MUDDYING THE TEA: THE LOCALITY OF HARUKI MURAKAMI AS REVEALED THROUGH THE ART OF TRANSLATION
Open Access
- Author:
- Rappaport, Brooke
- Area of Honors:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Arts
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Thesis Supervisor
Charlotte Diane Eubanks, Thesis Supervisor
Sydney Sue Aboul Hosn, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Haruki Murakami
Japanese
translation
global literature - Abstract:
- Haruki Murakami is arguably Japan’s most popular writer, both within the country and across the globe. Critics and readers praise his fiction for its vivid depictions of characters that seem to exist in anonymous, universal landscapes...places that could be found anywhere, regardless of labels or names. Because of this, he is often considered a global writer, whose mission is to craft fiction, and sometimes nonfiction, on a global level. But has there ever been a moment when Haruki Murakami was distinctly Japanese – completely concerned with his personal locality, and his origins? If we are to truly grasp Murakami’s identity as a writer – and if we are going to decide whether or not he is an inherently global writer - we need to find out if there was ever a time when he was writing more specifically about himself and his locality, and why he might turn away from that later in life. In 1987, a collection of several Murakami flash-fiction “opinion pieces,” originally published as short articles in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, was released in book-format – despite never having been translated into any other language other than Japanese, this small book, titled Asahidō, seems to be the only Murakami work that deals specifically, and in rich detail, with his own, personal locality within Japan, and his opinions and criticisms of that locality. What would happen, then, if some of the Asahidō stories were translated into English? What would this add to the overall discussion of Haruki Murakami as a global writer – would anything change? How does translation lead to a better understanding of a writer, and why is that important for the study of global literature?