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The author
Haruki Murakami is a difficult figure to categorize. In the
West, Murakami is primarily known for his longer works of
fiction, which tackle such issues as urban malaise, American-styled
capitalism, and the memory of war in Japan. However, in his
native Japan, Murakami is still primarily known for his short
stories and, it should be noted, this is the image that Murakami
promotes of himself both in the West and in Japan. However,
there is another aspect of Murakami's literary career that
is less mentioned in the West: his position as one of the
most prominent translators of English language (mostly American)
literature into Japanese. This issue, amongst others, is one
of the primary focuses of Rebecca Suter's The Japanization
of Modernity: Murakami Haruki Between Japan and the United
States.
Suter,
a lecturer of Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney,
writes that Murakami (along with his partner in translation,
Tokyo University English professor Motoyuki Shibata), has
helped just as much, if not more, to carve out the literary
tastes of the Japanese through his Japanese translations of
English and American literature as he has through his own
fiction. In Japan, a country whose literary industry is dominated
by translations, more literature is translated into Japanese
than originally written in Japanese. Murakami acts as a filter
and conveyor of Western Literature to the Japanese, and his
translation style is often mimicked in the fiction of young
writers.
Though
Murakami is far from being only a filter of Western literature
and ideals to the Japanese, it is through his popularity in
Japan that Murakami's literature and its considerable Western
influence has spread into countries such as China, Taiwan,
and South Korea. Combine this with the influence Murakami
has had on the number of individuals declaring Japanese as
a major in America and Europe because of his writing, and
Murakami transcends the label of author/translator to become
a force between Japanese and Western cultures. Putting on
his different masks to Japan and to the West, he acts as a
filter where both Japanese and Westerners can recognize themselves
in his literature.
Another
issue that Suter tackles is the prevalence of Western cultural
artifacts and Murakami's heavy use of English loanwords in
his literature. Murakami's literature has received both criticism
and accolades for the lack of things "culturally significant"
to Japan that are prevalent in, say, the works of a Yukio
Mishima or a Yasunari Kawabata. The supporters commend him
on being "modern" and "Westernized" and his destroying the
Orientalist mystique of the East that many have. Detractors
often have the opposite feeling. They are looking for something
"Japanese" in his works but instead are finding a globalized,
postmodern cultural milieu that takes away from preconceived
concepts of Japan. Japanese detractors often critique Murakami
on similar lines, stating that his writing is little more
than popular pulp writing with as little literary value as
weekly comics, and that gives in to the Americanized capitalist
model.
Murakami
supposedly, on the other hand, likens himself more to Meiji
and Taisho era writers such as Natsume Soseki, Ryu Akutagawa,
and Toson Shimazaki who tackled the languages and literatures
of the West in order to incorporate them into their own lives
as Japan was quickly modernizing. Like a number of these Meiji/Taisho
writers, Murakami believes in the value of Western literature
and language not so much for the literature and language itself,
but for their ability to help Japanese formulate different
trains of thought and ideals separate from those handed down
as standard from the Japanese elite/government. Also, to Murakami,
aspects of Western culture have become so engrained in Japan
that it is impossible for the Japanese to extricate themselves
from them. That instead of fighting the engrained aspects
Western culture, ignoring them, or looking at them as "superior,"
they should instead be incorporated fully by the Japanese
and no longer be viewed as "Western" but "Japanese" as well.
Dr. Suter's
tome is one of a number of scholarly works that have been
released to the English speaking world concerning the works
of Haruki Murakami. While it is not as informative about Murakami's
personal background or as theory-laden as other books studying
Murakami, The Japanization of Modernity is a relatively
easy read for both scholars and fans. Plus, she primarily
focuses on Murakami's short stories, which often receive little
coverage or are outright ignored in other English language
scholarly works on Murakami. Murakami's novels tend to have
a more mainstream attraction, as well as an international
reader base in mind, so his longer works are not as experimental
or bizarre as his short stories, where Murakami's playfulness
and creative use of the Japanese language—especially
incorporating loanwords—comes to the fore. Novels
in the Meiji and Taisho eras were also mainly consumed by
a mass audience, while shorter works of fiction by literary
luminaries such as the above mentioned Soseki and Akutagawa
were given a much more experimental, modernist flavor, which
can be seen in Murakami's short fiction.
Although
it does use a lot of modernist/postmodernist rhetoric, The
Japanization of Modernity is a delightful scholarly work
written in a style that is easy to comprehend. Hopefully,
it will shed more light Murakami's work for his English speaking
readers and add yet another voice to explain why Murakami
has become such a cultural force in Japan.
(August,
2008)
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