German Murakami devotee (a self-described 'Murakamian') from Gütersloh who runs the Haruki Murakami Art YouTube and Instagram channels (mini-documentaries visualizing Murakami's books), co-hosts the podcast Convo on the Shore, and helps admin a Murakami Facebook group. Formerly wrote film reviews for an online magazine and is slowly writing a novel.
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- Abandoning the cat at the beach
Salih relates Murakami's memoir of his father: the family left their cat at the beach, drove home, and found the cat already waiting there, inexplicably. Salih takes this as Murakami's real…
- Salih finds Killing Commendatore at 30
In April 2018, stressed and just past 30 after years of rushed business travel, Salih used a birthday bookstore voucher from his family. On a bright spring day he opened the prominently…
- Building a channel from old hard drives
Drawings online weren't enough for Salih, a visual person frustrated that so few Murakami novels have been filmed. He went through years of his own footage on his hard drives, combined it…
- Murakami helped Salih cope with threatening people
Salih says certain people in his life felt like threats, and turning them into Murakami-style metaphors made them much easier to cope with. Reading Murakami also changed his habits: he now…
- Sad goodbye to the shadow
Salih read Hard-Boiled Wonderland in winter and was left sad and melancholic by the shadow's hard goodbye at the end. Tamir reads the passage aloud and Salih recalls the narrator staring at…
- The Literarisches Quartett blowup
On the German TV show Das Literarische Quartett, one host called the intimate passages in South of the Border, West of the Sun 'fast food' writing. The others shouted that she was prudish…
- Murakami shrugs at Kawakami's questions
In a long conversation, Mieko Kawakami asked Murakami pointed questions about his female characters. Salih recalls his breezy reply ('Oh, I never thought about this... I just write it…
- The 1,000-page German Wind-Up Bird
Salih shows Tamir the blue German edition of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, retranslated from Japanese in 2020 at over 1,000 pages vs. the 607-page Jay Rubin English text, with whole chapters…
Words spoken
If you have something menacing in your life, just imagine this is a small Commendatore sitting in the corner trying to threaten you, but actually it's not real. You see it, but you don't need to take it too seriously.
- Fiction can process collective trauma
Murakami's unexplained wartime incidents and Western mascots can be read as a nation processing war trauma through symbols, just as Germany still processes its history.
- Limbo separates body from mind
Murakami's other world is a limbo between life and death where body and mind split, and a person who loses that unity loses what they stand for.
- Magical realism has no entry barrier
Invented universes like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings keep a barrier between you and the world; magical realism plants the strange inside your ordinary environment, so it is easier to…
The shadow is something that reminds you to not lose yourself into work, losing your passion and creativity, losing your emotions.
Who are we if we don't have any creativity or emotions inside our heads?
- Authors hide their lives in fiction
Writers say little in interviews but leave their histories in their books: Murakami's cats and Tengo's father likely trace back to his own father.
- Check whose eyes the story uses
Before calling a writer sexist, ask whose perspective the story is told from: a young man's thoughts (Norwegian Wood) differ from a grown man's or a woman's own voice.
- Demanding explanations blocks Murakami
Western readers are trained by tidy, logical endings to demand explanations; accepting that strange things can simply happen, as Japanese storytelling does, is the key to enjoying Murakami.
- Don't trade your emotions for work
Murakami's own life (writing, running, an unscheduled rest of the day) embodies the shadow's message: never lose your creativity or emotions to work; do what you love.
Reading fiction pulls you down from something, and it grants you more time for reflection and more time to try other things.
- Metaphors shrink what menaces you
Recasting a real threat as a metaphor (seeing it, but not taking it too seriously) makes it easier to cope with; this is the most practical gift of Murakami's fiction.
- Murakami's daily routine
Murakami wakes around 4 a.m., writes for several hours, then runs; the rest of the day is unscheduled, and he goes to bed by 8 or 9 p.m.
- Non-fiction instructs, fiction calms
Non-fiction hands you guides to follow; fiction calms you, lifts you out of your bubble, and opens perspectives and sparks that daily life never would.
The point of Dance Dance Dance is just do it. Do whatever you can.
- Turn threats into metaphors
When a person or situation feels menacing, picture it as a Murakami-style metaphor (a small Commendatore in the corner) so you can see it without taking it too seriously.
Reading fiction opens you more perspective than someone who talks about daily life only, because we're all living in our own world, in our own bubble.
This is Murakami, you won't get an explanation. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't.
- Translation can change the book
Which translation you read matters: an abridged translation can drop whole chapters that add little plot but much atmosphere, so a fuller retranslation can feel like a new book.
If we only rely on movies, which can't capture everything that a book captures, we're lost. We need books.
- Borrow the characters' slow rituals
Adopt the unhurried routines of Murakami's characters: take time to cook, exercise and reflect.
- Don't force the writing
Jot down thoughts whenever they pop up and wait for the real urge or idea rather than forcing a novel; trust the process.
- Everyman protagonists draw you in
Murakami's protagonists are imperfect, passive introverts pulled into situations by extroverts, not superheroes, which makes their strange journeys feel like they could be yours.