Haruki Murakami for me, a Japanese man

Haruki Murakami is an internationally popular Japanese novelist, you know. Here, I would like to say what I think of Haruki Murakami as a Japanese.

Haruki Murakami is popular in Japan as well, but he is actually unique as a Japanese novelist. His novels are not typical Japanese novels. Haruki Murakami’s work has not received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in Japan. The reason for the low evaluation is that Haruki Murakami’s novels are too heavily influenced by American literature.

When reading Haruki Murakami’s novels, people outside Japan may feel Japanese-like something, but Japanese people feel that literature is not like Japan.

In fact, Haruki Murakami is known to like novels from outside Japan. For this reason, he has also worked energetically to translate and introduce English novels into Japanese.

Haruki Murakami’s reputation in Japan is partly due to his high reputation overseas as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Because of its popularity, there are a certain number of teenagers who read Haruki Murakami’s works and are greatly influenced by them in Japan.

In Japan, novels translated by Haruki Murakami are also popular. Some Japanese don’t like Haruki Murakami’s novels, but they like Haruki Murakami’s translations. I’m one of them. I like Haruki Murakami’s early novels, but I prefer the following novels translated by him.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald “The Great Gatsby”
• J. D. Salinger “The Catcher in the Rye”

Haruki Murakami’s taste in music matches mine. I love “Pet Sounds” (The Beach Boys) and Radiohead.