Chapter 109 Haruki Murakami's Reaction

Suginami Ward, Tokyo.

In an extremely unassuming detached house, the stylus of a record player glides slowly along the grooves, playing a soft and restrained jazz piano piece.

Haruki Murakami sat in his private study, with a glass of malt whisky with ice balls beside him.

The furnishings in his study, like his writing, were clean and tidy, with each item quietly in its proper place.

The bookshelves along the wall were neatly arranged with a large number of original English novels, and in the corner were several pairs of running shoes with different levels of wear. There was even a ceramic cat sculpture that he had brought back from Greece lying on the windowsill.

The record had just switched to the third track on side B.

Just then, the study door was pushed open very roughly from the outside, shattering the perfect tranquility.

"Haruki! Did you see that?!"

The one who barged in was Murakami Ryu, an eccentric genius who was known as "W Murakami" along with him, but whose personality was completely opposite.

With his signature slightly messy curly hair, clutching a special edition proof he had just obtained from an insider at the publishing house, he stormed up to Haruki Murakami's oak desk, exuding an air of untamed arrogance.

"Those guys at Kadokawa Shoten have gone mad!"

Murakami Ryu slammed the proofbook onto the desk with a loud thud, pointing sharply at the table of contents on the cover with his finger. "Look at this order—the first story, Kitahara Iwao, 'Railway Man,' is at the very beginning. The second story is your 'Tony Falls Valley'!"

Murakami Ryu's voice trembled slightly with extreme anger as he asked, "Who are you?"

"You are Haruki Murakami! You are Haruki Murakami, the author of 'Norwegian Wood,' which has sold millions of copies!"

"Kadokawa Shoten actually puts a newcomer like you on their shoulders?"

"This is a blatant insult to literary veterans!"

Murakami Ryu paced anxiously back and forth in his study, growing increasingly agitated: "Say something! Should I contact some critics I know and put pressure on Kadokawa Shoten and 'Wild Age'?"

"We absolutely cannot tolerate this kind of behavior. If they dare to treat you like this today, they'll dare to trample the rules of the entire literary world underfoot tomorrow!"

Haruki Murakami remained silent in the face of Ryu Murakami's fury.

He picked up his whiskey and took a sip; the ice cubes clinked against the glass, making a soft, crisp sound.

Then, he waved his hand with utmost calmness.

"Sit down, Dragon."

Haruki Murakami's voice was completely flat, but the calmness in his tone was like a block of ice, abruptly cutting off Ryu Murakami's burning anger.

Faced with Haruki Murakami's indifferent reaction, Ryu Murakami, the usually unruly and eccentric genius, curled his lip and finally sat down heavily in the leather chair opposite the desk.

There's no need to file a complaint.

Haruki Murakami placed the whiskey glass back on the table and said, "Actually, I've been very interested in Kitahara Iwao lately."

"A while ago, I made a point of setting aside time to carefully read through the two works that won him the double award."

Murakami Ryu paused slightly, then asked, "You read it?"

"Um."

Haruki Murakami leaned back in his chair, his gaze fixed on the book "The Scream" on the bookshelf. As if recalling the tactile experience of reading it, he said, "The Scream is indeed an extremely sharp scalpel. It accurately picks out the festering sores of society, and the incision is very venomous. And the structural trick of the substitution reversal, and the way it integrates with deep social criticism, frankly, I haven't found another work like it in the same genre that I've read."

At this point, Haruki Murakami paused, picked up his wine glass, and took another sip.

"As for 'Love Letter'..."

Haruki Murakami tilted his head slightly: "It's a bit too much of a pursuit of aesthetics."

"The emotional intensity is somewhat oversaturated, and the way it concludes feels a little contrived. Of course, as the winner of the Akutagawa Prize, its quality is undoubtedly top-notch."

"It's just that in my personal aesthetic system, it's slightly inferior."

This commentary is extremely frank, even carrying a hint of subtle bias that only masters at the same level are qualified to reveal.

After hearing this, the anger on Murakami Ryu's face was gradually replaced by another expression.

And that expression is one of confusion.

Murakami Ryu spoke up, "Since you think his work has flaws, then you shouldn't accept this ranking at all!"

Haruki Murakami shook his head.

You didn't understand what I meant.

Haruki Murakami slowly raised his glass to his eyes, calmly gazing at Ryu Murakami across from him through the amber liquid that refracted a faint light.

But in those usually calm eyes, a rare glimmer of light flashed.

"What I just evaluated were only the two works he has already published. The one that Kadokawa Shoten dared to put ahead of me this time is a new manuscript that I have not yet read."

Haruki Murakami continued, "Hideaki Otani has been a senior editor for twenty years, and Haruki Kadokawa is an old fox who has spent half his life in the publishing industry. They know better than anyone what level of shock it means to have the name of a new writer firmly placed above mine."

"Since they dared to do this at the risk of upending the literary world, it can only mean that this piece, 'Railway Man,' is..."

There was not a trace of anger or resentment in Haruki Murakami's tone, but rather an extremely pure yearning belonging to a top creator.

"It has the power to surpass Tony Falls."

Murakami Ryu opened his mouth, but ultimately swallowed his rebuttal.

He knew his old friend all too well.

Haruki Murakami's extreme arrogance about his writing and his almost surgical-like precision in judging literature are well-known throughout the Japanese literary world.

When he so calmly uttered the word "surpass," there was absolutely no trace of a scholar's self-deprecation or affectation in his tone.

He made a professional judgment in an extremely objective manner.

"So, you're just going to sit here like this?"

Murakami Ryu, unwilling to give up, checked it again.

"Besides letting our works speak for themselves, what else can we writers do?"

Haruki Murakami tilted his head back and drank the last sip of whiskey in his glass.

The translucent ice ball hit the empty bottom of the glass with a crisp, clear sound.

"My only thought right now is to wait for the special edition to go on sale in three days and see for myself what kind of story 'Railway Man' tells."

In the corner, the stylus of the record player slid just to the last groove on side B, emitting an extremely faint hissing sound in the quiet study, a sound that signifies an end and a blank space.

"If it really is better than Tony Falls..."

Haruki Murakami narrowed his eyes slightly, a hint of inquiry and curiosity belonging to a pure creator emerging in his eyes.

"Then I really need to study how this young man, Kitahara Iwa, is shaking up this era."

On the evening of the same day.

A duplex apartment in Minato Ward, overlooking most of Tokyo Bay.

Kitahara Iwa was nestled in his large swivel chair, a paperback book with only a few pages turned casually on his desk.

Just then, the plain black landline phone next to me suddenly rang.

"Teacher Kitahara, it's me, Haruki Kadokawa."

On the other end of the phone, Haruki Kadokawa's voice was filled with barely suppressed excitement: "The layout of the special edition is now finalized, and it will be available for sale in three days. I'm calling to personally inform you of the final publication order."

"Your 'Railroad Man' is the first story in the volume. The second story following it is Haruki Murakami's 'Tony Falls Valley'."

Kitahara Iwao was stunned after hearing Kadokawa Haruki's words.

Tony Falls Valley.

He was very familiar with this novel.

In my past life's memories, this was a classic short story by Haruki Murakami, which was later not only included in "The Ghost of Lexington" but also adapted into a film.

He certainly knew what Haruki Murakami had written in this novel.

A wealthy illustrator loses a room full of expensive designer clothes and a middle-class romance, and then sits in an empty room savoring the emptiness.

What he handed over was a miracle that a lowly stationmaster, after losing his daughter, wife, and lifelong faith, witnessed amidst blizzards and absolute loneliness, transcending life and death.

In the early 1990s, the "emptiness" of the elite class described by Haruki Murakami seemed too insignificant compared to the overwhelming "life and death" in "Railroad Man."

Therefore, in Kitahara Iwao's view, it is only natural that "Tony Falls Valley" was ranked after his own.

"Understood. Thank you for your hard work, President Kadokawa and Editor-in-Chief Otani."

Kitahara Iwa responded, and the two exchanged pleasantries for a while before hanging up the phone.

After hanging up the phone, Kitahara Iwa put the receiver back on the landline and leaned back in his chair.

Just then, a thought suddenly flashed through Kitahara Iwa's mind.

Then Kitahara Iwa's gaze lingered slightly on the reflection in the glass window.

It is early February 1990.

In the original historical timeline, Haruki Murakami's "Tony Falls Valley" was clearly not officially published until June 1990.

Now it's been four months ahead of schedule.

Clearly, due to its own butterfly effect, the short story "Tony Falls Valley" was created ahead of schedule.

The shock of his unprecedented "double award" coupled with the premature collapse of the bubble caused by his secret shorting of the Nikkei index and the intense intensification of social sentiment led Kadokawa Shoten to hastily set up this project at a time when it should not have been planned.

Meanwhile, the literary giant in Suginami Ward was also moved by this early invitation from the era, and wrote "Tony Falls" a full four months earlier than the original history.

Thinking of this, Kitahara Iwa looked out the window at the fully lit Tokyo night view and remained silent for a few seconds.

Then, Kitahara Iwao turned around with utmost calmness, reopened the paperback on the table, and looked back at the printed words.

This is not something he needs to think about for too long.

Five days later.

Kadokawa Shoten's special literary issue, "Winter of the Heisei Era: Responding to the Times," is being distributed simultaneously in major bookstores and convenience stores throughout Japan.

The cover features an extremely simple design—a minimalist ivory white background with a line of small print at the top highlighting the purpose of this special issue:

"Literature's uncompromising response to the profound pain of the times."

At the very center is the main title printed with black and gold techniques: "Winter of the Heisei Era: Responding to the Times".

Below the title, two names representing the highest level of literature in Japan are listed side by side: Kitahara Iwao. Haruki Murakami.

Below their respective names, the two feature articles for this issue are highlighted in smaller font: "Railway Man" and "Tony Falls Valley".

The mere fact that these two names appear together on the cover of the same magazine is enough to make any bookstore clerk gasp and then respectfully place it in the most prominent position in the entire store.

And the facts have completely confirmed Kadokawa Haruki's wild prediction.

On the morning of the release day, long queues, unusually long for this cold winter, formed in front of the checkout counters of bookstores across Japan.

The readership that bought this special issue is extremely diverse.

There are absolutely loyal fans of Haruki Murakami, readers of Kitahara Iwao drawn by "The Scream" and the double award, and a large number of ordinary people who have just lost everything in the bursting of the bubble and desperately need to find even a little bit of breathing space in the words.

On crowded commuter trams during the morning rush hour, in quiet company break rooms during lunch breaks, and under the dim lights of late-night izakayas, countless people opened this white special edition.

A significant number of readers, drawn by Haruki Murakami's undefeated legend, turned to the second story, "Tony Falls Valley."

This is an extremely logical choice, after all, for many years, the name Haruki Murakami has meant an absolute dominance in the field of analyzing the inner world of urban dwellers.

They quickly finished reading Haruki Murakami's short story.

When they turned the last page, almost everyone had a very similar expression on their face: a heavy emptiness and deathly stillness, as if their souls had been completely drained.

Haruki Murakami's writing remains as cold and precise as ever.

With his almost transparent brushstrokes, he subtly revealed to everyone the eternally unfillable void deep within a man's soul.

After reading it, you won't burst into tears or become hysterical. You'll just feel like something has been ripped out of your chest, and a biting cold wind is pouring in through that black hole, making you feel a chilling despair from the inside out.

In a JR Chuo Line carriage, a young white-collar worker, having just finished reading "Tony Falls Valley," blankly closed the magazine, leaned against the door, and stared blankly at the rapidly receding gray steel forest outside the window for a long time.

Two middle-aged men stood facing each other in a standing soba noodle shop near Shinbashi Station.

One of them pushed the magazine, which had reached the end of "Tony Falls Valley," to the other side, swallowed the bitter noodle soup in his mouth, and muttered to himself, "After reading it, I suddenly felt... that in this world we're struggling to live in, there really isn't anything worth holding onto."

Haruki Murakami's "Tony Falls" is like an extremely precise gray filter, tightly covering the eyes of every reader and stripping away all color.

however.

When this group of readers, utterly overwhelmed and suffocating by the pervasive sense of emptiness, wearily turned back to the beginning of the special issue and began reading Kitahara Iwao's "Railway Man"...

At this moment, the pent-up emotions of Japanese society were completely ignited.

The first to collapse across the board were the middle-aged people who had just lost their jobs as the economic bubble burst.

In the extremely crowded Yamanote Line carriage during the morning rush hour, a middle-aged man wearing an inexpensive suit and with somewhat disheveled hair was staring intently at a special publication in his hands.

His briefcase was old, and the edges of the artificial leather were worn rough.

He had just received the layoff notice three days ago.

After working for the company for eighteen years, a single, casual letter and a five-minute interview completely wiped out his life.

He saw Sato Otsumatsu in the book.

I saw the old stationmaster who had worked on a remote branch line in Hokkaido for forty years.

Seeing him put on his faded uniform every morning and stand meticulously on the platform in the wind and snow.

Seeing that he lost his daughter and his wife for this railway, and in the end even the small station he had dedicated his life to was to be ruthlessly abolished.

The middle-aged man's hands began to tremble violently.

This is not someone else's story at all; it is a knife precisely plunged into his own heart.

When he read the last few pages, he saw a girl in a red coat walking smilingly out of the snow on a deserted platform on New Year's Eve, softly calling out "Dad."

The tears welled up in the middle-aged man's eyes and instantly burst forth.

Before he could even raise his hand to wipe them away, large, scalding tears fell onto the pages, blurring the printed words into indistinct blobs.

He bit his lower lip hard and desperately lowered his head, trying to hide his completely out-of-control expression with the magazine.

But in the crowded and deathly silent carriage, this extremely suppressed, choked sob, as if something was choking him, still leaked out from his violently heaving shoulders.

The surrounding passengers initially looked at them with surprise, but in this Japanese society where "not causing trouble for others" is extremely important, not a single person spoke up to stop them or showed any disgust.

Because many of them were also holding the same magazine. Some had even turned to the same passage.

The carriage became even more deathly silent than usual.

The only sounds were the monotonous rumble of the train and the sobs of a middle-aged man, which he tried to suppress but could not stop, coming from several different corners.

The same scene, on the same day, spread like a virus to countless corners of Japan.

In a café in Nagoya, an elderly engineer with gray hair solemnly closed the magazine after reading the last page.

He took off his reading glasses and carefully wiped his eyes for a long time with a handkerchief. On the empty chair next to him was a woman's coat.

This belongs to his wife.

His wife had already gone to the bathroom, and he deliberately waited until she was gone before daring to turn to the last page, letting his tears flow freely.

In an affordable izakaya near Dotonbori in Osaka, three middle-aged men who had just been laid off from the same factory sat together.

One of them gritted his teeth and pushed the special edition of "Railway Man," which was turned to the last paragraph, in front of the other two.

The two men huddled together and read the word "Dad" amidst the wind and snow. In an instant, the eyes of these two grown men, whose combined age was nearly a hundred, turned red.

No one read aloud; they simply picked up their cheap liquor glasses, clinked them together forcefully in mid-air, tilted their heads back, and swallowed the spicy liquor along with their tears.

On the evening of the day of release.

As the culture editors of major Japanese newspapers closed the special issue one after another, an extremely unified and shocking consensus spread like wildfire throughout the commentary world at an incredible speed.

Haruki Murakami's "Tony Falls" ruthlessly and precisely dissects the ailing nature of our times.

That is an absolute nothingness.

A sense of "having had everything yet still having nothing" is the ultimate emptiness for modern city dwellers.

It's like an extremely pale pathology report, exposing the deepest ailments in the souls of modern people in every detail.

But it only takes a cold-blooded approach to diagnosis, never to cure.

And Kitahara Iwao's "Railroad Man".

On this frozen land buried by heavy snow and economic ruins, Kitahara Iwao personally handed a pot of life-saving charcoal to more than ten million people struggling in despair.

Kitahara Iwao did not write about stock market investors jumping off buildings, nor about loan sharks pressing for repayment, nor about any specific tragic events that occurred in 1990.

It simply tells the story of an old man, a small station, a heavy snowfall, and a miracle that transcends life and death—the most clumsy yet tender one.

But every Japanese person who was stripped of everything in the bursting bubble saw themselves in the frail figure of Sato Otsumatsu.

The inclusion of these two masterpieces in the same special issue created a chemical reaction that even Haruki Kadokawa had not fully anticipated.

Those readers who prioritized reading "Tony Falls Valley" out of trust in the "Murakami myth" were first thoroughly permeated by a bone-chilling sense of emptiness.

Then, when they returned to the front of the special issue with this seemingly drained body, and fell into the snow-covered landscape of "Railroad Man," they were instantly pierced by Kitahara Iwa.

The suffocating coldness of "Tony Falls" becomes, in this moment, the perfect backdrop for the ultimate tenderness of "Railroad Man".

It's like in absolute, hopeless darkness, someone suddenly and quietly strikes a match.

The reason why a faint light is so dazzling and makes people want to cry is precisely because the darkness around it is deep and cold enough.

Haruki Murakami's writing is extremely cold and penetrating in its depiction of darkness.

Kitahara Iwa struck a match in the darkness.

These two names and these two masterpieces, published in the same magazine, achieved an ultimate resonance that transcends literary genres.

As for the other writers' works in the special issue that painstakingly pile up scenes of usury, bankruptcy, and suicide?

Faced with this clash of masters across time, they didn't even qualify to be compared in the open, becoming nothing more than a desolate footnote in this literary storm, ignored by everyone.

Many citizens who bought the special editions were completely emotionally and mentally drained after experiencing the extreme tear-jerking power of "Railroad Man" and the extreme depression of "Tony Falls Valley".

When they turned to the last page of Haruki Murakami's novels and saw the realistic stories that followed, which were filled with desperate descriptions of gangsters demanding debts and people jumping off rooftops, they felt nothing but noise, contrivedness, and cheapness.

Unable to read even a single line, he wearily closed the entire special issue.

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