CityReads│Haruki Murakami: A Running Novelist & Translator

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Haruki Murakami: A Running Novelist & Translator

Haruki Murakami is a running novelist and translator. Running, writing and translating are mutually beneficial for Murakami to become a life-long professional novelist.

Haruki Murakami, 2015. Shokugyō to shite no shōsetsuka (Novelist by profession),Switch library.

Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel, 2008. What I talk about when I talk about running: a memoir, Alfred A. Knopf.

Masaki Mor, 2014. Murakami Haruki the Translator, Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 36: 30-36.

The first book I read in the New Year is Haruki Murakami’s writing/running memoir, Novelist by Profession. It is the Chinese translation published in January 2017. It is written in a typical Murakami style, plain and frank, like talking with an old friend. 

The Japanese edition, Shokugyō to shite no shōsetsuka, was published in 2015. One unusual thing is about its distribution. A Tokyo bookshop operator Kinokuniya has bought 90 per cent of the book’s first print run from the publishers to compete with the online booksellers. I search for other language editions. The German edition, Von Beruf Schriftsteller (literally, "A writer by profession") came out in October 2016. I do not find the English edition, though. 

Murakami published a running memoir in 2008, What I talk about when I talk about running, which is more like running/writing autobiography. This book, Novelist by Profession, is more like writing/running autobiography. There is some overlapping between the two books, but the central theme differs. The former talks about running techniques; while the latter talks about the techniques of writing a novel. I feel interested at the parts on running, writing and translating. The three are mutually beneficial for Murakami to become a life-long professional novelist.

Writing & running

In What I talk about when I talk about running, Murakami writes, “Most of what I know about writing I've learned through running every day. These are practical, physical lessons. Writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. Basically, a writer has a quiet, inner motivation, and doesn't seek validation in the outwardly visible”.

Second, to write every day for over thirty-five years, you need to build up endurance via daily training, like you do in marathon running. When he writes a novel, Murakami sets a daily goal of ten pages regardless he feels like it or not. Murakami explains the importance of keeping the daily rhythms in writing a novel, very much like keeping the pace in running.

Furthermore, in order to have a long life as a novelist, you need to find a way to stay in shape. To write four or five hours every day is very energy-consuming, which becomes more challenging as you age. How do you acquire the energy and endurance? You have to find that energy via the physical exercise. You need to make the effort to reproduce yourself. In Murakami’s case, running was incorporated into his daily routine, like eating, sleeping, housework, and writing.

On the other hand, the maintenance and reproduction of physical strength are beneficial for thinking. Recent studies found that aerobic exercise increases the neuron reserves in the hippocampus area of the brain, responsible for learning. But if you leave them to be, the new neurons will vanish after 28 hours. Only via the mental training can you activate the new neurons and integrate them into your brain. Thus running and writing are mutually beneficial.

Writing & translating

Murakami’s translation carries significant implications in his overall activities as a professional writer. His “creative writing and translating…might rather be two sides of the same coin”.

Murakami’s works has been translated into over fifty languages. He is a translator himself, translating a large number of pieces from modern and contemporary American literature into Japanese. He also read the English translations of his own works carefully, as an objective way to evaluate his own works.

He translates partly due to his passion for American literature. Other reasons for his commitment to translation are more directly linked to his writing profession. 

Murakami is a prolific translator. The list of his translations from modern and contemporary American literature is quite extensive, including works by C. D. B. Bryan (1936–2009), Truman Capote (1924–84), Raymond Carver (1938–88), Raymond Chandler (1888–1959), F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940), Mikal Gilmore (b. 1951), Mark Helprin (b. 1947), John Irving (b. 1942), Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929), Tim O’Brien (b. 1946), Grace Paley (1922–2007), J. D. Salinger (1919–2010), Shel Silverstein (1930–99), Mark Strand (1934–2014), Paul Theroux (b. 1941), Chris Van Allsburg (b.1949), and several others to date.

He belongs to the first post-WWII generation that grew up under heavy influences from American culture. Three of the favorite novels of his teenage years were Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Chandler’s Long Goodbye, and Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, all of which he eventually translated into Japanese, despite the previous existence of widely accepted versions by other translators.

Murakami explains that his fiction-writing essentially undergoes the same process as translating, for he has consistently dealt with his native tongue like “a pseudo-foreign language” to avoid too close familiarity with it. When he finished the first draft of his first novel, he was not satisfied with it. He tried to write the first chapter in English instead. With the limited language arsenal, he learned how to express the complex idea in a simple and clear way. Then he “translated” or rewrote it into Japanese. That is how he finds his own writing style.

Murakami utilizes translation to enhance his capacity for producing novels. The title of What I talk about when I talk about running is inspired by Raymond Carver's collection of short stories entitled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

He intentionally alternates between different kinds of writing and translating. He “spent several months writing a long novel in the mornings and recovering from the fatigue by translating [Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1940)] in the afternoons”. Translation plays a vital, integral role in maintaining his prolific career as a writer of fiction.

In his life as a professional novelist, Murakami got up before 5 a.m. and went to bed before 10 p.m. He writes in the morning. Afterward, he work out or do errands that don’t take much concentration. At the end of the day, he relaxed, read, or listen to music. In this pattern, he has worked efficiently for thirty-five years. He is keenly conscious not only of the importance of his original works translated into other languages but also of the benefits that he enjoys by engaging himself in the act of translating the works of others. The pleasure he derives from it is comparable to his passion for running.

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