Writing novels is about rhythm, says Haruki Murakami

Tokyo: Best-selling Japanese author of Norwegian Wood, and Kafka on the Road, Haruki Murakami said on a radio show that writing novel was about rhythm like in music and running.

Murakami hosts a special radio show that features his favourite songs. During his show on August 5 night, the author played nine songs and went on talking about stories behind the songs, before comparing writing to music and running.

Growing up he had no plans to becoming a writer. After university, he found himself running a jazz bar in Tokyo. Associated Press reported the author as saying that music was his thing and that’s where his style came from.

Murakami, a long-time contender for Nobel Prize in literature, is a native of Kyoto, brought out his first novel Hear the Wind Sing in 1979. However, Murakami decided to become a writer only the prior year, exactly at around 1.30 p.m on April I. The epiphany came as was watching a baseball game at Jingu Stadium, Tokyo.

His 1987 opus Norwegian Wood established him as the rising literary star, and over the years there followed notables including IQ84, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and the latest being Killing Commandatore.

Rightly as the author puts, most fans might have noticed music offering motifs in his works. Aside from being a writer, he is a runner finishing some 30 maronthons, which he initially used as means to shed weight accumulated from long-overhaul siting to write books.