Major Yammerton: Japanese Literature Challenge #4

I read this book for The Japanese Literature Challenge 15

走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること 2007

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir - Haruki Murakami

Marathon runner and triathlete Murakami talks about his great passion, aside from writing novels, long distance running. He discusses his determination to overcome his limits in running events in respectable times, but also his ability to get over disappointing physical breakdowns and times that were longer than his optimistic expectations.

Murakami claims that the occupation of writing is not so different from the training for running daunting distances. Writing requires talent of course but it requires the discipline to focus on the writing process and endure siting and thinking for hours at a time. He makes the point that after he changed his job, which required him to be on his feet all the time, to the more sedentary one of literary man, circumstances therefore forced him to move more to keep fit.

But he found the discipline of running and training benefitted his writing process. Running with dedication also kept him away from tobacco, alcohol, over-eating, and late night partying, none of which do writers much good. I think Murakami is on to something with regard to the discipline of running:

Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to wile away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as whole.

The importance of not living in a fog or sleepwalking through life is a commonplace kind of wisdom. But avoiding muddle and living the examined life constitute an eternal verity that certainly resonates with me. It’s why I read so much and why I sleep well, eat well, don’t drink or smoke, and exercise five days a week. It also helped to stir my interest that Murakami didn’t start to run until he was in his early thirties, which was true for me too. I didn’t start to jog until I lived in Okinawa, whose subtropical climate (Taipei, Corpus Christi) makes it ideal for a guy like me who likes humidity for warming up quickly.

Murakami said he trained with serious runners in Okinawa in the Eighties so I wondered if he had ever trained when I was jogging there from 1986 to 1992. In Naha, from Sobe, I’d cross the 221 Bridge, make a right through Onoyama Park, another right across the Tsubogawa bridge and back to Sobe. In Nishihara, I’d just jog around the university and its track. I’d also visit the gym and shoot baskets. The solitary pleasure of shooting baskets in an empty gym is ineffable, not to mention conducive to thinking or, more often, fantasizing about taking passes from Kareem or Magic or Worthy and scoring buzzer beaters to send the Celtics home in defeat.

Murakami is clearly a literary figure who’s a power of the publishing scene, able to publish non-fiction and see it sell in magazines and bookstores. It would be interesting to read his literary criticism or travel narratives.

Fiction: click the title to go the review

Nonfiction: click the title to read review

Kappa – Akutagawa Ryunosuke

I am a Cat II – Natsume Sōseki,

Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology – Donald Keene

Modern Japanese Stories – edited by Ivan Morris

A Strange Tale from East of the River and Other Stories - Nagai Kafu

Kokoro – Natsume Sōseki

The Old Capital - Yasunari Kawabata

The Tale of Genji

Norwegian Wood- Haruki Murakami

The Shooting Gallery - Yuko Tsushima