THE HARUKISTS, DISAPPOINTED

失望的村上迷

---来自译言网



The annual autumn buzz here in Tokyo for the Nobel Prize in Literature was more intense last week than in any years past. The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, whose global audience and literary stardom confound conventional publishing wisdom (he’s not American, doesn’t write in English, and not a single vampire or wizard appears in his oeuvre), has been in the running several times, but this year he topped everyone’s list of favorites. Leading up to the word from Stockholm, early evening local time, a major domestic TV network aired a segment in which Murakami readers worldwide expressed their love for him and his books in a babel of languages. One Chinese reader declared that the latest China/Japan spat over disputed island territories had zero impact on China’s love for Murakami, despite the author’s recent newspaper article calling for both sides to lay off the liquor of nationalism. (Some Japanese newspapers were reportedly banned in China last month, so the reader may not have seen it.)

在今年秋天的东京，过去一周诺贝尔文学奖带来的兴奋与骚动比以往任何一年都要强烈。日本小说家村上春树虽已几度入围提名名单，但今年他是每个人心目中的最佳人选。不过村上春树的全球读者群及文学明星身份无法为传统出版理念所解释，他不是美国人，不用英语写作，作品中没有吸血鬼也没有巫师。在斯德哥尔摩公布结果前夕，即日本当地时间傍晚早些时候，一家主要日本国内电视台播放了一条短片，片中全球各地的村上读者用各种语言表达了对他及其作品的热爱。一位中国读者表示，虽然最近中国与日本因为领土争议纠纷不断，但这丝毫不影响中国读者对村上春树的喜爱，尽管村上春树最近在报纸撰文，呼吁双方摒弃民族主义的劣酒。（据称部分日本报纸于上月在中国被禁，因而这位读者可能没能读到这篇文章。）

Speaking of liquor: At least one bar in Tokyo hosted a special Murakami Nobel gathering for so-called “Harukists,” the label at home and abroad for Murakami’s most ardent fans. They were shown clutching copies of his books and framed photographs of the author, and half-finished glasses of wine and beer. Only the World Cup and the Olympics have occasioned similar events in the past. For the first time, oddsmakers, scholars, critics, readers, and publishing pros in and beyond Japan seemed united in nodding their belief that this was “his year.” But it wasn’t. China’s Mo Yan won, and the disappointed Harukists managed only sighs, followed by half-hearted applause for their neighbor’s accolade. “I’m very happy the winner was someone from Asia,” one female Harukist told the Mainichi newspaper on her way home, polite to the end.

说到酒：至少有一家东京酒吧为所谓“村上迷”举办了一场特殊的村上春树诺贝尔奖聚会。我们看到聚会上有村上的主要作品，裱在相框内的作者照片，以及一杯杯喝了一半的红酒啤酒。只有世界杯和奥运会曾制造过类似场景。第一次，庄家、学者、读者、书评人、出版界人士，无论来自日本还是国外，似乎一致相信，这是“他的一年”。但结果不是。中国作家莫言最终获奖，失望的村上迷们唯有扼腕痛惜，然后半心半意地为邻居的获奖鼓掌。“我很高兴获奖者是亚洲人，”一位女性村上迷在回家路上告诉《每日新闻》，一如既往地彬彬有礼。

“When I write novels, I have to go down into a very deep, dark, and lonely place,” Murakami told me the first time we met, in the summer of 1999, describing his creative process with an image he has now repeated in conversations many times since. “And then I have to come back, back to the surface. It’s very dangerous. And you have to be strong, physically and mentally strong, in order to do that every day.” Readers of Murakami’s fiction will likely recognize his description instantly: it’s the very same process many of his characters undergo, though for them the experience is more literal, involving wells, subway tunnels, and other subterranean passageways into secondary realms, where they struggle to connect two realities. In last fall’s “1Q84,” his latest and longest novel, the female protagonist, a fitness instructor and part-time assassin, descends from a raised expressway on a set of emergency stairs and encounters a time-warped alternate reality, with two moons, doppelgangers, and a murderous cult, that may or may not be happening in the Orwellian year 1984.

“创作小说时，我必须潜入一个非常深邃、黑暗、孤独的地方，”在我们初次见面的1999年夏天，村上这样说道，他用这样的画面来形容他的创作过程，自那以后，他也经常在访谈中重复这个比喻。“接着，我必须回来，回到表面。这很危险。而且你必须很强壮，在身体上与心理上都要强壮，这样才能每天如此。”村上的读者也许能立刻辨认出这种描述：他笔下的人物通常也经历相同的过程，不过他们的经历通常更直观，例如井、地铁隧道，以及其他通往异次元的地下通道。在他去年秋天最新出版的个人最长的小说《1Q84》中，女主角，一位健身师和业余杀手，爬下高速公路的太平梯，进入另一个时间扭曲的现实世界，那里有两个月亮、二重身、邪教组织，各种可能或不可能发生在奥威尔式的1984年中的事物。

Little wonder that Murakami’s single major work of nonfiction is called “Underground,” an exhaustive account of his interviews with the victims and perpetrators of one of modern Japan’s darkest days: the 1995 poisoning of Tokyo subway commuters by, yes, a murderous cult. But what most readers don’t know is that Murakami himself inhabits parallel realities, and not just at his writing desk. One is inside Japan; the other is nearly everywhere else, but especially in the United States. And in each, his behavior and reputation, and perceptions of both, are in many ways starkly divergent.

不出意料，村上唯一也是非常重要的非虚构类作品称为《地下》，这本书详细记录了他对1995年东京地铁毒气事件的受害者与施害者的访问，这是现代日本历史上最黑暗的日子，对，这事件由邪教组织策划执行。但大多数读者不知道的是，村上他自己，不仅仅在书桌前，在生活中亦经历着双重现实。一种在日本；另一个在几乎所有其他地方，但特别是在美国。在这两种现实中，他的行为、声誉以及对两者的认识，在许多方面都截然不同。

I first met Murakami thirteen years ago, at his central Tokyo office. I was living in Osaka at the time and was there on a wager—literally—after a group of editors from a local English-language magazine assigned me the interview, then placed a good-natured bet on me not being able to meet him. “He’s a recluse,” they told me, an observation later confirmed by several of my Japanese friends.

我第一次见到村上是在十三年前，在他东京中心的办公室。我当时住在大阪，前去东京是因为一次打赌—确实是，当时一家当地英语杂志的几位编辑安排我访问他，当又好心地打赌我不可能见到他。“他是个隐士，”他们告诉我，这种说法之后也得到我几位日本朋友的证实。

I had read some of Murakami’s short stories and novels and had reviewed his then most recent book, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” but I knew little about the author. I sealed a photocopy of my review, a few short stories I’d published, and a brief cover letter into an envelope and sent it to his office. A fax arrived the following week listing his dates of availability and adding, “but you’ll have to come to Tokyo,” as if I might find that a deal-breaker. The Murakami I met had already produced, in 1987, a bestseller that sold millions in Japan, a novel called “Norwegian Wood,” but he spoke of the occurrence with detachment and even, at times, displeasure. “I couldn’t go out to dinner or to the train station without being photographed,” he said. “It was terrible. That will never happen again.” The resulting media crush prompted Murakami and his wife, Yoko, to escape the entire country, moving first to Greece, and later to the U.S., and it was clear that the experience still evoked painful memories. (He was wrong about the sales, but right about the invasion of privacy. A decade later, when “1Q84” became his second million-plus seller in Japan, its famous author was nowhere to be found.)

我当时已读过部分村上的短篇及长篇小说，也评论过他最新的作品《奇鸟行状录》，但我不怎么了解这位作者。我封了一个信封，里面包括我出版的几篇短篇小说和一封简单的说明信，寄到了他的办公室。第二个星期我收到了一份传真，上面列出了他有空接受访问的日期，并附上一句：“但你必须到东京来，”就好像我可能觉得那无法办到一样。当时，也就是1987年，我见到的村上，已经出版了在日本售出百万册的畅销书—《挪威的森林》，但他说起这件事的语气相当冷漠，甚至有些不满。“我无法出去吃饭或去火车站而不被人拍照，”他说。“这太可怕了。这样的事永远不会再发生。”这本书带来的媒体轰炸促使村上与他的妻子阳子逃离这个国家，他们先搬去了希腊，随后去了日本，显然那次经历仍会带来痛苦的回忆。（他在销售额上还是预计错了，虽然隐私问题上他是对的。十年以后，当《1Q84》成为他第二本在日本销售过百万的小说后，该书的作者却无处可寻。）

Murakami was also ambivalent about his native land. He spoke of how much he hated the Japanese literary establishment, with its cliques and obligations, how he had always wanted to “get away from Japan—first from Kobe, then Tokyo,” and how he saw himself as a professional writer, a craftsman who worked hard and delivered on time, and that that was enough. When I asked him about his youth, he talked about feeling betrayed when the political protests of the nineteen-seventies were crushed by the authorities, and their leaders, his peers, bought suits and became corporate salarymen, their passions subsumed into money-making. About Japan’s activist Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe he offered: “He was a powerful writer to me when he was young, but I’m not interested in politics or making statements. I let him do that. What I care about is my readers.”

村上对祖国的态度也摇摆不定。他曾说过他非常厌恶日本文学届，因为有各种小圈子和义务责任，他总想“远离日本—先是神户，之后是东京”，他认为自己是职业作家，认真工作、准时交稿的手艺人，那就够了。我问及他的青年时代，他说，当时眼看着1970年代政治抗议被当局强烈打压，而那些抗议的领袖，他的伙伴，纷纷购买西装，变身企业推销员，他们将热情转向赚钱，他感到自己被背叛了。谈到日本文学大师、诺贝尔奖获得者同时也是社会活动家的大江健三郎时，他说：“我觉得他年轻时是位非常强大的作家，但我对政治或发表声明毫无兴趣。我允许他那么做。我关心的只是我的读者。”

“Every book I publish,” he noted, “even before it is promoted or reviewed, it sells three hundred thousand copies in Japan. Those are my readers. If you’re a writer and you have readers, you have everything. You don’t need critics or reviews.” When I asked him about the possibility of being awarded the Nobel Prize, he laughed. “No, I don’t want prizes. That means you’re finished.” Since that first meeting, I have spent a lot of time with Murakami, in Tokyo, Boston, New York, and San Francisco, where I was asked to read with and interview him onstage before a sold-out audience of more than three thousand at the University of California, Berkeley. As a longtime Tokyo and New York resident, I became increasingly aware of a schism that defines his public persona. In Japan, he is a best-selling commercial writer, with all the implications of the label: he’s an entertainer who can afford, both financially and otherwise, to protect his privacy. In the rest of the world, and especially in the U.S., he is a literary alchemist who fuses East to West, and who greets his readers when he can, with a generosity he would never proffer at home in Japan.

“我出版的每一本书，”他提到，“哪怕在它被推广或评论前，都会在日本卖出三十万本。这些人是我的读者。若你是一名作家且你拥有读者，你就拥有一切。你不需要书评人或书评。”当我问及他有可能获得诺贝尔文学奖时，他笑道：“不，我不想获奖。那意味着你完了。”自从那第一次见面以后，我和村上见过很多次，在东京、波士顿、纽约、旧金山。在旧金山，我曾需要在加州大学伯克莱分校，面对超过三千名购票观众（门票一早售罄），与他一同朗诵他的作品，并与他对谈。由于长期居住在东京与纽约，我越来越意识到他分裂的公众形象。在日本，他是畅销商业作家，带有一切与这标签相关的含义：他是表演者，无论在钱财还是其他方面都有能力保护自己的隐私。在世界上其他地方，特别是在美国，他是将东方熔入西方的文学炼金师，他用在故乡日本永远无法提供的热情，尽可能欢迎他的读者。

The Murakami that exists in Japan is reclusive and, for some, especially older readers, a tad too Westernized, or, as the Japanese used to say, batakusai—stinking of butter. My Japanese uncle and aunt were both in their mid-sixties when they told me they simply couldn’t read his prose, that it wasn’t really Japanese. My seventy-year-old Japanese mother sat me down at home in Boston and opened two books, one by the literary lion Yasunari Kawabata, the other by Murakami. “This,” she said, pointing to Kawabata’s stoic lines of traditional kanji characters, logographs inherited from the Chinese, “is Japanese literature. This,” showing Murakami’s mish-mash of katakana and hiragana, syllabary writing systems used for words with no kanji, or borrowed (usually) Western terms, “is something else.” Murakami said that he found his voice by writing the first pages of his first novel in English—then translating them into Japanese. (He is also a professional translator of American fiction.) “It’s a strange thing,” he often jokes. “As I get older, my readers get younger.”

在日本的村上是个隐士，对某些人，尤其是较年长的读者而言，亦是个过于西化的男孩，或者，就像日本人通常说的—“浑身黄油臭”。我的日本舅舅阿姨曾告诉我，他们根本无法读懂他的散文，那不是真正的日文，说这话时他们都大约六十五。我那七十岁的日裔妈妈曾与我坐在波士顿的家中，面前摊开两本书，一本是文学勇士川端康成的，另一本是村上的。“这，”她说，指着川端康成由传统日本汉字构成的坚忍克制的文字，“这才是日本文学。而这，”她指着村上由平假名与片假名构成的大杂烩般的文字说，“这是其他东西。”平假名与片假名是拼音文字，用于无法用日本汉字表示的词语，或者来自西方的外来词（通常是这种情况）。村上曾说过，通过用英语写他的第一部小说的第一页—然后将其翻译成日文，他找到了自己的声音。（村上也是美国小说的专业翻译。）“这是件奇怪的事，”他经常开玩笑道。“我年纪越大，我的读者越年轻。”

He has delivered precisely one reading here, in Kobe, in response to the horrible 1995 earthquake that afflicted his hometown. He won’t accept TV or radio interviews (“They chop up what you say for their own needs and make you sound stupid,” he told me), nor will he appear on the cover of magazines, because “they stare at you from the newsstands, then other people stare at you, and you feel uncomfortable.” In short, Murakami in Japan is a commercially successful cipher.

他在日本只举办过一次朗诵会，在神户，在令他的故乡遭受重创的1995年神户大地震以后。他不接受电视或电台访问（“他们会按照他们的需求剪切你说的话，让你显得相当愚蠢”，他对我说），他也不会出现在杂志封面，因为“他们会站在报摊前看着你，然后其他人也会看着你，让你觉得非常不舒服。”简而言之，在日本的村上春树是一个在商业上很成功密码。

But outside of Japan he is an accommodating celebrity, giving talks, book signings, and meet-and-greets in the most public of venues. At a Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, he sported rock-star sunglasses and was accompanied by a security guard, but he smiled and shook every hand extended to him. I watched him sign books for nearly two hours in downtown San Francisco until I, at Yoko’s prodding, advised him to stop. “I’m strong, you know,” was his wry response. Outside of Japan, Haruki Murakami becomes Japan, or at least the Japan he wants you to see. “I think I am becoming some kind of a face for Japan,” he explained a couple of years ago, shifting in his seat in his Tokyo office. “Maybe a kind of cultural ambassador. It’s a privilege and a responsibility, and I am the only one who can do it.”

但在日本以外，他是随和的公众人物，他发表演讲，签名售书，在最公开的场合出现并致意。在曼哈顿的一家全美连锁书店—邦诺书店里，他戴着摇滚明星般的墨镜，由保镖陪伴着出现，但他一直保持微笑，且与每一只伸到面前的手握手。我曾看见他在旧金山市中心签名将近两个小时，之后在阳子的提醒下，我才想起建议他停下。“我很强壮，你知道的，”他略带揶揄地回答道。在日本以外的地方，村上春树变成了日本，或者至少是他想展示给你看的日本。“我想我正成为某种日本的形象代表，”他几年前在东京办公室的座椅里解释道，一边说一边调整坐姿。“也许是一种文化大使。这是荣幸也是责任，而我是唯一能办到的人。”

When he was awarded the Kafka Prize, in 2006, I received numerous queries from Japanese journalists, one of whom took me for a drink in my neighborhood. Was I in touch with Murakami, she wanted to know, and did he plan to attend the award ceremony in Prague? He did, and later popped up in Israel and Spain to receive their highest honors and deliver speeches largely addressing moral issues: declaring his solidarity with the oppressed in Israel, and in Spain, chastising his own nation’s nuclear policies in the wake of the Fukushima plant disaster.

当他2006年获得卡夫卡奖时，我收到了大量日本记者的提问，其中一位还请我在我的住所附近喝酒。她想知道我是否与村上有联系，以及他是否会去布拉格领奖。他确实去了，并且之后出现在以色列与西班牙，接受当地的文学最高荣誉，他还就道德议题发表演讲：他声明自己支持在以色列与西班牙受到迫害的人们，同时谴责自己国家在福岛核灾后所采取的核能政策。

He was right about his ambassadorship. No one but Murakami can be the face of Japan while it languishes in confused politics and pressure from fast-rising neighbors. And no one but Murakami has earned the good will and respect from abroad that Japan so sorely needs right now. But there is something deeper at work in Murakami’s persona and thinking. When U.C. Berkeley asked us to conduct a live, onstage reading and interview, I had my apprehensions. They flew me into San Francisco to spend time with him and Yoko prior to the event. Murakami only spoke with me about baseball, jazz, and the American banking crisis. We didn’t say a word about the interview. Finally, I mustered my courage and asked him what we should talk about onstage. “Oh, what we always talk about, Roland,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

他在自己的文化大使身份上的看法是正确的。除了村上，没人能代表日本，如今的日本，在应对混乱的政治问题及来自迅速发展的邻国压力时，仍表现不佳。除了村上，没人能为日本从海外赢得如此多的善意与尊敬，而这正是日本此刻最需要的。但在村上的公众形象与思想中，仍有更深层的部分。加州大学伯克莱分校要求我举办一场现场朗诵及访谈会时，我有所担忧。活动前他们安排我飞到旧金山与村上和阳子见面。村上只和我谈棒球、爵士乐和美国次贷危机。我们丝毫没有提到访谈。最后我鼓起勇气问他，我们在台上应该说什么。“哦，就谈些我们经常谈的东西，罗兰，”他说道。“别担心。”

The man I joined onstage the next night was a brilliant performer. “I should be watching Akinori Iwamura win his first World Series with the Tampa Bay Rays in a bar tonight,” he began. “Or I could be hanging out with Thom Yorke of Radiohead in Tokyo. Instead I am here with you in Berkeley. You’re very lucky, you know.” His irony, grace, and pleasantries were applauded in California. For here was Haruki Murakami, a Japanese author greeting his American readers on their terms, improbably, with their sense of humor. There are two Murakamis—the one who staves off attention in his native land, and the one who embraces such love and accolades, in New York, San Francisco and other major cities across America and Europe, and in the pages of The New Yorker. But for Harukists worldwide, not to mention the beleaguered publishing industry, two don’t seem nearly enough.

第二天晚上和我一同出现在舞台上的男人是一位出现的表演家。“我应该在酒吧看岩村明宪与坦帕湾光芒队赢得他的第一座棒球世界大赛奖杯，”他开始说道。“或者我可能和电台司令乐队的主唱汤姆·约克一同在东京聊天。但我却在这里，在伯克莱，和你们一起。要知道，你们非常幸运。”他的嘲讽、风度和诙谐言语为他赢得了加州的掌声。因为在这里的是村上春树，一位日本作家，问候他的美国读者，用他们的语言，虽然未必用他们的幽默感。世上有两个村上春树—一个在他的祖国躲避关注，另一个拥抱这样的爱戴与荣誉，在纽约，在旧金山，在其他美洲与欧洲的大城市，也在《纽约客》杂志上。但对于全世界的村上迷，更别说处境艰难的出版界，两个似乎远远不够。