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Reading Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" on Sunny Sunday in a train
As always, the sky was clear in Kanto Plain because it is winter. Today I went to the center of the capital area of Japan by riding on a train. It took several hours. And I had been reading English translation of "Norwegian Wood" in the train. The author is Mr. Haruki Murakami, and the translator is Mr. Alfred Birnbaum. According to wikipedia, Mr. Birnbaum's translation is now out of print, and another translator's version is now available.
I bought Mr.Birmbaum's translations which have red and green jackets as the original Japanese versions, when I was a university student. There was a clever guy in my class at that time, and one day I saw him in a book store in the university. He picked up one of the copies of "Norwegian Wood", flipped the pages, but soon he put it back on the shelf. It seemed that he felt some difficulties to read English version. Looking at him, I decided to buy the two books. I was a very bad student who could not get any "A"s even "B"s for my grade. Even if I could read "Norwegian Wood" in English, it would not be any consolations against clever student like him at all. But I just wanted to try.
This is the second time for me to read the novel. Actually I could not read through the books during my university years. But I remember that it was before I became 30 years old when I read through them for the first time. I remember the story, but the story is still quite interesting. I started reading from the red one in last year. Because I am very slow to read English, it seems that it has taken more than a half year to get to chapter 10. Today, I started with page 160 which the first page of the chapter 10, and got to page 234 in the middle of the chapter 11.
It was amazing story of a young university student in Tokyo, who came from other part of Japan. And interestingly enough well arranged sexual depictions in the pages make a reader to keep on reading. So I think it can be regarded as a kind of fairy tail for adult. No one can be a playboy like him. And things happened to him is quite extraordinary. But at the same time, the story is very well written to make reader feel empathy to the central character, Mr. Toru Watanabe.
The train which I got on was running under the clear sky of Tokyo. But I hadn't seen the outside through the windows. I was just reading. In the part that Watanabe talked in his mind to his dead friend Kizuki, I got tears in my eyes. Though I couldn't get to the end of the story before I got to the station I get off, I felt that's enough for today. I know the ending, which was not so bad, maybe better than me, in terms that he has a friend to make a telephone call. I don't know the novel would be understood by people in other culture, but I am sure that this is a good book to read.
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