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Growing up, the literature I was exposed to was limited to what was available in the library. Young-adult novels and comic books from DC and Marvel were my staples, and any Eastern literature I read was adapted into forms beyond the pure written word (my exposure to Romance of the Three Kingdoms was a graphic novel adaptation published by AsiaPac Books). I would hear of various celebrated works and authors, from Edgar Allan Poe and J. R. R. Tolkien to Jin Yong, but it was Haruki Murakami of all people who would be my first foray into true-blue adult (in the non-erotic sense) literature. Having completed a number of his works, allow me to dissect how I feel about them. MEN WITHOUT WOMEN My first encounter with Murakami, I found a copy amidst the shelves of my local library sometime in early 2019, shortly after my last semester of polytechnic ended. Despite never having read adult literature till that point, I felt compelled to borrow it. Assuming that Murakami had only written full-length novels, I was surprised to discover that this was a short story collection. Then-19-year-old me found it thought-provoking, and aspired to achieve Murakami’s style of writing from a first-person point-of-view, having come from young-adult literature where the narrator is often an omniscient third person. P.S. Of these stories, Drive My Car was turned into a multi-award-winning live-action movie. COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE About a year later, I was in the early days of vocation training during National Service, learning to drive vehicles like the MAN 5-Tonner. I was with a fellow trainee walking around the library at Northpoint City while waiting to meet up with our section to celebrate another trainee’s birthday. I came across this particular Murakami novel, and something about the title struck a chord. I later understood why I had such a feeling. The titular protagonist Tsukuru experiences an event involving his childhood friends that causes much grief, which I similarly experienced in my own life (albeit not to such an extreme degree), and through his journey of seeking closure, I came to make some peace with my own past. In terms of Murakami’s writing, this is where I came to appreciate his skill at evoking powerful, cathartic emotions with simple words. NORWEGIAN WOOD If I could not see Murakami’s appeal by the end of Colourless, I certainly felt it with one of his most popular novels. By this time during my NS, I was in the 36th Battalion, Singapore Combat Engineers (the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit) as a full-fledged pioneer. Part of a pioneer’s duties involve sitting in the operations room, which acts as a command centre since the unit actively performs peacetime operations, and managing the keys to the unit’s vehicles. This occurred once or twice a month, when a platoon was not on duty. As rooms like that were sensitive areas (designated as “red zones”), camera phones were not allowed, so books became a viable form of entertainment. In this ops room at least, there was a mini-library - an assortment of books brought in by a regular officer. Of these, Norwegian Wood was my first pick. It turned out to be such an immersive read that I finished it in a day, unlike many of the other books that took me a few duty rotations to complete (or give up if I couldn’t get into them). What literary prowess Murakami had demonstrated in the books I’d read before was on overdrive in lines like these: Of course life frightens me sometimes. I don't happen to take that as the premise for everything else though. I'm going to give it hundred percent and go as far as I can. I'll take what I want and leave what I don't want. That's how I intend to live my life, and if things go bad, I'll stop and reconsider at that point. If you think about it, an unfair society is a society that makes it possible for you to exploit your abilities to the limit. That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have for happiness where you find it, and not worry too much about other people. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a lifetime, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives. Don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up, you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realise it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time. It’s no wonder Norwegian Wood blew up among Japanese youth, who must have related to the depictions of the student protests in the novel's late-1960s setting, turning Murakami into such a celebrity that he decided to leave Japan for a time to avoid the attention. KILLING COMMENDATORE Once I was done with Norwegian Wood, I had a few choices from the mini-library. There was Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant (which I barely remember now) and Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X (which left a rather good impression with the twist). I no longer recall the order which I read during my time in 36 SCE, but I certainly remember being disappointed by Murakami’s writing for once. The copy I read was the large print edition, which when printed into physical form, was a 704-page chunk with a hardback cover. Already discouraging, the story itself turned out to be a slow-burning slog of a mystery that unfortunately left me without closure. While that is a staple of Murakami’s more surrealistic works and I shouldn’t be projecting my wishes onto the creator’s intent, I couldn’t help but feel confused at what I had read. A WILD SHEEP CHASE During the Christmas period spent in camp, my platoon organised a Secret Santa of sorts, where we could put up a wishlist, and the assigned gifter would buy us something from that list (with budget restrictions of course). I received A Wild Sheep Chase from a medic who had joined the platoon just over a month before, and I expressed my surprise given that I’d only stated my wishlist in vague terms (I wrote “A book”, “A Gundam model kit or anime figure”, and I no longer recall the last thing), so it was serendipitous to see another Murakami book in my hands, but this time I had my very own copy. Well, let’s just say it was a mistake on my part to read it without context, given that it is the second book in Murakami’s so-called Trilogy of the Rat. I was thus confused at what was going on as though I had gone on a wild sheep chase of my own, though I don’t think it’s the reason I have not read a Murakami novel since. A RETROSPECTIVE IN THE WORKS In the end, I’m not sure what it is that’s deterred me from reading more of Murakami’s work. Is it fear that I might be left confused again by his more surrealist novels (many people describe his work as dream-like)? Or his tendency to write women in ways that can manifest as an uncomfortable, even disturbing, pattern? Nevertheless, I am interested in visiting the Haruki Murakami Library on the Waseda University grounds, as well as reading the likes of South of the Border, West of the Sun, Hear the Wind Sing and Kafka on the Shore. When I have time perhaps haha… *nervous glance at my ever-growing backlog of media (movies, TV shows, games, manga…)* ~ Wei Feng Images: Cover: Haruki Murakami to publish first new novel in six years | The Straits Times Men Without Women: Penguin Books Australia Colorless: Penguin Books Australia Norwegian Wood: Amazon.sg: Books Killing Commendatore: Amazon.ca: Books A Wild Sheep Chase: Rakuten Kobo Estados Unidos Haruki Murakami Library: Tokyo Cheapo