The Productivity of a Space In-between: Murakami Haruki as a Translator

ABSTRACT

In this article I aim to contribute to the discussion of Murakami Haruki’s significant role as a cultural mediator by examining his role as a translator with a focus on his attempts to explore cross-cultural effects. The discussion includes Murakami’s use of translation to experiment with language and to create his own writing style, his attitude towards his own translators, and the impact of his translation activity on his fiction writing.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Rebecca Suter for her advice on an early version of this paper. I appreciate the kind offer of Asian Studies Institute of Tasmania University to access their library resources and Katsuhiko Suganuma’s assistance in arranging contact with the Institute. I would also like to thank my two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback and comments, and David Kelly for his meticulous editing.

Notes

¹ For example, Murakami contributed an introductory essay to Jay Rubin’s Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories.

² Suter, The Japanization of Modernity, 26, 86.

³ Murakami and Shibata, Murakami Haruki haiburiddo, 5.

⁴ Sato, ‘Self-Back-Translation’, 15.

⁵ Wakabayashi, ‘Translational Japanese’, 3.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid., and Nakamura, Nihon no kindai shōsetsu.

⁸ Numano, ‘Haruki vs. Karamazov’, 190, original emphasis. Numano points to contrary trends in translations into English of The Tale of Genji and The Brothers Karamazov in support of his contention.

⁹ Murakami, ‘Haruki Murakami’, unpaged.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Cockerill, Style and Narrative in Translations, 9; Nakamura, Nihon no kindai shōsetsu, 51.

¹² Karatani, Kindaibungaku, 47–48.

¹³ Sato, ‘Self-Back-Translation’, 14.

¹⁴ Miller, ‘Author Interviews’; Murakami, ‘Hachigatsu no an’; Gregory et al., ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’; Wray, ‘Haruki Murakami’.

¹⁵ Murakami, ‘Kigō to shite no Amerika’, 249–50. Translations in this article are mine unless otherwise noted.

¹⁶ Murakami, ‘Boku ga hon’yaku o hajimeru basho’, 25.

¹⁷ Shibata, et al., Sekai wa Murakami Haruki o dō yomuka, 251.

¹⁸ Devereaux, ‘PW Interviews Murakami Haruki’, unpaged.

¹⁹ Murakami, ‘Boku ga hon’yaku o hajimeru basho’, 24.

²⁰ Besides his fiction, Murakami’s idea of the ‘power of narrative’ constitutes an essential part of his discussion in Andāguraundo about Aum Shinrikyō, the cult that was involved in the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack

²¹ Bassnett, Translation Studies, 5, 6.

²² Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 41.

²³ Ibid, 20.

²⁴ For example, the aforementioned symposium invited Murakami’s translators into Chinese, French, English, Korean, and Russian to participate along with Japanese literary critics. See Shibata et al., Sekai wa Murakami Haruki o dō yomuka.

²⁵ Zielinska-Elliott, ‘Special Section’.

²⁶ Examples can be found in Kafka on the Shore (2002), where the illiterate character Nakata’s speech often contains katakana words, implying his failure to understand their meaning; and in 1Q84 (2009) the lack of clarity in Fukaeri’s speech is conveyed through her random use of hiragana, katakana, and kanji.

²⁷ For example, in Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), one of the narrators of the parallel stories addresses himself with the first-person male pronoun boku and the other with a more formal first-person watashi. While the readers eventually find out that the two narrators represent voices of the same character, one in reality and the other in his subconscious mind, their use of different pronouns easily leads readers to think they are separate characters.

²⁸ Rubin, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, 356, original emphasis.

²⁹ Sehgal, ‘Six Questions for Jay Rubin’, unpaged.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Zielinska-Elliott and Holm, ‘Two Moons Over Europe’, 13; note especially samples cited in Polish, Swedish, Russian, French and German.

³² Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 22; see also Satō, ‘Nihongo hon’yaku’, 194–96.

³³ Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility, 42.

³⁴ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa, 19.

³⁵ Ibid., 29.

³⁶ Gabriel et al., ‘Translating Murakami’, unpaged.

³⁷ Engetsu, ‘Murakami Haruki no hon’yakuchō’, 608–09.

³⁸ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa, 20.

³⁹ Carver, Carver’s Dozen, 347.

⁴⁰ Hayashi, ‘Murakami Haruki bungaku’, 38.

⁴¹ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa, 82–83. Murakami’s translator into English, Philip Gabriel, shares an episode about translating Sputnik Sweetheart. When he tried to simply replace ‘monburan’ a popular chestnut cake in Japan, with the original French word ‘Mont Blanc’, Murakami suggested that it is translated as a ‘cake’ because of his worry that English-speaking readers might mistake the Japanised European cake for a fountain pen. Gabriel was also advised by Murakami to translate ‘Royal Host’, a popular restaurant chain in Japan, with ‘Denny’s’ as an equivalent that is more familiar to American readers. Gabriel et al., ‘Translating Murakami’, unpaged.

⁴² Murakami, ‘Boku ga hon’yaku o hajimeru basho’, 28.

⁴³ For example, in the advertising for Murakami’s translation of The Great Gatsby, the publisher stresses Murakami’s love for the novel, saying that ‘We would like to present to you the novel that Murakami Haruki read and cherished the most in his life’ (‘Murakami Haruki hon’yaku laiburarī’). Similarly, when Asahi.com (29 November 2006) featured Murakami’s translation of The Great Gatsby, the article title clearly gave prominence to the name of the translator: ‘Murakami Haruki san “Gurēto Gyattsubī” o shin’yaku (Mr Haruki Murakami releases a new translation of The Great Gatsby).

⁴⁴ Satō, ‘Shin’yaku o meguru’, 13.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 18.

⁴⁶ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa 2, 23–24.

⁴⁷ Fujimoto, ‘Bungei hon’yaku no shinjidai’, 316.

⁴⁸ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa 2, 23.

⁴⁹ Koshikawa et al., ‘Murakami Haruki yaku o yomu’, 296.

⁵⁰ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa 2, 26, 68; Yukawa and Koyama, ‘Murakami Haruki’, 22–23.

⁵¹ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa 2, 26, 46.

⁵² Ibid., 116.

⁵³ Ibid., 46.

⁵⁴ Petersen, ‘Nihongo hanasemasuka?’, Shōsetsu shinchō July 2003, cited in Tsubouchi, Amerika, 87, original emphasis.

⁵⁵ Tsubouchi, Amerika, 93.

⁵⁶ Murakami and Shibata, Hon’yaku yawa 2, 49.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 27.

⁵⁸ Koshikawa, et al., ‘Murakami Haruki yaku o yomu’, 292–93.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 296–297.

⁶⁰ Satō refers to other critics who similarly disapprove of the high visibility of Murakami’s style and interpretation in his translation of The Catcher in the Rye; Satō, ‘Shin’yaku o meguru’, 12–14.