On May 29, 2009, the two-volume novel “1Q84” published by Haruki Murakami, who had been dormant for seven years, landed in Japan and sold over one million copies within 12 days. No slogan “Restocking pending”. On the one hand, the anticipation that the fans of Murakami had accumulated for seven years exploded, on the other hand, the crazy printing by Japanese domestic publishing houses and the translators from all over the world were immersed in translation. The media even exclaimed in unison, “Selling crazy”! I believe that in Japan, there is no pure literature writer who can set off such a sales frenzy. Publishers should also meditate “pain and be happy” when working overtime. At the same time, the CD music mentioned in “1Q84”, such as Janacek’s “Sinfonietta” and George Orwell’s “1984”, also hitchhiked with Murakami, and the sales volume was soaring.
In April of this year, the simplified Chinese version of “1Q84 BOOK1 April to June” finally came out, which made many Murakami fans who have been eagerly looking forward to relax their stiff necks and enjoy the long-lost fun. In July, “1Q84 BOOK2 July-September” arrived as scheduled. When readers were still complaining that the novel left too many regrets, Fang Zhi and BOOK3 followed, of course, it must be after September this year. thing. This time, the translator is no longer Mr. Lin Shaohua, the “imperial translator” of Haruki Murakami, but Mr. Shi Xiaowei, the scholar who once translated “When I Talk About Running, What I Talk About”. Be wise!
Behind the booming sales performance, we can also gain insight into why Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84” can trigger a worldwide wave when pure literary works are not booming today. First of all, Haruki Murakami has been thinking of a comprehensive novel like “The Brothers Karamazov” since he published “Kafka on the Shore” in 2002. The new work will be a summary of all previous works and Murakami’s thinking for many years. Aroused widespread concern among Murakami fans. In addition, Haruki Murakami won the Jerusalem Literature Award in 2009, and went to Israel to accept the award in person, and also published the acceptance speech of “The Wall and the Egg” (also translated as “The Wall and the Egg”). At that time, many media Both commented that Haruki Murakami was “running into Stockholm”. Not to mention the fact that the Nobel Prize winners in recent years have always focused on diaspora literature. Does Murakami’s popularity make him closer to the Nobel Prize in Literature or further away? Of course, none of this is true. Influence Haruki Murakami once again became a world-renowned writer, and his new works should not be underestimated.
The most important point is that Haruki Murakami is undoubtedly a model of the popularity of modern Japanese pure literature writers. His line seems to be between pure literature and popular literature, that is, holding the banner of pure literature and walking the road of popular literature, I think this. This is also the reason why domestic pure literature writers often criticize Murakami! Beautifully bound covers, appetizing publicity, and a raging copyright dispute, the means of popular culture communication have all appeared. Haruki Murakami is also known as “the godfather of petty bourgeoisie”. The novels are full of traces of consumer culture, all of which are closer to popular culture. In terms of the content of his works, Haruki Murakami has shown himself as a “fighter” since the Tokyo Metro Sarin Incident and the Kobe Earthquake. There are metaphors alluding to reality, such as After Dark and “Tokyo Chi Tan Ji”, which gradually drift away from the nihilistic sentiment that pervades his earlier works. Regarding “1Q84” Murakami said: “I want to go beyond the category of pure literature and use a variety of communication methods to ensure that a large number of topics are drawn, and people’s lives are embedded in the air of a certain era today.” Japanese media also Comment: “Such a major and complex subject can be regarded as a great beginning of Japanese literature in the new millennium.” It seems that the popularity of “1Q84″ has become inevitable.
”1Q84” still uses Murakami’s usual two-line parallel method, and the titles are Aomame and Tengo, the hero and heroine of the novel. This can be said to be a love story. The hero and heroine are looking for the first love that began when they were ten years old. With the tremor and residual heat of the two hands together, they searched hard in the vast sea of people. In the end, Aoma wanted to save Tengo’s life. And drink bullets. This can also be said to be an urban legend. On the surface, Aomame, who works as a fitness instructor, is actually a professional killer. The targets of murder are all men who mentally and physically abuse women: Tengo is ostensibly a math teacher at a cram school. , is actually the gunman who rewrote the novel for the 17-year-old beautiful girl to win the Newcomer Award. This can be said to be a religious story. Aomame was born in a family with religious beliefs, ran away from home to escape the imposed beliefs and became a professional killer, and finally killed the leader of the “pioneer” who raped many underage girls : Tengo met Fuka-Eri, a 17-year-old beautiful girl who escaped from the religious organization “Pioneer”, and rewrote the novel “Air Chrysalis” that revealed the internal situation of the “Pioneer”. Aomame and Tengo ended up going the same way, and they were both hooked up with the religious organization “Pioneer”. They both realized that there were two moons hanging in the sky, the air had changed, the scenery had changed, and the rules had also changed. They were both in the middle of 1Q84… …
With so many clues, maybe this can really be regarded as a “comprehensive novel”, and Haruki Murakami’s charm elements are not lacking, brand, music, famous wine, sexual intercourse, metaphor… In “1Q84”, the biggest bright spot is probably It is because Murakami has extended his brushstrokes to the religious theme this time, which is also the issue he has been paying attention to and thinking about since Aum Shinrikyo and the 9.11 incident. In fact, along the way, we found that in Murakami’s life trajectory, there were three public events that had the greatest impact on him: the All-Common Fight movement in the late 1960s, the Tokyo subway sarin gas incident in 1995, and Kobe Earthquake. Regarding the All-Common Fight Movement, Murakami has always adopted an attitude of alienation. The Kobe earthquake was a “natural disaster”, while the sarin gas incident was a “man-made disaster”. In addition, he learned about Japan’s crimes in “World War II” under the influence of his father since he was a child. The events of 9.11 have had a considerable impact on Murakami’s view of creation, so many of his published works are exploring the issue of “evil”. So far, he has continued to focus on two issues: “Story” (Story) and “System”. In his speech “Wall and Egg” in Israel, he clearly stated that “system” is a high wall, and each individual They are more or less eggs, “beating the wall with eggs, I would like to live and die together with the eggs”, so he wanted to write a “story” that could fight against the “system”. In “1Q84”, the metaphor of “little man” appears, which reminds us of the “big brother” in George Orwell’s masterpiece “1984”, they are all similar to the “system”, of course is the “evil” thing. And Tengo, Aomame, and Fuka-Eri used various means to fight the virus of the “system” – “little people”, so as to maintain the balance of good and evil in the world, and all the characters who appeared are individuals with good and evil coexisting Therefore, he took advantage of the situation and proposed that “there is no absolute good and no absolute evil in the world. Good and evil are not static and fixed, but things that constantly change places and positions.” This conclusion surprised many critics, and even Mr. Lin Shaohua, who has always called Haruki Murakami a “fighter”, also believed that “many problems, even he himself did not understand, became very ambiguous, not even the basic concept of right and wrong. ”.
As a reader of Haruki Murakami for many years, I think the changes in his thinking revealed in “1Q84” are traceable. Since his debut novel “Let’s Hear the Wind Sing”, Haruki Murakami has been laying out metaphors from a relativistic perspective, whether it is the “real unreality and unreal reality” he pursues, or “death is not the opposite of life, And as a part of life forever”, we all find that Murakami likes to seek the middle ground between the two extremes of things. It is undeniable that in “The Shape of a Strange Bird” and “Kafka on the Shore”, Haruki Murakami is creating an absolutely evil image, but in “After Dark”, his Shirakawa becomes a “relatively evil” one. Incarnation, at this point, Japanese scholars Komori Yoichi, Kuroya Kazuo and others have smelled Murakami’s ambiguous tendencies towards good and evil from “Kafka on the Shore”. Until the publication of “1Q84”, we found that Haruki Murakami was really lost in the conversion. To investigate the reason, I think the first thing to think about is the Japanese people’s deep-rooted concept of impermanence. Isn’t Murakami’s willingness to coexist with the egg the same as the author of “Heike Monogatari” who is not sure of a clear position, but is on the side of the weak?
Since the 20th century, there have been continuous wars, religious disputes, and the whole world has been in a state of chaos and disorder. Murakami is also deeply worried about this. He used cult organizations as an entry point to generalize it, and believed that the restraint of all systems on human thought was similar to the evil of the huge and terrifying system described in “1984”, so as to infer the relativity of good and evil and the anti-reverse nature of all systems. Human nature, so resolutely show the attitude of “coexisting with eggs”, which seems to be a workable logic. It is true that the relativity of things is advocated from Lao and Zhuang thinking to Buddhist classics, so should we fall into the quagmire of relativism or historical cyclicism? Is it always correct to always stand on the side of the minority? We can only say that Murakami After discovering the relativity of mutual inclusion and transformation between good and evil, he just showed its relativity, but did not continue to perform the writer’s duty to introduce the apparent relativity into the historical absolute. Good and evil, good or bad, must be accompanied by each other, but the creator of “Story” should stand at the height of history, remove the veil of reality, and infer that a certain system will promote the development of human history and human civilization. Progress is good or evil. Of course, “1Q84” is still going on. We look forward to Haruki Murakami getting out of the ambiguous whirlpool and regaining the weapons of “fighters”!
