The world knows Haruki Murakami as the surrealist master of contemporary fiction, the man who populated our imaginations with talking cats and subterranean labyrinths. However, in an exclusive look into his creative process, the author reveals that his prolific career is built upon a foundation of “other people’s shoes,” the art of translation.
Speaking from the Waseda International House of Literature, Murakami likened his dual life as a novelist and a translator to that of a sporting phenomenon. “I’m like Shohei Ohtani,” he remarked, referencing the baseball icon. “I’m a pitcher and a batter at once.”
Murakami’s journey into the English language didn’t begin in a classroom, where he admits his grades were merely “mediocre,” but on the docks of Kobe. As a young man, he would purchase second-hand paperbacks from American sailors. These mysteries and sci-fi novels became his true textbooks.
Even as he managed a jazz club and began his ascent in the literary world, translation remained a constant “hobby” that eventually became an essential counterweight to his own storytelling.
While writing a novel requires an “enormous energy” and a robust ego, Murakami finds a unique peace in translating the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truman Capote.
“When I do a translation, I don’t need any ego,” Murakami explained. “I just put my feet in other people’s shoes. It can be like solving a mathematical problem, but I enjoy taking that time.”
This “close reading” has allowed him to deconstruct the styles of the greats, line by line, helping him to refine his own world-renowned voice.
Interestingly, Murakami is a pragmatist regarding the shelf-life of translated works. Despite the success of his 2003 translation of The Catcher in the Rye, he acknowledges that language is a living, breathing thing that eventually outgrows its clothes.
“Styles change,” he noted. “As translations get older, younger people might have difficulty reading in that old style. My translation will get old, too, and someone will need to do a new one.”
For Murakami, the “goodness” of a translation isn’t measured by rigid technical perfection, but by the pleasure of the reader. If a book is easy to read and enjoyable, it has succeeded—a philosophy he applies even when reviewing the English versions of his own surrealist epics.
