heated discussion on the crowded train. He could not immediately tell what they were talking about, and he didn’t care, so he read his book. As the conversation became more intense, Murakami realized that they were talking about him and his work. One of them had read all of his books and really liked his work (“the beautiful one, of course,” he said), the boy had read some of his work and hated it (“I don’t know why,” Murakami said. “He must have had some sort of mental disorder.”) and the other girl was indifferent — she hadn’t read any of his work.
Murakami got off the train as soon as he could, even though it was not his stop. He said that he realized something after the train exited: “Some people will like me, some people will hate me, and others won’t care at all.”
He read the beginning of “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” from After the Quake, first in Japanese, then in English. Murakami explained that the music of the words is different between the two languages and that music is a very important part of his writing. The rest of the story was read aloud by a MIT faculty member.
The floor was opened up for questions after the reading. When asked about the frequent appearance of spaghetti in his work, Murakami said that he liked the food.
“Writing fiction is a tough job and spaghetti helps me.”
He was asked how the English translations held up to his original visions and said that the two versions are completely different experiences. He said he doesn’t like to read his own work in Japanese, but he will read it in English.
“When my book is translated into English, I read it and I enjoy the story very much,” he said.
He was also asked about his references to literature and art, and how they appear in the different worlds within his work. His reply was that when he writes — usually between 4 and 9am — he is transported to a different place, like the underground places in his work.
When he is down there, what is there is there — that is the place where he is digging for his work.
“Writing is like going into a cave,” Murakami Said.

-TN