The problem of tatemashi in Murakami Haruki’s work: comparing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and 1Q84

Abstract

This article investigates a problem that has been underexamined in Murakami scholarship so far, namely what I will call tatemashi (stacking), a method of novel-writing which Murakami Haruki used twice in his career, first in Nejimakidori Kuronikuru and later in 1Q84. In both cases, Murakami first published a shorter, two-volume version, but later stacked up the novel with a third volume. This article studies the various problems surrounding this writing method. I suggest that edits during the translation process of the two novels into English have made it impossible to detect why tatemashi was carried out. By studying the Japanese versions, I identify that a main reason for tatemashi to happen is the thrust of a storyline that calls for the development of a ‘smaller-scale’ story of personal self-discovery into a ‘larger-scale’ tale of commitment to an ‘other’.

Keywords:

• tatemashi
• stacking
• Murakami Haruki
• Nejimakidori Kuronikuru
• 1Q84

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

1 Translator’s note: As will be shown later, this article partly addresses the issue of editorial cuts during the translation process of Nejimakidori Kuronikuru into English. As a translation strategy, quotes from the original Japanese versions of the story ‘Nejimakidori to kayōbi no onnatachi’ and the novels Nejimakidori Kuronikuru and 1Q84 will be rendered in this article using their official English translations, unless otherwise specified. This is partly because both The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and (the English version of) 1Q84 are widely read by a global readership. But more importantly, footnote 7 later refers to a quote in one of the removed sections from Nejimakidori Kuronikuru, and hence, without an official English translation, has to be translated by myself. The unfamiliarity of that quote for those who have read the English Wind-up Bird Chronicle thus illustrates the argument later that these editorial cuts in the translation have made it difficult to understand certain plotlines and erased an opportunity to understand why Murakami decided to write a Part 3 for Nejimakidori Kuronikuru in the first place. Translations from all other Japanese sources, including Murakami’s conversation with Kawai Hayao, are done by myself.

2 He also said: ‘I will work hard not to let everyone think that “geez, we should have waited for another year, then we would not have given him the award”’ (Hayashi 2009b).

3 See the extensive coverage on translation issues surrounding 1Q84 in Anna Zielinska-Elliott and Mette Holm’s ‘Two moons over Europe: Translating Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84’ (Zielinska-Elliott and Holm 2013).

4 I have attempted to overcome such post-textual theory of literary criticism in my work, Tekusuto kara tōku hanarete (Katō 2004) and ‘“Riron” to “Jugyō” – Bungaku riron to “kanōteki kūkan potential space”’ (Katō 2016). Given that current textual criticism eulogises ‘the death of the author’ and no longer recognises the rights of the author, I draw on theories by Wolfgang Iser and Donald Winnicott and advocate a new theory that proposes the concept of ‘potential author’, which is a subjective being that emerges in between the reader and the text.

5 As a side note, the climax at the end of Part 2 where the protagonist hesitates whether to accept Kanō Creta’s invitation to leave Japan is similar to the ending of Ōe Kenzaburo’s novel Kojinteki na taiken (A Personal Matter).

6 See Zielinska-Elliott and Holm (2013), esp. pp. 7–8, for another discussion on how the translation of Nejimakidori Kuronikuru has changed the text.

7 Translator’s note: As explained previously in footnote 1, this quote is translated by the translator of this article and does not come from the official English translation, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, because it is taken from the part removed during the translation process. The fact that this translated quote is not part of the published Wind-up Bird Chronicle helps exemplify the author’s argument in this section that the editorial cuts in the English translation have made it impossible to identify the ‘turning point’ that prompted Murakami to build up the story into Part 3.

8 The Hissatsu series (also called Sure Death) is an umbrella term for a series of very popular amusement historical drama shows from the beginning of 1970s based on Ikenami Shōtarō’s historical novel Shikake’nin: Fujieda Baian.

9 Created by the playwright Kikuta Kazuo, this radio drama was a representative melodrama in postwar Japan, and continues to be adapted into films and TV dramas even until now. By pure coincidence, the name of the protagonist is also called Haruki. The 2017 animation film by Shinkai Makoto has the same title but is unrelated to this series.

10 In addition, I have argued in my other books, Katō (2011) and Katō (2015), that this confession echoes a pedigree of works dating back as early as the short story ‘Shinagawa Saru’ (2000). In a way, it even anticipates the divorce between the protagonist and his wife in the novel Kishidanchō-goroshi (Murakami, 2017), but this is beyond the discussion of this article.

11 I, for one, predicted a sequel (third volume) in my review ‘Saisei e Hatei to tenkai no yochō (2017b), but it did not come true. My prediction drew on Jacques Lacan’s tripartite theory of psychoanalysis and saw Part 1 as the Symbolic, Part 2 as the Imaginary, and therefore a potential third volume as the Real.

12 In this novel, the wife Yuzu begins seeing another man and divorces the protagonist, her husband of six years. Later, she becomes pregnant and returns to the protagonist. They remarry, and the child is born. In the final scene, the three of them are shown living together.

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Katō Norihiro

Katō Norihiro (1948–2019) was Emeritus Professor at Waseda University. He published more than fifty books, including eight on Murakami, and was one of the first critics to widely recognise Murakami’s contribution to Japanese literature. He also wrote extensively on other topics related to Japanese literature, history and contemporary affairs. While most of his writings are in Japanese, he was a columnist for the Op-Ed section of The New York Times from 2014 to 2015.