How Jazz Influenced Haruki Murakami
(Muh. Syahrul Padli — Head of Penghayat Sumur Community)
Jazz has a long history in Japan, with the first jazz clubs opening in Tokyo in the 1930s. By the 1950s, jazz had become a major influence in Japanese popular culture.
Haruki Murakami, the world known Japanese author, was exposed to jazz from a young age and has been a fan of the genre since then. He even owned a bar in Tokyo called Peter Cat, where he and his customers would listen to jazz records.
The musical elements of jazz have had a major influence on the works of him too. His novels often use the language of jazz as a metaphor for life, and the music has a direct influence on the characters and stories he creates.
This influence can be seen in Murakami’s characters in his novels which often feature characters dealing with loneliness and alienation. It is a common theme in jazz music.
Besides that, we can feel something like music in his novels. He plays with tempo, vibe and tone. If we noticed it, we could hear organized noise like music.
May it’s caused of the revelation his got when he watched a baseball game for few decades ago. Something dropped from the sky and he could grasp it with his hands. He called that moment as the moment of revelation. After that moment, he could put his abstract music in his head into the concrete forms such as short stories, novels, and even memoirs.
You will experience free improvisation like a pianist playing solo with great variety, the drummer playing tempo and the saxophonist playing their saxophone freely. It may sound disorganized and chaotic to those unfamiliar, but when we feel the resonance of its energy, we will experience a kind of beauty.
So, in the same way, Murakami’s surreal style can be seen as a way to liberate readers to participate in their own improvisation. I can say that Murakami wants to transmit his story in this way.
In addition, Murakami has written books that are directly inspired by jazz. His novel “South of the Border, West of the Sun” is about a jazz pianist, and his short story collection “After the Quake” includes a story about a jazz band.
