First published 2019
Haruki Murakami's father was the son of a Buddhist priest and nearly became one himself. A clerical error rerouted him into the Second World War instead. He survived, became a teacher, wrote haiku, and raised a son who would go on to become one of the most widely read novelists in the world. The two men grew apart as Haruki reached adulthood. They spent twenty years estranged. They reconciled only when his father was dying. This short autobiographical work began as a piece for the New Yorker in 2019 and is presented here in its complete, unabridged form. Murakami moves between his father's biography and his own, examining what each man understood about the other and what they failed to understand. The war, Japanese history from the postwar years to the present, and the strange distance that can open between fathers and sons all run through the text. Readers who know Murakami's fiction will recognize certain preoccupations, but the directness here is something different. He is not writing through a protagonist. He is writing about his own family, and the honesty of that shows on every page.
Genres: biography, essays, literary-fiction, autobiography, memoir, japanese-literature
Vibes: honest, intimate, introspective, melancholic, thought-provoking
Tropes: deathbed-reconciliation, family-secrets, generational-divide
Setting: Japan
Period: World War II, Postwar Japan, 20th century, 21st century
80 pages · Paperback · Random House Large Print
Content warnings: death, war