For my data analysis goals for this week, I have examined several interviews and public statements by the author of one of my texts, Haruki Murakami. I looked for his statements specifically regarding the events that inspired the publication of after the quake, a collection of short stories set in February 1995 in between the Kobe earthquake and gas attacks in Tokyo. I discovered that these events returned Murakami’s attention to Japan, which he had previously shunned due to his fame and his subsequent visibility. These events not only propelled him to return to Tokyo from his location in the United States, but inspired him to write both nonfictional and fictional works responding to the events and his dissatisfaction with the media coverage of them. I collected interviews from The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Guardian, Salon, The Telegraph UK, The LA Review of Books, and 3 AM in addition to a speech given after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake on the occasion of receiving the International Catalunya Prize called “Speaking as an Unrealistic Dreamer.” These statements speak to the role of disaster in solidifying Marukami’s relationship with Japan and its people. They also speak to his use of magical realism and world building to engage readers in his texts in a media landscape of constant distraction and competition. Marukami is a figure who truly bridges the Pacific Ocean, working as a translator for his favorite American works, living and working in the US, and engaging American pop culture in his writing and personal life.
Marukami has interesting and relevant opinions about the relationship between reality and fiction, emphasizing the fakeness of not just his own works, but the virtual world in which we live. In an interview with The Paris Review, he says: “The walls are made of paper. In the classical kind of magic realism, the walls and the books are real. If something is fake in my fiction, I like to say it’s fake. I don’t want to act as if it’s real.” In my inquiry into the ‘place’ of fiction, I find Marukami’s philosophy to be importantly aware of his role as a writer in relation to art and current events.