Haruki Murakami, part 6: Manga Stories

Image source: Tuttle

Haruki Murakami: Manga Stories (Tuttle, 2023) adapts four Haruki Murakami short stories as comics, to powerful effect. Comics are a perfect medium for representing the sudden shifts in Murakami's fiction between everyday life and an alternate reality.

But before going further I have to address the title: "manga" is a term that, outside of Japan, is generally used to indicate Japanese comics. However, Manga Stories is the English-language publication of Le septième homme et autres récits (The seventh man and other stories, Delcourt, 2021), a bande dessinée adapted from four Murakami short stories by Jean-Christophe Deveney and illustrated by PMGL (Pierre-Marie Grille-Liou). The distinction isn't purely academic: it is one more manifestation of Murakami's international appeal. To add a further layer of internationality, Haruki Murakami: Manga Stories was issued by Tuttle, which is now a Hong Kong-based publisher.

The four Murakami stories were written in the decade between 1996 and 2005, and were published in two English-language collections. "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" appeared in after the quake (Knopf, 2002, translated by Jay Rubin), and the other three in Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (Knopf, 2006, translated by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin). All feature Murakami's trademark offhand surreality.

• In "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo," middle-aged salaryman Katagiri returns home from work to find a giant talking frog waiting for him. Frog reveals that in a few days Tokyo will be devastated by an earthquake caused by a huge Worm. Frog will descend beneath Tokyo to battle Worm, and because the struggle will take place directly underneath his office building Katagiri has been chosen to help. But he has no idea how to go about it; meanwhile, the fate of Tokyo rests in the balance. . .
  
  
  

• In "Where I'm Likely To Find It," a woman approaches a private detective for help. The previous week her husband was summoned for assistance by his elderly mother, who lives in the same apartment building. From there he called his wife to say that he would be back soon, and to ask her to make pancakes for breakfast. He then disappeared without a trace. The detective takes the job, but he isn't a detective (he just likes to hear people's stories and try to help them) and it isn't a job (he refuses to accept money). The search for the missing husband begins. . .
  
  
  

• In "Birthday Girl," a woman recounts the story of what happened on her 20th birthday (the equivalent of turning 21 in the U.S.). At the time she was working at an Italian restaurant; on that day she was called by a sick co-worker asking her to take her waitressing shift. She agreed, and when the manager also became ill, it fell to her to take his usual place and deliver the evening meal to the restaurant's owner. Although the owner lived on an upper floor of the restaurant's building, the waitress had never seen him before. On learning that it was her birthday, he offered her a special gift: he would fulfill one wish, whatever it was. He warned her to choose carefully: he could only grant one wish, and once it was granted it couldn't be changed. . .
  
  
  

• In "The Seventh Man," the title character is haunted by a day in childhood when he was caught in a typhoon. After raging wind and rain have battered his family's house, an eerie calm descends: the eye of the storm is passing overhead. The child begs his father to let him go outside, despite radio warnings to stay indoors. His father agrees but cautions him to come right back, and the child heads down to the beach. On the way a playmate sees him and asks to go along. When they reach the beach, it is deserted; the tide is far out, and a vast expanse of sand stretches to the horizon. The boys start to explore the treasures that have been tossed up by the storm—but then the tide starts to come in, quickly. . .
  
  
  

PMGL's drawings are vivid and full of detail; they are like the hyperreality of a dream. He changes graphic styles to match the tone of each story, as in the black-and-white renderings for "Where I'm Likely To Find It." In that story he also effectively employs cinematic framing, such as overhead, reverse-angle, and multiple-exposure views, to represent the protagonist's film noir fantasy. In "Birthday Girl" and "The Seventh Man," which are narrated by a character in the story, the sections in the present have a style different from that of the character's memories. But sometimes it is the lack of a change in style that is significant: in "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" and "The Seventh Man," PMGL avoids signaling whether experiences that seem fantastical, or nightmarish, should be accepted (by the reader or the main characters) as real.

A second volume of Murakami stories rendered in comics by the same team is scheduled to be published in April 2024; it will include "The Second Bakery Attack" from The Elephant Vanishes (Knopf, 1993). Judging on the basis of this first volume of Haruki Murakami: Manga Stories, it will be well worth watching for.

Other posts in this series:

• The English Library novels: Hear the Wind Sing (1979/1987), Pinball, 1973 (1980/1985), and Norwegian Wood (1987/1989)
• The first U.S. publications: A Wild Sheep Chase (1982/1989) and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985/1991)
• The transition: The Elephant Vanishes (1980-91/1993) and Dance Dance Dance (1988/1994)
• International breakthrough: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995/1997)
• Film adaptation: Ryūsuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (2021)
• More film adaptations: Burning (2018) and Norwegian Wood (2010)