The Haruki Murakami 村上 春樹 Reading Challenge

[Akashelia]

I got inspired by the conversations we have been having around the forum recently about reading Murakami and by @NicoleIsEnough’s threads, so after the The Honya Taishou 本屋大賞 Reading Challenge, the Akutagawa Prize Reading Challenge and the Naoki Prize Reading Challenge, I think it is time for a Haruki Murakami 村上 春樹 Reading Challenge

This is not the first Murakami thread, but Haruki Murakami book lovers thread is about to be closed at the time of writing this post, 村上の本ファンのスレッド AKA The Murakami Books Thread is already closed.
So let’s see if this one is more successful and can be used as an Appreciation Thread / Recommandation Thread / Organizing a Book Club Thread

Some of the books have been read here on the forums, here is a list of links to them (not including them in the polls, as the list might grow and it is not possible to edit polls after they have been posted):

• アンダーグラウンド with the ABC
• 海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore with the ABC
• 1Q84

Here are polls for you to mark if you have read his works in Japanese. I also included the same polls for the translated versions at the end of the post so feel free to mark those too

Which of these books have you read so far? (Japanese)

Novels:

Novels

• 風の歌を聴け
• 1973年のピンボール
• 羊をめぐる冒険
• 世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド
• ノルウェイの森
• ダンス・ダンス・ダンス
• 国境の南、太陽の西
• ねじまき鳥クロニクル
• スプートニクの恋人
• 海辺のカフカ
• アフターダーク
• 1Q84
• 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年
• 騎士団長殺し
• 街とその不確かな壁

Short stories:

Part 1

Short stories part 1

• 中国行きのスロウ・ボート
• 貧乏な叔母さんの話
• ニューヨーク炭鉱の悲劇
• スパゲティーの年に
• 四月のある晴れた朝に100パーセントの女の子に出会うことについて
• かいつぶり
• カンガルー日和
• カンガルー通信
• 午後の最後の芝生
• 鏡
• とんがり焼の盛衰
• 螢
• 納屋を焼く
• 1963/1982年のイパネマ娘
• 蟹 (within 野球場)
• 嘔吐1979
• ハンティング・ナイフ
• 踊る小人
• レーダーホーゼン
• パン屋再襲撃

Part 2

Short stories part 2

• 象の消滅
• ファミリー・アフェア
• ローマ帝国の崩壊・一八八一年のインディアン蜂起・ヒットラーのポーランド侵入・そして強風世界
• ねじまき鳥と火曜日の女たち
• 眠り
• TVピープル
• 飛行機―あるいは彼はいかにして詩を読むようにひとりごとを言ったか
• 我らの時代のフォークロア―高度資本主義前史
• トニー滝谷
• 沈黙
• 窓
• 緑色の獣
• 氷男
• 人喰い猫
• めくらやなぎと、眠る女
• 七番目の男
• UFOが釧路に降りる
• アイロンのある風景
• 神の子どもたちはみな踊る
• タイランド

Part 3

Short stories part 3

• かえるくん、東京を救う
• 蜂蜜パイ
• バースデイ・ガール
• 偶然の旅人
• ハナレイ・ベイ
• どこであれそれが見つかりそうな場所で
• 日々移動する腎臓のかたちをした石
• 恋するザムザ
• ドライブ・マイ・カー
• イエスタデイ
• シェエラザード
• 木野
• クリーム
• チャーリー・パーカー・プレイズ・ボサノヴァ
• 石のまくらに
• ウィズ・ザ・ビートルズ
• ヤクルト・スワローズ詩集
• 謝肉祭
• 品川猿の告白
• 一人称単数

Essays and non fiction:

Essays and non fiction

• ウォーク・ドント・ラン: 村上龍 vs 村上春樹
• 雨天炎天
• ポ－トレイト・イン・ジャズ
• アンダーグラウンド
• 約束された場所で―underground 2
• ポ－トレイト・イン・ジャズ 2
• 走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること
• 意味がなければスイングはない
• 小澤征爾さんと、音楽について話をする
• 村上春樹、河合隼雄に会いにいく
• ラオスにいったい何があるというんですか?
• 猫を棄てるー父親について語るとき
• 僕の愛したTシャツたち
• 職業としての小説家

Polls for translated versions (English titles)

Which of these books have you read so far? (Translated versions)

Novels:

Novels (Translated versions)

• Hear the Wind Sing
• Pinball, 1973
• A Wild Sheep Chase
• Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
• Norwegian Wood
• Dance Dance Dance
• South of the Border, West of the Sun
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• Sputnik Sweetheart
• Kafka on the Shore
• After Dark
• 1Q84
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
• Killing Commendatore
• The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Short stories:

Part 1:

Short stories part 1 (Translated versions)

• A Slow Boat to China
• A ‘Poor Aunt’ Story
• New York Mining Disaster
• The Year of Spaghetti
• On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning
• Dabchick
• A Perfect Day for Kangaroos
• The Kangaroo Communiqué
• The Last Lawn of the Afternoon
• The Mirror
• The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes
• Firefly
• Barn Burning
• The 1963/1982 Girl from Ipanema
• Crabs
• Nausea 1979
• Hunting Knife
• The Dancing Dwarf
• Lederhosen
• The Second Bakery Attack

Part 2:

Short stories part 2 (Translated versions)

• The Elephant Vanishes
• Family Affair
• The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds
• The Wind-up Bird And Tuesday’s Women
• Sleep
• TV People
• Aeroplane: Or, How He Talked to Himself as if Reciting Poetry
• A Folklore for My Generation: A Prehistory of Late-Stage Capitalism
• Tony Takitani
• The Silence
• A Window
• The Little Green Monster
• The Ice Man
• Man-Eating Cats
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
• The Seventh Man
• UFO in Kushiro
• Landscape with Flatiron
• All God’s Children Can Dance
• Thailand

Part 3:

Short stories part 3 (Translated versions)

• Super-Frog Saves Tokyo
• Honey Pie
• Birthday Girl
• Chance Traveller
• Hanalei Bay
• Where I’m Likely to Find It
• The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day
• Samsa in love
• Drive My Car
• Yesterday
• Scheherazade
• Kino
• Cream
• Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova
• On a Stone Pillow
• With the Beatles
• The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection
• Carnaval
• Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey
• First Person Singular

Essays and non fiction:

Essays and non fiction (Translated versions)

• Walk, Don’t Run
• Rain, Burning Sun (Come Rain or Come Shine)
• Portrait in Jazz
• Underground
• Underground 2
• Portrait in Jazz 2
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
• It Ain’t Got that Swing (If It Don’t Mean a Thing)
• Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa
• Haruki Murakami Goes to Meet Hayao Kawai
• What Is There To Do In Laos?
• Abandoning a Cat: Memories of my Father
• Murakami T: the T-Shirts I Love
• Novelist as a Vocation

[Akashelia]

Tagging @hotdogsuplex @raindrops @Jintor as you were in the recent Murakami conversations, and @macalys because I know you are a Murakami fan

[pm215]

I’ve also read 翻訳夜話 | L40 which is a book-length interview/dialogue between Murakami and somebody else about the art of translation.

[NicoleIsEnough]

Have you synced your list with the list of books on Natively? It seems there are a few missing in your polls…?
https://learnnatively.com/search/jpn/books/?q=村上%20春樹

[Akashelia]

Didn’t check Natively, I took the list from Wikipedia. But I chose to write each short story by itself instead of writing the Collection of Stories it was included in. Could it be that? Do you have a specific book in mind that’s missing? Otherwise I’ll try to cross check the lists when I have a bit more time.

[raindrops]

Thank you @Akashelia for making the thread!

I’ve only ever read Murakami in English, but I’ve loved everything I have read so far :> I’d totally be down for reading something shorter of his in Japanese. If anyone has read one of his short stories and wants to (spoiler-free) recommend it, I’d be grateful <3

When I asked my coworker who loves Murakami his fav shorter works he suggested:

• ホタル (He said he thinks maybe Murakami wrote this first and Norwegian Wood as a longer version !)
  → link
  → whole collection: 158 pages but Hotaru is just the first one

• 沈黙 (he read this recently and enjoyed it!)
  → link
  → 35 pages

But I have a feeling those stories will still be longer than I could manage! *EDIT - I found them online (included their links above) and apparently they’re shorter than I thought they’d be which is cool!

[NicoleIsEnough]

@raindrops

If anyone has read one of his short stories and wants to (spoiler-free) recommend it, I’d be grateful <3

I thought the first story from 神の子どもたちはみな踊る | L31 was really accessible reading-level-wise, and also very funny. Thought about it a couple of times during my [it’s just a very mild spoiler but I cannot explain it in a spoiler-free way without sounding like a creep ] hikes in Canada But of course it has its explicit parts.
So far I’ve only read half of the stories from that book. The second and third were much more difficult to me language-level-wise, though…

[yukitanuki]

seems like it also lists books he translated, because I am pretty sure he didn’t write the giving tree おおきな木 | L16??

[NicoleIsEnough]

@yukitanuki

seems like it also lists books he translated,

Yeah, the filter also captures those books where he is listed as one of a number of authors, and Amazon (or at least Natively?) seems to list the translator of a book as author (which is not exactly wrong, but not exactly right either, I think…).