Okay, so let's unpack this. Imagine, right, you
are wandering through a city at night and you
stumble into this tiny, like, obscure dive bar.
Okay, I'm picturing it. There's this indie band
playing on a cramped stage in the corner and
their sound is, well it's weird, it's highly
experimental, totally outside the mainstream,
and honestly just a little bizarre. Right, not
your typical radio pop. Exactly. Now imagine
that exact same band without changing a single
note of their strange, dreamlike music, inexplicably
becomes the biggest stadium act in the world.
Like, they are suddenly filling arenas globally.
Millions of people are singing along to lyrics
that, frankly, don't quite make logical sense.
That is a wild visual, but it really is the perfect
analogy. Right. That is essentially the story
of Haruki Murakami. Welcome to this deep dive,
everyone. Glad to be here. We have a lot of ground
to cover. We really do. Today, we are pulling
from a massive stack of sources for you. We've
got comprehensive biographies, recent literary
essays, his own memoirs, all to decode the fascinating
life, the highly unusual creative process, and
the massive global impact of a man who didn't
write a single word of fiction until he was almost
30. Which, you know, is late for a writer of
his caliber. Yeah. But the central mystery we're
looking at today isn't just the sheer scale of
his fame. Right. It's the underlying mechanics
of why his deeply surreal, almost hallucinatory
fiction crosses cultural borders so effortlessly.
I mean, we're examining an author whose work
features, like, parallel dimensions, reigning
fit. Talking cats. Don't forget the talking cats.
Exactly. Talking cats. And a whole lot of solitary
people making pasta. Yet somehow it strikes a
universe across vastly different political realities
and languages. It's crazy. It is. And to understand
the architecture of that kind of global resonance,
you really have to look at how he constructs
his worlds. And to do that, we have to go back
to a very specific, honestly incredibly mundane
moment in 1978. And we need to explore this bizarre
creative process he later dubbed the Automatic
Dwarfs. The origin story here is famously unlikely.
It really is. So in 1978, he was just a regular
guy. He was running a small jazz club in Tokyo
called the Peter Cat. He didn't even consider
himself a writer at this point. Not at all. He
was a guy making sandwiches, washing glasses,
flipping jazz records. But then he goes to a
baseball game. Just a normal afternoon out. Yeah,
he's sitting in the outfield of Jingu Stadium,
drinking a beer, watching the Yakult Swallows
play. A player hits a double. And in that exact
moment, hearing the crisp crack of the bat echo
through the stadium, he says he felt this sudden
warm sensation. The literal light bulb moment.
Truly. Out of nowhere, the thought just simply
arrived in his head as saying, I can write a
novel. That's amazing. So he goes home, sits
in his kitchen table, and just starts writing
his first book, Hear the Wind Sing. He did it
in these tiny brief stretches late at night after
closing up the bar. And that spontaneous, almost
unexplainable genesis perfectly mirrors his actual
writing process, which honestly is a radical
departure from traditional methods. Oh, completely.
Like most conventional novelists, you know, they
rely heavily on structure. They build extensive
character biographies. They map out the narrative
arc on whiteboards. They know the ending before
they write chapter one. Exactly. But Murakami
completely rejects that. In a 2022 essay, he
detailed this concept he calls the automatic
dwarfs. Which is such a great phrase. It is.
He claims he almost never decides on his characters
or plots in advance. Instead, as he sits down
at the keyboard, fragments of information and
memory are just pulled from these subconscious
cabinets in his brain. Like magic. Basically.
He compares the process to iron scraps flying
through the air and attaching to a magnet. He
describes the characters as like materializing
on the page and then breaking free of his control
to act entirely independently. He essentially
claims he's just taking dictation from his own
subconscious. He even compares writing to making
a movie just for himself, where he gets to sit
in the theater and be surprised by the twist
ending. Which sounds incredible. It does, but
here's where I have to push back a little. I
have a hard time buying this whole mystical channel
or framing. Oh, really? How come? Well, it sounds
a bit like an author trying to make his process
sound more magical than it actually is. You don't
just sit down at a kitchen table without an outline
and accidentally write a structurally coherent
masterpiece. Fair point. I would argue this automatic
process is actually the result of the massive
amount of Western literature and music he consumed
growing up. His mental cabinets weren't empty,
right? They were meticulously stocked. You know
that skepticism is entirely warranted. And actually
cognitive science would back you up on that.
Oh, it would. Yeah. What looks like pure untethered
improvisation is almost always the result of
intense structural internalization. Think about
it like a brilliant jazz saxophonist on stage.
They're letting the music flow spontaneously,
but they can only improvise because they've spent
thousands of hours internalizing chord progressions,
scales, and music theory. Ah, that makes total
sense. So he had the scales down. Exactly. Growing
up, Murakami obsessively read Franz Kafka, Kurt
Vonnegut, Raymond Janler. He listened relentlessly
to Russian classical music and American jazz.
So he was absorbing all these structures. Right.
He was internalizing very specific narrative
rhythms, the hard -boiled pacing of a detective
novel, the absurdity of Kafka, that heavy constant
diet of Western influence built an intuitive
internal architecture. So when he finally sat
down to write, those automatic dwarfs had a massive
inventory of sophisticated tools to build with.
Exactly, which explains how he could write so
uniquely right out of the gate. But, and this
is crucial, that heavy reliance on Western structures
is the exact reason his own country's literary
establishment initially rejected him. Oh yeah,
they did not know what to do with him. He was
the ultimate outsider. And to really put you,
the listener, in the context of the era, you
have to understand the environment he was pushing
against in Japan. Right, his upbringing is key
here. He was raised by parents who literally
taught Japanese literature. But as a teenager,
he fiercely rebelled against that pedigree. He
immersed himself completely in Western culture,
and that rebellion became the defining feature
of his early writing style. It fundamentally
altered his narrative DNA. Because for decades,
traditional Japanese literature was dominated
by the i -novel tradition. The wadakushi shisetsu.
Right. Exactly. These were highly confessional,
hyper -realistic narratives. They placed a heavy
focus on societal duty, intense family dynamics,
and the suffocating intimacy of social obligations.
So if you were reading Japanese lit at the time,
that was the baseline expectation? Completely.
And Murakami intentionally drove in the absolute
opposite direction. He utilized first -person
narratives, but but his protagonists are profoundly
solitary and detached. They're like these independent
guys who value emotional distance over intimacy.
Right. They exist almost entirely outside of
traditional societal structures. They just spend
their time listening to records, cooking simple
meals, and passively observing the weirdness
of the world. He actually called himself an ugly
duckling and a black sheep. in the Japanese literary
world. And domestic critics initially found his
work to be aggressively un -Japanese. It felt
entirely foreign to them. Especially when you
factor in how he deployed magical realism. Like,
let's look at the short story, Super Frog Saves
Tokyo. Oh, that's a classic example. It's so
good. The setup is that a perfectly normal unimaginative
bank employee comes home to his apartment to
find a six -foot tall frog standing on two legs.
Just waiting room. Just waiting. Yeah. The frog
makes them both a cup of tea and they sit down
to calmly discuss an impending earthquake that
will destroy Tokyo unless they team up to fight
a giant subterranean worm. As you do. Naturally.
But the genius of it is the deadpan delivery.
The absurdity isn't treated as a fever dream.
It's treated with the same mundane realism as
cooking spaghetti. And the mechanics of that
deadpan surrealism are exactly what propelled
him to global phenomenon status. Because he treats
the bizarre with such casual acceptance, the
reader just, well, accepts it too. Right. You
just go along for the ride. And if we look at
the historical timeline of his exploding popularity,
a really fascinating pattern emerges. Murakami
himself noted that his deeply surreal books became
massively popular in Germany right around the
time the Berlin Wall fell. Wow. And shortly after
that, his readership just exploded in Russia
following the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union.
That timing is incredible. I mean, think about
it. When the actual political and social structures
of a country collapse and reality literally stops
making sense, people gravitate toward a guy writing
about talking frogs and parallel dimensions.
Because it serves as a psychological survival
guide for disorientation. That's a great way
to put it. His style perfectly captures the confusion
of modern people going through sudden, chaotic,
systemic shifts. When your real world feels unstable
and surreal, a traditional linear story feels
false. about a detached guy navigating a dreamlike,
unpredictable landscape where the rules keep
changing, that feels incredibly authentic to
the lived experience of societal collapse. It's
like he's the literary equivalent of a master
fusion chef. He takes the setting... and the
mundane ingredients of modern life, but he mixes
in Western narrative spices and heavy doses of
surrealism to create this coping mechanism for
the modern world. Exactly. But OK, this brings
up a major structural problem in his early work,
which is, well, if your protagonists are completely
detached, solitary figures who just passively
observe the weirdness around them while drinking
beer. How do you keep the stories from floating
away into meaningless absurdity? That is the
danger of that style. Right. A character can
only stay detached for so long before they have
to actually care about the real world. And they
eventually did. That detachment was a protective
shell. And you are totally right. It couldn't
last forever. The real world eventually crashed
into Murakami's surreal universe with terrifying
force. Which forced a massive shift. Right. Yes.
A defining turning point to both his literary
mechanics and his per - world view. This pivot
happened in 1995. Japan experienced two incredibly
horrific collective traumas almost back to back
which fundamentally shattered the myth of national
safety. It was a very dark year. First was the
devastating Kobe earthquake in January. It killed
over 6 ,000 people and exposed massive systemic
failures in infrastructure and government response.
Yeah. Then just two months later the Ayum Shinrikyo
cult unleashed sarin gas on the Tokyo subway
system during rush hour. It was an act of domestic
terrorism that deeply traumatized the national
psyche. And up until this point, you have to
remember, Murakami had been living abroad in
the United States and Europe. He was maintaining
his physical and emotional distance from Japan,
just writing his dreamlike fiction. Keeping that
detachment. Exactly. But the sheer scale of these
twin tragedies pulled him back. He moved home
to Japan. And in conversations with psychologists
and critics later on, he explicitly stated that
these Owens forced him to change his core stance
as a writer. From detachment to commitment. Exactly.
The passive observation of his early protagonists
was no longer a sufficient response to a world
that contained that level of active real -world
evil. And we see that psychological shift instantly
alter the DNA of his books. He writes his massive
opus, The Windup Bird Chronicle. Such a monumental
book. It is. The protagonist still starts out
as a passive guy looking for his missing cat.
but he's eventually dragged down into the literal
and metaphorical darkness to confront the horrific
history of Japanese war crimes in Manchukuo during
World War II. He's no longer just watching. Right.
Murakami forces his character to actively fight
the darkness, and he also completely steps out
of his comfort zone to publish his first major
work of nonfiction. underground. Which was a
massive journalistic undertaking. Opposed entirely
of interviews with the everyday commuters who
survived the subway gas attack. He fundamentally
changed the function of his platform here. He
realized that the ability to weave compelling
narratives couldn't just be used for escapist
surrealism or detached irony anymore. He had
to do something more. Right, he had to use his
craft to foster social consciousness. Underground
was his way of helping his country process its
pain by looking directly at the victims rather
than the perpetrators. It forced the public to
confront the fragility of their everyday lives.
Which sets up this really fascinating ripple
effect. If he is forcing his fictional characters
to confront the dark history and the oppressive
systems of the world, it forces him to do the
same in reality. Absolutely. This era of commitment
turned a notoriously private, reclusive writer
into a highly vocal critic of real -world political
systems and historical amnesia. And the philosophical
foundation for all of his public stances was
codified a bit later, in 2009. He was awarded
the Jerusalem Prize, which is a major literary
award. Right. Because of the intense geopolitical
conflicts in the region at the time, there was
immense pressure on him to boycott the ceremony.
But he went anyway. He chose to attend, and he
delivered a highly critical speech that introduced
a metaphor that basically defines his entire
worldview. He stated, if there is a hard high
wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will
stand on the side of the egg. It's such a striking
image. And let's break down that metaphor for
everyone listening. Sure. The high hard wall
represents the system. So that's governments,
institutions, military forces, corporate bureaucracies,
basically anything that operates on a cold structural
logic and forces individuals to conform. And
the egg naturally represents the fragile, irreplaceable,
unique human soul. Right. By stating he will
always stand with the egg, he publicly declared
his opposition to any form of systemic oppression.
And just to be clear for you listening, we're
simply reporting on his specific worldview here,
not endorsing any political stances. But this
is how he operates. He explicitly aligned his
worldview with writers like George Orwell. Viewing
the role of the novelist as inherently standing
against the system. Exactly. And you see this
philosophy applied consistently across various
global issues over the years. Like, he has publicly
criticized Japan's historical understanding of
its actions in World War II, urging the country
to offer straightforward, unequivocal apologies
to China and the Koreas to heal those historical
wounds. Which is a very bold stance domestically.
Very. Following the 2011 Fukushima disaster,
he argued that Japan, a nation that intimately
knows the horrors of radiation, should have firmly
rejected nuclear power. You also spoke out during
the pandemic, right? Yes. During the COVID -19
pandemic in 2021, he publicly criticized the
Japanese prime minister's optimistic messaging
while hospital cases were actively surging. Wow.
And in 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
he hosted a special international radio broadcast
specifically focusing on the preciousness of
individual life over the machinery of war. When
you lay it all out like that, the continuity
is just remarkable. Whether his protagonist is
swinging a baseball bad at a magical subterranean
monster in a dreamscape, or Murakami himself
is speaking out against a government policy,
the core philosophy is identical. Defending the
fragile individual against the crushing weight
of the collective. Exactly. But honestly, zooming
out a bit, the logistics of his life seem impossible
to me. How so? Well, confronting global trauma.
Speaking out against oppressive regimes, processing
national grief, and sitting down to write densely
layered 1 ,200 page novels. How does a human
brain not just collapse under that kind of immense
psychological weight? Well, it absolutely would
collapse if he relied entirely on his brain.
What do you mean? The genius of Murakami is that
he realized the mind cannot sustain that level
of deep chaotic work on its own. So he effectively
outsourced his mental endurance to his physical
body. Ah. This is perhaps the most surprising
pivot in his entire biography. And really? We
have to look at his extreme physical discipline.
This man didn't even start running until he was
33 years old. Get your mind blown. He'd just
sold the jazz bar, quit smoking, and wanted to
lose a little weight. But he didn't just casually
jog on weekends. He transformed himself into
the deeply committed, experienced marathoner
and triathlete. He even traveled to Hokkaido
to run a 100 kilometer ultra marathon. That is
intense. Highly intense. And he documented this
entire physical journey in his memoir, What I
Talk About When I Talk About Running. He explicitly
treats physical endurance and literary creation
as the exact same discipline. You cannot separate
the running from the writing. Never. And to understand
the mechanism of why this works, we have to weave
his deep love for music back into the equation.
Right, the jazz club background. He has stated
that music shapes his writing even more than
the literature he consumes. Because he lacked
the technical ability to become a professional
musician, he decided to become a writer by treating
the physical act of typing as a musical performance.
That is fascinating. He structures his sentences
to the internal rhythm of jazz and classical
music. So you basically have a writer treating
like a jazz track. Exactly. And in jazz, you
can only have that erratic, wild, unpredictable
saxophone solo if there is a relentless, steady,
repetitive bass line holding the entire song
together. Yes, the bass line is everything. For
Murakami, his physical routine is that bass line.
Let me just lay this out for you. He wakes up
at 4 a .m. He writes for several hours. He runs
a 10k or swims. He reads, listens to records,
and goes to bed by 9 -0 -0 p .m. Every single
day. True chaos on the page requires extreme
order in the body. It completely flips our romanticized
notion of the tortured, chaotic artist on its
head. He proves that to safely let your mind
free fall into the furthest, most terrifying
reaches of the subconscious. To confront national
trauma or invent parallel universes. Right. To
do all that, you have to have an unbreakable
physical tether to the ground. The relentless
pounding repetition of his feet on the pavement
is what frees his internal automatic dwarfs to
build without the whole structure collapsing.
That is so profound. let's just step back and
look at the incredible arc we've traced today.
It's been quite a journey. We started with an
ordinary guy running a jazz club who experienced
a sudden inexplicable epiphany at a baseball
game. We watched him rebel against his literary
heritage to become a black sheep, stubbornly
writing about talking frogs and detached men
to capture the disorientation of the modern world.
And then we saw a real world tragedy force him
to transform. Yeah, from a passive observer into
a committed defender of the fragile egg against
the crushing walls of society. And finally, we
discovered that the engine powering this massive
global creative output is the relentless daily
rhythm of a marathon runner. It is a profound
synthesis of imagination, physical endurance,
and social conscience. And I think it reveals
that true creative longevity isn't about waiting
for inspiration. It's about building a structure
strong enough to hold your wildest ideas. Absolutely.
And as we wrap up this deep dive, we want to
leave you, the listener, with a final thought
to mull over. This is drawn from his 2023 novel,
The City and Its Uncertain Walls. A great book
to end on. When discussing the themes of the
book, Murakami noted, that the global pandemic
and recent geopolitical conflicts have created
massive invisible walls that divide people, fueling
a culture of intense fear and skepticism. Which
is very relevant right now. Highly relevant.
Regarding the novel's core dilemma, he has a
very profound question. How is it possible for
both extreme isolation and warm feelings of empathy
to coexist? That's a powerful question. And I
want to challenge you to look at your own environment
through that exact lens. Think about the walls
you have built around yourself for protection,
whether they are professional boundaries, emotional
detachment, or ideological echo chambers. Are
those walls actually protecting you or are they
just locking you in? A tough question to ask
yourself. It is. And more importantly, how can
you deploy your own internal automatic dwarfs
of imagination to finally break through them?
Because if a guy running a tiny jazz bar can
figure out how to dismantle the walls of global
literature just by trusting his own strange,
uncertain rhythm, well, maybe the walls around
us aren't as indestructible as they seem. That's
the hope. Keep listening to the music, keep pounding
the pavement, and we'll see you on the next Deep
Dive.