NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 1 THE COMPLETE TEXT UNABRIDGED Haruki Murakami Read by Rupert Degas, Teresa Gallagher and Adam Sims NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 2 CD 1 1 UFO in Kushiro read by Rupert Degas 6:23 2 Shortly after he had sent the papers back with his seal... 5:19 3 Two young women wearing overcoats of similar design... 5:09 4 Shimao drove a small four-wheel-drive Subaru. 5:41 5 The three of them left the noodle shop... 5:54 6 While she was bathing, Lomura watched a variety show... 6:30 7 Landscape with Flatiron read by Adam Sims 6:56 8 As usual, Junko thought about Jack London’s ‘To build a Fire’. 7:11 9 Junko came to this Ibaraki town in May... 6:16 10 Walking on the beach one evening a few days later... 3:28 11 The flames finally found their way to the biggest log... 7:20 12 The bonfire was nearing its end. 6:57 Total time on CD 1: 73:11 2 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 3 CD 2 1 All God’s Children Can Dance read by Rupert Degas 4:34 2 Yoshiya’s mother was 43, but she didn’t look more than 35. 5:45 3 When Yoshiya turned 17, his mother revealed the secret... 6:39 4 The man boarded the Chiyoda Line train to Abiko. 4:35 5 The train was almost out of Tokyo and just a station or two... 7:33 6 Yoshiya felt a faint throbbing in his temples... 5:38 7 He trod the earth and whirled his arms... 5:33 8 Thailand read by Teresa Gallagher 5:47 9 She stayed on alone at the hotel in Bangkok... 5:01 10 Nimit gave a little nod but said nothing. 3:13 11 The limousine reached its destination at three o’clock... 3:59 12 The pool that Nimit had found was half an hour’s drive... 4:34 Total time on CD 2: 62:58 3 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 4 CD 3 1 ‘Where did you learn English?’ Satsuki asked Nimit. 3:43 2 On her last day before leaving for Japan... 7:13 3 That night, lying in her broad, pristine bed, Satsuki wept. 6:37 4 Superfrog Saves Tokyo read by Adam Sims 4:31 5 Katatiri scanned the room for a hidden TV camera... 5:11 6 As a member of the Trust Bank Lending Division... 5:23 7 Frog looked straight into Katagiri’s eyes and said... 6:21 8 The moment Katagiri arrived at work the next morning at nine... 5:21 9 Frog told Katagiri his plan. 3:48 10 When he woke up, he was in bed. 4:40 11 Frog came to his hospital room that night. 5:31 12 Frog lost his grasp on words... 5:39 Total time on CD 3: 64:05 4 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 5 CD 4 1 Honey Pie 1 read by Rupert Degas 5:32 2 It was almost two a.m. by the time Sala went back to bed. 5:17 3 Taktsuki had Junpei with him when he adopted the same approach... 4:17 4 The fifth day after he stopped going to classes... 5:18 5 Junpei went to his classes the next day... 7:13 6 Takatsuki had landed the job he had always wanted... 5:32 7 Honey Pie 2 Junpei learned just before Sala’s second birthday... 5:24 8 Two years went by. 2:50 9 Junpei was in Barcelona at the time... 7:18 10 The three of them had dinner together as usual... 5:58 11 Sala slept in Sayoko’s bed that night. 4:52 Total time on CD 4: 59:38 Total time on CDs 1-4: 4:19:52 after the quake copyright © Haruki Murakami 2001 English Translation © Haruki Murakami 2002 Cover picture: Hannah Davies 5 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 6 Haruki Murakami On January 17th, 1995, at about a quarter attacks are even more elusive in these to six in the morning, a major earthquake allusive, tangential tales. But this short hit the city of Kobe. It came as a surprise work contains much that is typical of because the city was thought to be Murakami’s style, as well as significant sufficiently distant from any of the major differences; and for some, has proved his fault-lines that scar the underside of most moving and powerful work to date. Japan. Over five thousand people died, a Haruki Murakami was not in Japan further 26,000 were injured and some when the earthquake struck. In some 300,000 were made homeless, including senses, he had not been there for a very Haruki Murakami’s parents. The economic long time. He fell out with his mother and loss has been estimated at about $200 father from an early age, a symptom of the billion. Two months later, on March 20th, rebellion that was gathering momentum in members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult placed Japan in the late 1960s as the new canisters of nerve gas in the Tokyo generation decided to turn away from what underground. Over three thousand people they saw as the stifling nature of traditional were hospitalized, twelve died and some Japanese culture and society. For suffered permanent brain damage. Many Murakami, this meant looking west – to still get headaches, breathing difficulties or American or European literature and music, dizzy spells. after the quake is a collection and especially jazz. He married against his of six short stories set in the February parents’ wishes, and established a jazz café between these two catastrophic events, where he worked until he decided that his and while each one makes a specific true calling was to be a writer. Even here, reference to the earthquake, not one is however, he could not escape the sense of directly about it; and the underground being suffocated within Japan’s booming, 6 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 7 money-crazed society. He escaped to writing for the salarymen back home – Europe for several years with his wife. the commuters who thronged the When he returned to his home country, underground anticipating a lifetime’s however, and produced a massive best- employment for dedication to the hugely seller, he felt so overwhelmed by the successful economy. He was writing for attention and the criticism of the old-school those who felt lost in the world where literati that he had to leave again, finally such things were expected. But something stopping in the United States where he happened to Murakami when he saw the taught at two universities. He had turned news reports of that earthquake; and after his back on his homeland, its traditions, his the quake is different. parents and many of his contemporaries. Not unrecognisably so. Any reader of He felt disenchanted, dissociated and his earlier works will hardly be surprised by disconnected from Japan. the appearance of a six-foot frog striving But not from his readers. In his novels, to save Tokyo, or the unresolved mystery he usually uses a first person male of the contents of a little wooden box. narrator, stuck in a vaguely unsatisfactory There are plenty of references to jazz and job, who is a good if ineffective person. the Western classical tradition. But there Weird things happen to him, and he goes are significant departures from his usual along with them. The narrative becomes a style: no first-person narrator, for instance; cross between fantasy and dreamland, a storylines much more closely rooted in fabulous concoction of competing realities experiences the audience can share (giant where the narrator strives to find frogs notwithstanding); a warmth towards something that he cannot define, and the frustrations of daily existence and the usually fails to find it – but is greater for depth of feeling hiding beneath the the effort. There will be long disquisitions surface of almost every life. on art and philosophy, constant references There is also an unusually direct to music and musicians (almost always correlation between the subject of the Western ones), name-checks of brands like book and its meaning. In much of his work, McDonalds, Coke and the like, almost the meaning is quite deliberately kept always a cat or two, and references to beyond the reader’s reach, just as it is the food. Murakami’s audience was universal, protagonist’s, and Murakami delights in and so was his popularity. He was not this tantalising opacity. But here there are 7 NA443212 after the quake booklet 17/10/06 2:34 pm Page 8 levels of metaphor that he openly but from the ground up. Junpei felt an acknowledges. One is for the country itself. entirely new sense of isolation. I have no Japan’s economy had for several decades roots, he thought. I’m not connected to been extremely successful, and people felt anything. that they could expect it to continue. They were convinced that the economic ground The parallels between Junpei and they stood on was secure. As it happened, Murakami at this point are too close to be it was not, and the economy had to deal ignored. This is not to suggest that Junpei with its own quake shortly after.