Japanese Literature discussion

We'll be reading this book in January, but I'm opening a discussion thread now.

We'll add more resources as January approaches.

*An apology from the mod: Due to a miscommunication, I [Alison] announced the winner of our group read for December and January before the poll closed. We will still read The Memory Police in December. We normally run a "January in Japan" discussion in January; we will open threads for both The City and Its Uncertain Walls and Tokyo Ueno Station.

Just fyi,
The "Haruki Murakami Fans" discussion group is reading this along with us in Jan 2025. There are a few of us in the j-lit forum that are members of both groups. So, welcome to all.

I'm short on resources for this one, but I'm hoping other people will add what they have!

Read Japanese Literature does have a podcast episode about Haruki Murakami if you're interested: https://readjapaneseliterature.com/20....

I will add an author and translator profile later this month. I will be reading the written text and listening to the audiobook.

This was originally a short story he published in 1980. He expanded it into the 1985 novel, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Much later he returned to the original material in the short story to expand the story 40 yrs later to write The City and Its Uncertain Walls. So, I expect the stories will have a lot of similarities in part.

I also think there is a lot of reexamination of his themes in his stories in general.

Lit hub had an article on this novel:
https://lithub.com/haruki-murakamis-l...

One of my favorite series and manga, Haibane Renmei Anime Manga Volume 1 by Yoshitoshi Abe, was influenced by the original short story and, i think, the 1985 novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland. I am very interested in if I can see the influences in The City and Hard-Boiled Wonderland…

I will be looking for what might be common themes in Murakami stories (credit to Andy Murray):

Magical Realism (and the problems that it visits on his MCs),
Influences from the West,
The lonely and alienated lives Of his (male) MCs,
Weird worlds that may be built to test the MCs (maybe this is futility vs hope),
Characters going down a well (figurative or real),
Food, cooking (and food),
Mysterious women (maybe a recurring plot device),
Cats! (And other animals but mainly cats),
Embedded stories about war (and Japan…),
And, of course, _Music_.

I am about 25% through now, at part two. I really like the story and Peter Gabriel as a translator. Part may be remembered from Hard Boiled Wonderland. I think I will be reading the new translation of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland: A New Translation in the next month or two. This is supposed to be a full translation of his novel where the previous version as published in English was abridged.

And from the themes above, oh yeah, he fell down a hole, or a well.

I'm not so far in yet but the Hard Boiled Wonderland stuff caught my eye right away. I have an opinion on that but we'll see how the rest of the book goes haha.

I think I also want to try and read the new translation for End of the World sometime after this.

Updated.. completed the novel now… I am glad HM got around to reworking and finishing this story which was originally a short story product 40+ years ago. I liked it much better than Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. I do plan to read the translation of the full version of that also this year.
I will come back and add comments after I think about the story with regards to the possible themes I noted in an earlier post.

Hard Boiled Wonderland is my favorite Murakami novel so far, so I was excited to see the plot of this book. I enjoyed this one and see how the world could be expanded upon. I was trying to count how many times he said “a town surrounded by a high wall” or something similar but lost track.
I appreciate the chance to further explore what this city might be.