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- Convenor:
-
Rebecca Suter
(the university of sydney)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Modern Literature
- Location:
- Lokaal 2.24
- Sessions:
- Friday 18 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
Investigating Murakami Haruki’s European travelogues as self-promotion; his reconstruction of Japanese settings from an outsider position; and his reception in Europe, the panel examines Murakami’s fiction as a “two-world literature” that avoids the pitfalls of both parochialism and universalism.
Long Abstract:
The idea of “world literature” has been the object of intense debate among intellectuals in recent decades. From Moretti’s advocacy of “distant reading,” the study of literary works from a perspective deliberately situated outside their context of production, to Damrosch’s focus on “great works” whose meaning remains unchanged through translation, the study of world literature has been hailed as a progressive enterprise that transcends national borders and nationalistic ideologies. Yet scholars like Apter and Mufti have critiqued this approach for being based on “one-world thinking,” the legacy of an imperial system of cultural mapping from a single aesthetic and moral point of view that ultimately coincides with that of the dominant (Anglophone and/or Euro-American) culture.
Contemporary Japanese literature is a particularly productive object of enquiry in this respect, because of the country’s ambivalent history as one of the few Asian countries successful in resisting European colonisation as well as a non-Western Imperial power. Many modern Japanese literary works can be characterised as a form of “two-world literature,” a practice of storytelling that avoids the pitfalls of both parochialism and universalism by constantly retaining a multiple perspective, never allowing the reader to rest on a “single world” vision.
The panel investigates these ideas by focusing on Japan’s most ‘global’ author, Murakami Haruki. Murakami may appear to be the epitome of Anglo-America-centric globalisation of literature, from his close relationship with his North American translators to his numerous sojourns in the U.S. Yet his travels in Europe exerted significant influence on his early novels, and his translations into European languages significantly contributed to shaping the “Murakamiverse”.
Through analyses of Murakami’s European travelogues from the 1990s as a form of self-promotion; of the novels written during that period and how they reconstruct specifically Japanese settings in the 1960s and the 1980s from a deliberate position outside of Japan; and of the translations of Murakami in Europe and their reception, the papers will examine Murakami’s fiction as a form of “two-world literature” and reflect on the implications of this reframing for our understanding of contemporary Japanese fiction.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 18 August, 2023, -Rebecca Suter (the university of sydney)
Paper short abstract:
Examining Murakami’s travelogues based on his experience in Italy and Greece, Tōi taiko (Distant Drums) and Uten enten (Rainy Skies, Blazing Skies), I read Murakami’s writing as a “two-world literature” that complicates our understanding of contemporary Japanese fiction and its global positioning.
Paper long abstract:
Murakami Haruki is arguably one of the most global authors of contemporary Japan. The novels that made him famous were written during sojourns overseas; he actively constructed his career around his image as a cosmopolitan author; he presents his experience of displacement as one of the main sources of his creativity; and his vast production also includes several travelogues. Interestingly, despite the existence of a long-standing tradition of Japanese travel writing, all the way from Matsuo Basho’s Oku no hosomichi (the Narrow Road From the Deep North, 1702) to Mori Ogai’s Doitsu nikki (German Diary, 1937), Murakami’s travelogues are overtly inspired by English-language travel writing. This is consistent with the author’s long-standing habit of looking for sources of inspiration in foreign, particularly Anglo-American, fiction.
Some critics condemn Murakami’s disregard for the Japanese tradition as a xenophile pose that resulted in lack of originality and cultural authenticity, while others value it as the basis of his unique and innovative style. Balancing between these two seemingly opposed interpretations of Murakami’s relationship with foreign literature and culture, this paper will look at how the author uses the conventions of English-language ‘cosmopolitan’ travel writing as a means of self-promotion, and shed light on the cultural politics that inform Murakami’s travelogues. Through a close reading of two of Murakami’s travelogues based on his experience in Italy and Greece, Tōi taiko (Distant Drums) and Uten enten (Rainy Skies, Blazing Skies), both published in 1990, I propose to read Murakami’s travel writing as a form of “two-world literature” that complicates our understanding of contemporary Japanese fiction and its global positioning.
Norimasa Morita (Waseda University)
Paper short abstract:
Taking up the two fictions, _Norwegian Wood_ and _Dance, Dance, Dance_, which Murakami Haruki wrote in Europe, this paper will explore their strongly Japanese nature in themes, settings, and characterisation as well as faint shadow of the foreign land where he lived.
Paper long abstract:
Murakami Haruki spent for three years from October 1986 to autumn 1989 in Europe. During these years, he completed two long novels, _Norwegian Wood_ and _Dance, Dance, Dance_, short stories to be collected in _TV People_, travelogues for various journals and, also, sketches to be rewritten as _Toi Taiko (Distant Sound of Drums)_. Writing the two long novels in out-of-season Mikonos, noisy Palermo, wintry Rome and grey London, Murakami made them, if anything, very Japanese works. For they are inextricably knotted with the Japanese period situation, the 1960s in _Norwegian Wood_ and the 1980s in _Dance, Dance, Dance_ and the writer's own life in Japan via his alter ego, 'Boku'. The major characters in _Norwegian Wood_ , which is a realistic novel according to the author, are Japanese university students who live in the great social turmoil triggered by student revolts in the 1960s, while the protagonist, Boku, in _Dance, Dance, Dance_ is, like the author himself, a 34-year-old man who spent the 1960s as a teenager and obtained all his sense of value from the decade. _Dance, Dance, Dance_ is a parable of what has been lost in the late capitalist Japan and an elegy for the bygone 1960s . Murakami admits after returning from Europe that he was lonely because though his wife, Yoko, was always with him, he had no close friends and though he spoke some of Greek and Italian, he was not proficient enough to have complicated and meaning conversation in them. As a result, he descended deeper into the world that was familiar to him rather than widened his fictional world. Did not his three years in Europe leave any mark? It is, if any, the 'shadow of foreign land' that Murakami himself called after he returned to Japan. The foreign shadow that is embedded in his 'European' novels is the admiration of simplicity found in Greek people and life as well as the envy of long-lasting tradition in Italian people and life.
Giorgio Amitrano (UniversitÀ Degli Studi di Napoli L'orientale)
Paper short abstract:
In my paper I will examine the reception of Murakami Haruki's works in Italy, both from the point of view of the reading public and of the critical response. I will highlight a type of asymmetry between the “Italian Murakami” and the original, which projects his work in a different dimension.
Paper long abstract:
Murakami is considered one of the most representative authors of World Literature, with emphasis on his capacity of being internationally appreciated. However, it should be remembered that the reception of his works takes on different connotations in different countries. Indeed, the notion of World Literature tends to focus on the homogenization effect inherent in the process of globalization rather than on the varieties of reactions literary works can produce in different cultural environments. It is precisely such a variety that needs to be investigated to rethink World Literature not in terms of its presumed universality but, on the contrary, as a multifaceted and heterogeneous phenomenon, a mosaic rather than a monolith.
In my paper I will examine the reception of Murakami's works in Italy, both from the point of view of the reading public and of the critical response. I will draw a brief picture of their editorial history, characterized by an initial failure and then by a slow but constant success, pointing out the marketing strategies that have most likely contributed to its increased popularity. I will also provide examples related to the critical judgments of his works by Italian intellectuals, who belong to the literary milieu rather than to the academic world. I will highlight the fact that the “Italian Murakami” – by which I mean the Murakami translated, read and interpreted in Italian – at the same time matches and differs from the original. Such dissimilarity creates a sense of slight unbalance, a type of asymmetry which, rather than subtracting value from the original works, projects them in a different dimension, partially "liberated" from authorial control and enriched by new, unexpected readings.