跳舞猫日録

Life goes on brah!

2022/10/02 English

I thought why I have been attracted to Haruki Murakami. One of the reasons why is that Haruki has broadened my world of reading or listening. After I had learned about Haruki's novels, I tried to read various writers' works. . I read some of John Irving's and Raymond Carver's books because I had learned Haruki had translated them into Japanese. I also tried to listen to the Beatles, Jazz, and a kind of sophisticated fusion. Accidentally, I had learned Motoyuki Shibata as a friend of Haruki, and I read Paul Auster and Stephen Millhauser that Shibata had translated.

I can add the reason why I adored Haruki more. Because he lived in America, and there he wrote various novels. That kind of attitude that separated from the Japanese narrow guild of literature, and acted globally was simply cool for me. I had lived in the countryside in Japan, and therefore I felt some hardships so adored his cool maverick style. I thought I had to learn English more. By the way, I had such a childlike adoring for Motoharu Sano and Flipper's Guitar, both Japanese musicians. A good old memory. Now we have the internet so living in the countryside might be easier than in those days.

Ah, I felt really bored in the life of the countryside, so I adored the city life (especially Tokyo)... At that period, we had to endure living in the harder gap between the city and the countryside than now. So, you might think this must be a joke, but I honestly tried to get the information about the city. I listened to various radio programs and bought expensive magazines... and got into Flipper's Guitar and Pizzicato Five. Now we have a subscription system and can listen to so much music(but we should care about the harm of that kind of subscription system), and also can get various information easily. We also can access and communicate with each other. Now is the time we can live with lesser stress even if we live in the countryside. The time changed...

Now I had time to read Haruki Murakami's "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" seriously with Donald Fagen's "Kamakiriad". This novel contains a very cruel story, but the tenderness and seriousness of the main character embraced me well. As entertainment, it becomes a well-made story. And we also can find more profound messages in this novel I guess. But I couldn't say what was that... By the way, I noticed that this novel's events are happening at the current time, in other words, the beginning of October. Synchronicity? No, just a banal thing. But this coincidence also embraced me a lot I thought, and was glad to read this novel.