Patti Smith<\/a> introduced the author with the ballad \u201cWing\u201d and its lofty refrain, \u201cAnd if there\u2019s one thing\/I could do for you\/You\u2019d be a wing\/In heaven blue.\u201d She then shared memories of first learning about him, holding up an old copy of his debut novel, \u201cHear the Wind Sing,\u201d and reading its opening sentence: \u201cThere\u2019s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there\u2019s no such thing as perfect despair.\u201d <\/p>\nSmith said, \u201cI was hooked, immediately.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Town Hall \u201cMixtape\u201d was a sold-out, bilingual evening of music, readings and reflections, framed by Murakami\u2019s opening and closing remarks and presided over by the prize-winning jazz pianist Jason Moran, translator-publisher Motoyuki Shibata and author-scholar Roland Nozomu Kelts. \u201cMurakami Mixtape\u201d was entertainment for the casual fan \u2014 author tributes don\u2019t often include a makeshift bar on stage \u2014 and educational even for the specialist, featuring Murakami works little known to English-language readers.<\/p>\n
Kelts (reading in English) and Shibata (reading in Japanese) selected fiction and nonfiction passages for Moran and his accompanists to weave through and around. They read from the surreal \u201cHard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World\u201d and the memoir \u201cWhat I Talk About When I Talk About Running.\u201d But they also highlighted such rarities as the short story \u201cThe 1963\/1982 Girl from Ipanema,\u201d in which the narrator shares a drink with the bossa nova muse, and an old essay about New York before Murakami had ever seen it.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes New York City really exist?\u201d Murakami wondered. \u201cI don\u2019t believe, one hundred percent, the existence of the city. Ninety-nine percent, I would say. In other words, if someone came up to me and said, \u2018You know, there\u2019s actually no such thing as New York City,\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t be that surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kelts remembered asking Murakami about some of his favorite international stops, and how his choices, including Boston and Stockholm, were home to used jazz stores worthy of repeated visits. Murakami\u2019s affair with jazz began in his teens, in 1963, when Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were on tour in Japan. It was rekindled at The Town Hall when Moran brought out the last surviving member of that band, 88-year-old bassist Reggie Workman, who joined the other musicians for a jam on \u201cUgetsu\u201d (the title track of a live Blakey album) and capped it with a searching solo.<\/p>\n
Murakami appeared briefly at the end to read a portion in Japanese from \u201cKafka on the Shore,\u201d and explained that he might have been a musician instead of a writer, but he couldn\u2019t bear to rehearse every day. At the start of the evening, Murakami shared some impressions of New York once he did arrive, in 1991. His comments were read in English by Japan Society President & CEO Joshua Walker.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then was the height of Japan bashing,\u201d Murakami said. \u201cYou could find events, where, for a dollar, they hand you a hammer and let you take a whack at a Japanese car.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Dec. 7, 1991, the 50th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Murakami was advised to stay at home \u201cjust in case there was any trouble.\u201d The author began to feel more welcome after Japan\u2019s economy fell into a decades-long slump, the threat to the U.S. apparently diminished. But he continued to feel isolated by his native country\u2019s \u201ccultural\u201d deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou often hear that Japan has no real face, no identity. I almost never came across contemporary Japanese fiction in American bookstores. As a Japanese writer, I couldn\u2019t help but feel a real sense of crisis,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now I see young Japanese writers venturing abroad, earning recognition, their books being picked up by readers as a matter of course, in music, film, anime and more. The advances have been remarkable. Economically, people talk about Japan\u2019s three last decades, but culturally, I think it\u2019s fair to say that Japan\u2019s face has finally emerged.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Haruki Murakami was in town last week to hear his words set to music…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":446555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-446554","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115718215808125599","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}