Thhe non-Japanese Murakami fans were young, for the most part, with most in their twenties or thirties. It seemed to me to be mostly a Capital Hill or Queen Anne crowd, with few representatives hailing from LeBark. (Lynnwood Edmonds Burien Auburn Renton Kent) This, I should add, did not surprise me terribly. I was also happy to see that the crowd offered a diverse racial/ethnic mix.
 
Murakami made his entrance shortly after seven-thirty. By this point the room had filled to near-capacity, and the view from our table, which had been Pretty Good when we arrived, had progressively worsened until now, completely obstructed by standing fans, it could be euphemistically rated Auditorily Adequate. I stood for a moment to get a look at the Man himself, adding my own bobbing and ducking head to the sea of them around me as I searched in vain for a window of visibility. At length I was rewarded, and could see Murakami now standing before the podium following his brief introduction by an EBBS staffer. Murakami-shi was comfortably attired in a white button-up shirt and simple black blazer. He wore a relaxed, almost stoic expression that belied a lack of enthusiasm for these events. He seemed very likable.
 
He introduced himself, spoke briefly about the book, it's history, and the translator, Jay Rubin, who had been, he said, a former faculty member at WSU (actually, it was UW). After a few minutes of this he began to read from his new book, first in Japanese and then in English. He read right from the beginning in both cases, finishing at the "[10 minutes] ...like cooking spaghetti al dente" part. (Actually, he read further in the Japanese, but with the difference in reading speed between the two languages they both came out to be about the same length.) His spoken facility with English was not remarkable, but it did, as he said it would in his introduction, lend a certain "exotic flavor" to the piece.
 
Hearty applause accompanied his segue into the Q and A portion of the evening. Unfortunately, I was so far removed from the main room that I missed hearing many of the questions asked by the audience. I was able to hear the answers in almost all cases, though, and could usually grasp the subject matter, if nothing else. One especially enjoyable response was to that of a woman who asked a detailed, convoluted question about sheep, earnestly invoking well-considered examples of sheep allusions, speculation on things ovine. and literary references from various Murakami novels before asking just what was the significance of this whole sheep business, anyway. When Murakami replied, you could almost hear a kind of unzari, a tiredness in his voice. He had answered the question, or questions like it, many times, I thought. It went something like, "When I, myself, think of or write about sheep, I pretty much just think sheep. That's it. Just sheep. I mean, sure, you're free to have your opinion and everything, but...nope... sheep. [scattered snickering can be heard in the audience at this point] That's right. Just sheep. [shrugs] Yup. That's all. Not much more to it than that. Sheep.
 
Anyway, at some point the questions resumed, with many such readin'-a-little-into-it-are-ya-there? kind of questions effectively silenced for the duration of the evening. (At least until the book signing.) He spent the next twenty ot thirty minutes answering predictable questions. Except for one, that is. (I must add this) One alert reader noticed a "subtle" difference between the opening scenes of both his latest Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and a short story published in English under the name "The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women." He asked Murakami about it, and the author explained that the translators for each were different, perhaps contributing to the different "flavor" of the two works. And then he added, pointedly, "And, of course, I rewrote it." (After reading both, this is pretty obvious, even for me, and I'm stupid.) At any rate, the iyami made it across pretty clearly.
 
I found myself wanting to take the opportunity to ask him, well, something, but couldn't come up with a question worthy of his time. I briefly considered asking him about a piece of symbolism that had puzzled me from his short story Panya SaiShuugeki. It was this huge, underwater volcano that a ravenous, daydreaming man sees, gazing through the surface of the ocean while floating atop a small inflatable raft. Murakami returns to the scene again and again in the story, and I never figured out what on Earth (ittai nani...??) he was trying to say with it. But the more I thought about it, the sillier the question seemed. It was just too obscure to ask in front of god and everyone like this. And besides, I was too far back to get called on anyway. So I saved it, and considered other opportunities. "The Book Signing. All right."
 
He answered more questions, speaking about his distaste for Norwegian Wood and how he really thought of Wind-Up Bird as a turning point, a positive transition in his writing and his career. He spoke about translating the works of Raymond Carver, an American author who lived in the Northwest until his death in 1988, and how he hoped to translate them all some day. He responded to questions about the similarity of his work to that of Carver's, and mentioned that Carver had become one of the best-loved foreign writers among Japanese readers. He seemed willing to go on indefinitely, and might have, had not the Elliot Bay staffer brought the Q&A session to close and initiated the move en masse to the Book Signing.
 
We of "the other room" were fortunate this time, because the signing area was set up only feet away. We were well-positioned for an early ingress into the line that had already begun to form, and wasted no time securing a spot among the book-toting horde. Things got pretty dicey pretty fast, with people all around jockeying for position and the boundaries of the line fading fast. I felt a little guilty standing there with *two* books instead of just the one being promoted (actually I was holding a copy of the English translation and the first volume of the Japanese, but anyway) until I looked around and saw people with four, five, even six different volumes balanced before them, entire libraries that had been stuffed into duffle bags or whatnot to be graced by Murakami's pen. Frankly I thought it was a little inconsiderate, what with about twelve thousand people now massing behind the table, and Murakami armed with a single stylus to stave them off.
 
"This is gonna be brutal," I thought.
 
I did my time in the line, all twenty minutes or so. This older guy behind me complained incessantly about the way the signing was being done, how the line should have gone this or that way, how the process was a flop, how it woulda been better if [your great idea here], etc. etc. until I wanted to crack him on the nose with my own weighty volume of Wind-Up. We were packed in there pretty tightly, I gotta say, though, and when my turn came up I was glad to be free of the throng and standing before The Man himself.
 
I had spent the last twenty minutes trying to think of what to say. I was nervous. Whenever I get in these situations I always end up babbling idiotically and embarrassing myself to death. I knew I'd get the first word or two out and then ->gurk<- I'd just blurt out something completely random like, "I've read all your books, and...uh...say, do you wear boxers or briefs? Or worse, I'd decide to use Japanese instead, likely producing something close to "I'm a big...fan..and I all books stories saxophone about many fourteen yellow...um...tokoroga, do you wear boxers or briefs? I was under a great deal of stress. I decided to speak Japanese after all, and I had rehearsed my question many times before finally having the opportunity to ask it. I planned to ask him about the volcano. I stepped up, the book-prep woman slipped my books over to him, and he began signing furiously. "I have a quick question, if that's okay," I started. "ii desu yo," he replied, looking up at me for the first time. "Well, it's about The Second Bakery Attack, and that volcano down at the bottom of the ocean. What was that supposed to symbolize?" He looked up at me blandly. "Nothing. It symbolizes nothing. It's whatever you want it to be. Sore wa anata no jiyuu desu." "Oh," I replied. "I mean, you know, we debated it and everything in my Japanese class, trying to understand the significance of it." He just looked at me. "I see." It occured to me then that he was very busy.
 
I thanked him and stepped away, the movement assisted by the sharp elbow a squat, elderly Japanese woman who was apparently tired of waiting. Yaseiji was there, my camera in hand and having "captured the moment," as it were. As we made for the exit I saw a line of fans that stretched off and out of sight, each person waiting with his or her stack of books, and realized why Murakami was doing a two-stop tour. I felt for him, and was grateful that he had picked my city. I gave a short nod in the direction of the signing area as we ascended the stairs, and said good night to the man.
 
Ganbatte, Murakami-san.
 
 
Denbushi
Seattle
December, 1997