Haruki Murakami: Readers drawn to enigmatic appeal of Japanese author

Throngs of fans joined precocious nighttime queues extracurricular bookstores crossed Japan past week, anxious to laic their hands connected Haruki Murakami's caller caller - his archetypal successful six years.

At 1 Tokyo bookstore, which hung a two-storey LED banner counting down the clip to release, copies of The City And Its Uncertain Walls were snapped up astatine midnight.

Many readers dived consecutive successful upon getting their copy. Pictures online showed readers curled up successful all-night cafes, with cups of java by their side.

The caller novel, which the 74-year-old wrote successful isolation during the pandemic, follows the protagonist's travel into a metropolis surrounded by precocious walls. The 661-page work is divided into 3 parts, successful which the protagonist moves from his teenage years into mediate age.

But crippled is possibly the slightest important constituent successful Murakami's novels which are known for their meandering magical-realist storylines.

For galore readers, the crippled points are simply jumping-off points for explorations of loss, isolation, individuality and increasingly, societal and governmental events.

The latest publication was written during the pandemic.

"I started penning this caller successful aboriginal March 2020, erstwhile the coronavirus started raging successful Japan, and it took maine astir 3 years to finish," Murakami said successful the book's connection issued by his steadfast Shinchosha.

He hardly went retired oregon took agelong trips during those years, helium said.

"In this rather extraordinary, tense environment, I diligently wrote this piece, arsenic if a 'dreamreader' reads 'old dreams' successful a library," helium added.

It is that benignant of enigmatic enactment that sends his legion of fans astir the satellite into frenzy. In anticipation of the book's release, a bookstore successful Nagoya metropolis enactment up a capsule instrumentality dispensing sentences from his novels.

Six years isn't the longest clip betwixt books, and Murakami has been prolific implicit a four-decade career. He's produced astatine slightest 14 novels and respective short-story collections with works translated into much than 50 languages.

But the overwhelming reception to his latest publication reflects his enduring popularity, peculiarly successful his homeland.

One longtime Murakami reader, Yu, told the BBC the entreaty of his works is however helium connects the "two worlds" of dreams and reality.

"Sometimes they are 'me' and sometimes they are 'not me', and that creates a consciousness of absorption. For me, his novels are similar lukewarm and brushed mud. You get comfortably drawn and absorbed into these stories," she said.

The 36-year-old work the entirety of the caller publication successful 1 sitting connected Thursday, the time aft it was released. She attacked it with the aforesaid enthusiasm arsenic erstwhile she archetypal picked up a Murakami enactment much than 20 years ago, astatine the proposal of her superior schoolhouse teacher.

Part of the joyousness of picking up a Murakami publication is sinking into a satellite of established motifs, readers person said.

Murakami tropes are truthful good known they adjacent inspired a bingo cartoon, published successful the NY Times' Sunday Book Review successful 2014. Murakami bingo includes an "ear fetish, a "mysterious woman" oregon "faceless villain", "urban ennui", "Tokyo astatine night" and assorted supernatural spookiness and things vanishing.

"I deliberation Murakami's worlds beryllium truthful good with galore radical crossed the satellite due to the fact that helium is beyond civilization successful a way," said Gitte Marianne Hansen, a lecturer successful Japanese Studies astatine Newcastle University.

"His stories talk to the halfway of humanity successful our interior modern lives and this is what we respond to arsenic readers. The halfway feeling of loneliness and alienation is astir apt beyond culture," said Dr Hansen, who has translated Mr Murakami's abbreviated stories.

However, the writer has been progressively criticised for his portrayal of women.

Critics accidental pistillate characters successful Mr Murakami's books are often sexualised oregon defined lone successful narration to the antheral protagonists.

Mr Murakami himself said successful a 2004 interrogation with The Paris Review: "If the enactment is good... Your wounded volition beryllium healed, your imaginativeness volition beryllium invigorated... In that sense, successful my stories, women are mediums - harbingers of the coming world. That's wherefore they ever travel to my protagonist; helium doesn't spell to them."

This is simply "the antheral dependable that [Mr Murakami] privileges", says Michael Tsang, a Japanese Studies lecturer astatine Birkbeck, University of London. His dominance illustrates that Japan "needs to bash much astir sex and different number groups."

But for some, the misogyny successful Mr Murakami's works is hard to overlook, and that could beryllium 1 crushed arsenic to wherefore literature's biggest honour has eluded him for truthful galore years.

"Hello Japan's pundits, Haruki Murakami volition not get a Nobel prize unless helium gets escaped of each his misogyny... Pin your hopes connected a amended Japanese writer," 1 Twitter idiosyncratic argued.

"The sexualisation of an underage girl, arsenic good arsenic elaborate descriptions of the voluptuousness of her body, tin beryllium considered problematic per today's literate context," said Koichiro Sukegawa, a Japanese lit prof astatine Gifu Women's University.

The caller publication is simply a extremist rewrite of his novella of the aforesaid name, archetypal published successful a mag successful 1980. The writer said helium believed much could beryllium mined from the material.

Mr Murakami's penning has ever been seen to connection a "cool, Japanese civilization that is exported to the remainder of the world, said Dr Hansen.

Much of his enactment tin beryllium work against the backdrop of the Japanese economical recessions successful the 1980s and 1990s. But it doesn't preclude readers from different cultures from knowing him.

"In fact, it is singular that his enactment tin scope specified a wide readership contempt being acceptable mostly successful Japan and speaking to a precise 'Japanese' societal fabric," said Dr Tsang.

His abbreviated communicative Sleep, published successful 1993 astir a housewife who struggles to spell to furniture astatine night, was viewed arsenic a effect to Japanese household and sex norms.

He has besides written and spoken astir the atomic disasters and earthquakes that person ravaged Japan.

Mr Murakami's works person besides inspired different forms of art. The Oscar-winning movie Japanese movie Drive My Car was based connected respective of the author's abbreviated stories, including 1 of the aforesaid title.

His latest publication has flown disconnected the shelves. Shinchosha announced an archetypal people tally of 300,000 copies and had sold much than fractional by the extremity of the archetypal week. On Wednesday they announced a 2nd re-print.

Two volumes of his erstwhile caller Killing Commendatore, published successful February 2017, saw 700,000 and 600,000 orders respectively.

An English translation of Mr Murakami's newest rubric volition beryllium made disposable aboriginal this year.