The U.K. Calling
Becoming a “New Yorker Author”
The Wind-Up Bird and The New Yorker’s Women
3. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The Murakamis Go to Princeton
Which Book Second?
Side by Side
Imaginary Beings
For That Was His Name
The Pink Girl Vanishes
Alternate Worlds
A Sophomoric Funk
4. The Elephant Vanishes and Dance Dance Dance
The Making of a “Meticulous” Translator
Rubin Discovers Murakami
“Lively” Versus “Faithful”
Fiction Over There
In Search of a New Publisher
Murakami Meets Mehta
In Search of an Agent
Joining the “Carver Gang”
Murakami Meets Fisketjon
“Lite” Versus “Literary”
A Selection of Selections
Chip Kidd, Optic Translator
The “Winter Years”
Birnbaum and Luke’s Last Dance
The Beginnings of a Backlist
5. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Becoming a “New Yorker Author” 2
A Changing of the Guard
The Long Goodbye
The Windup to the Publication of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
A “Salable” Book
A Most Elegant Object
Great Expectations
To the U.K. and Beyond
Acknowledgments
Notes
Image Permissions
Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami
A writer friend once said to me that if non-Japanese readers know anything about Japan, they usually know just two things: manga and Murakami. But what—or who—is it that these non-Japanese readers of Murakami know? While Murakami’s books have now been published in more than fifty languages and have sold millions of copies globally, it is easy to forget that the works that a great many of his readers—devotees, fans, critics, and detractors alike—have come to know are also creations of his translators, editors, and publishers around the world. This book explores the Murakami phenomenon from a very particular angle, traveling back in time to tell the stories of the colorful cast of characters who first contributed to publishing Murakami’s work in English, which in turn laid the foundation for the author’s subsequent global reach.
In the early stages of my research I had a pretty good sense of what I wanted to say. The more people I got to talk to and the more documents I managed to excavate, however, the more convinced I became that any point I was hoping to make might be best communicated through the voices of the many people who played key roles in the making of the author we know as Haruki Murakami. So this book—which is an adaptation of a book first published in Japanese in 2018—has come to be largely about their efforts and recollections. It seems somehow fitting that I am able to share this tale about translation with readers of English through a process of translation and adaptation.
DAVID KARASHIMA
March 24, 2020
Pinball, 1973 and Hear the Wind Sing
The first three novels I read by Murakami . . . were all translated by Alfred Birnbaum. When I finished the books, I was mildly curious to know more about Murakami; I was desperate to know more about Birnbaum.
—WENDY LESSER, Why I Read1
The Making of a “Bohemian” Translator
Alfred Birnbaum lives in a narrow two-story house near Inokashira Park in west Tokyo with his wife, Thi, and their two cats, Koko and Chacha. The structure had been an abandoned boardinghouse when he purchased it around ten years ago; he has since transformed it into a unique, charming, self-designed home. The living room, which is on the second floor, rises to an open-beam ceiling. A wood-burning fireplace has been situated in a corner overlooking train tracks that connect two popular hubs of the city, Kichijōji and Shibuya. When a train stops at the crossing, Birnbaum walks over to the window and waves at the people in the train. Nobody glances in his direction.
There are fewer books lining the bookshelf than you might expect in the house of a literary translator. Birnbaum explains that while he is almost never away from an open book, he has been on the move for most of his life, so once he’s done with a book he leaves it behind or gives it away. Anyway, this house does not have the kind of space that can afford walls of books. This is Tokyo, after all. The ones that have managed to stay on his shelf include The Book of Dave and Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe, by Will Self (“An excellent writer, great sense of humor”); Zadie Smith’s NW (“Can’t remember if I read that”); Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge (“A gift”); and a range of novels in Spanish, including those by Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges (“Those I read many times”).
He seems to have no books by Haruki Murakami. When I point this out, Birnbaum shrugs. “They still send them to me . . . don’t think they sent me the latest yet . . . but the others should be somewhere.”2
Packed into the shelves next to the books are artworks he has created on a specialty printer at Kobe Design University, where he briefly served as a visiting professor. There are long handscroll prints collaged from photographs. On the walls are masks Birnbaum has collected from his travels throughout Mexico and Asia.
Birnbaum met his wife in 1990 when he first visited Yangon, in Myanmar. They married in 1998 in a ceremony in Yangon attended by friends from around the world; Murakami was one of the guests. For the next several years, the couple moved with the seasons, spending their winters in Myanmar, where the hot air suited Birnbaum; summers in Seattle, when the rains ceased; and the spring and fall in Japan. But when the Burmese government, in a moment of bureaucratic confusion, blacklisted him and refused to renew his visa, he found himself suddenly unable to go “home.” He was eventually allowed reentry to the country, and he now visits regularly, though not as often as before.
When Birnbaum decided to buy a place in Tokyo, he could not find a single bank willing to give a foreigner and freelance translator a loan, so he began looking for a place he could purchase in cash. He put together enough money to buy this property, standing on a small plot of land by the train tracks, for which no