Murakami Interview

When The New Yorker published an excerpt from “Killing Commendatore,” I asked you about the unreal elements in your work. You said, “When I’m writing novels, reality and unreality just naturally get mixed together. It’s not as if that was my plan and I’m following it as I write, but the more I try to write about reality in a realistic way, the more the unreal world invariably emerges. For me, a novel is like a party. Anybody who wants to join in can join in, and those who wish to leave can do so whenever they want.” So, how do you invite people and things to this party? Or how do you get to a place when you’re writing where they can come uninvited?

Readers often tell me that there’s an unreal world in my work—that the protagonist goes to that world and then comes back to the real world. But I can’t always see the borderline between the unreal world and the realistic world. So, in many cases, they’re mixed up. In Japan, I think that other world is very close to our real life, and if we decide to go to the other side it’s not so difficult. I get the impression that in the Western world it isn’t so easy to go to the other side; you have to go through some trials to get to the other world. But, in Japan, if you want to go there, you go there. So, in my stories, if you go down to the bottom of a well, there’s another world. And you can’t necessarily tell the difference between this side and the other side.

The other side is usually a dark place?

Not necessarily. I think it has more to do with curiosity. If there is a door and you can open it and enter that other place, you do it. It’s just curiosity. What’s inside? What’s over there? So that’s what I do every day. When I’m writing a novel, I wake up around four in the morning and go to my desk and start working. That happens in a realistic world. I drink real coffee. But, once I start writing, I go somewhere else. I open the door, enter that place, and see what’s happening there. I don’t know—or I don’t care—if it’s a realistic world or an unrealistic one. I go deeper and deeper, as I concentrate on writing, into a kind of underground. While I’m there, I encounter strange things. But while I’m seeing them, to my eyes, they look natural. And if there is a darkness in there, that darkness comes to me, and maybe it has some message, you know? I’m trying to grasp the message. So I look around that world and I describe what I see, and then I come back. Coming back is important. If you cannot come back, it’s scary. But I’m a professional, so I can come back.

And you bring things back with you?

No, that would be scary. I leave everything where it is. When I’m not writing, I’m a very ordinary person. I respect the daily routine. I get up early in the morning. I go to bed around nine o’clock, unless the baseball game is still going. And I run or I swim. I’m an ordinary guy. So when I walk down the street and somebody says, “Excuse me, Mr. Murakami, very nice to meet you,” I feel strange, you know. I’m nothing special. Why is he happy to meet me? But I think that when I’m writing I am kind of special—or strange, at least.

- Haruki Murkami Interview, The New Yorker