One reason recognition by the media and consecration through academia are particularly important to Murakami within the Anglophone context is that—as a foreign writer published in translation—he is largely excluded from the game of literary prize giving. As James English has illustrated in his study of cultural prizes, there was a great proliferation of literary prizes in the US and UK during the 20th century. English estimates that the ratio of number of literary prizes to new titles published each year has risen tenfold since the 1920s. In the US, the number of literary prizes rose from fewer than fifty in 1935 to more than a thousand at the turn of the century. In the UK, the
number rose from half a dozen “significant” literary prizes before the war to more than three hundred today (English 2005: 324-5). Of the hundreds of literary prizes awarded in the United States annually, the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, PEN/Faulkner Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award are arguably the most prestigious awards for literary fiction. The $15,000 PEN/Faulkner Award, awarded since 1981, honors “the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year” (Pen Faulkner Foundation). The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, awarded since 1917, is awarded to “distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life” (Pulitzer Prize Office), and the National Book Award, awarded since 1950, recognizes “excellence in American writing” with the mission to “increase the impact of great writing on American culture” (National Book Award). Unlike the above three prizes, which are only open to living American authors, the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award, founded in 1974, is “open to all books published in the US in English, including translations.” In 2008, for example, Natasha Wimmer’s English translation of the novel 2666 by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño (who had died in 2003) won the NBCC Award for Fiction. Across the Atlantic in the UK, the most influential of the three hundred-plus literary prizes remains the Man Booker Prize, awarded for a full-length novel written by “a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe” (The Man Booker Prizes). While there are exceptions such as the £60,000 Man Booker International Prize, awarded every two years since 2005 to a living author whose work is written in English or “available in English translation”, and Ireland’s IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, both of which consider works
translated into English alongside works originally written in English, most of the major literary prizes in the US and UK have restrictions related to nationality and residency and exclude translations from consideration. For the most part, literature in translation is considered a separate category to be evaluated through prizes such as the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Critics such as Masashi Miura have suggested that Murakami is just as much an American writer as he is a Japanese writer. For all official purposes, however, Murakami is a “Japanese” writer. He is a Japanese citizen writing in Japanese. This means that, unlike a writer like Ha Jin, who chose to write in English and adopt American citizenship, Murakami is not eligible for most of the major literary prizes in the Anglophone world. However, he has been recognized through other newer mechanisms that function very similarly to the “literary prize”. In 2005, the English translation of Kafka on the Shore was “selected” as a New York Times Best 10 Book and in 2011 1Q84 was selected by Amazon, first as one of the Amazon Best Books of the Month for October 2011, and later that year as one of the Top 20 overall Amazon Best Books of 2011. While these new mechanisms of recognition administered by major media organizations and booksellers have by no means replaced the more traditional awards (the awards industry being one where forerunners always have a significant advantage), their influence appears to be on the rise. One important characteristic of many of these new tools of literary recognition is that, unfettered by decades-old mission statements and selection criteria tied to notions of a national literature, selections appear to be more aligned (to differing degrees) with the tastes (and/or perceived tastes) of the wider reading public. It is interesting to note that the books
included in Amazon's Best Books program are selected by Amazon's editorial team, who “scour reviews and book news for tips on what the earliest readers have loved, trade books amongst ourselves, and fan out to tear through as many of the best books as possible” and make selections during a monthly meeting “to champion the books we think will resonate most with their readership.” Amazon also adds that “Many of our editorial picks for the best books are also customer favorites and bestsellers, but we strive to spotlight the best books you might not otherwise hear about, too” (Amazon.com 2013).
The strengthening of the commercial logic in the US and UK literary fields in recent years has meant that “general readers” now have a greater influence over literary “evaluation” as well as “production”. The impact of the general reader in imbuing prestige through the mechanism of a “literary prize” such as the Quills Awards, where the public votes for winners, may still be limited (as demonstrated by the prize’s discontinuation after just three years). The general reader, however, influences the literary standing of an author more indirectly through the purchase of books. And as Roland Kelts has suggested, “most American readers who like Haruki Murakami’s stories don’t merely like them. They fall in love” (Kelts 2008: 56). Significant resources are invested to ensure Murakami receives “critical attention” because his popularity allows him to generate enormous capital—symbolic, social, and above all economic—for the publishers and professionals associated with him. The general reader’s influence on the measure of “critical success” is on the rise in international publishing and this has borne well for the immensely popular Haruki Murakami.
At the same time, there is no doubt that Murakami benefited greatly from the support of various editors, translators, agents, authors, and other members of the literary community in achieving his current position in the field. David Damrosch has suggested that one of the conditions for a work to be considered “world literature” is that it is “read as literature” and that “a given work can enter into world literature and then fall out of it again if it shifts beyond a threshold point along either axis, the literary or the worldly” (Damrosch 2003: 6). Murakami’s work was “read as literature” when he first made inroads into the US literary system with a selection of short stories in the New Yorker and experimental novels such as A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (signicantly edited and abridged to bring the books in line with Anglophone literary norms). The publication of his more “historical” and “engaged” (again significantly edited and abridged to conform to perceived expectations of Anglophone readers) pushed Murakami further along the “literary” axis, allowing his body of work available in English, including his arguably “lighter” and “less literary” works—described by former NBCC President and Granta editor John Freeman as “amusing and sexy treatments on the anomie of youth” (Freeman 2013: 29) to be read as “literature” at the same time that these lighter works were helping Murakami shift further along the “worldly” (or at least “global”) axis by expanding his readership in other foreign countries. One wonders, for example, how Murakami would have been received (and positioned) within the US literary field if he had first made his American “debut” with Norwegian Wood from a more “commercial” imprint. As mentioned earlier, even his translator Jay Rubin has said that he “would not have liked Murakami’s writing so much if I had first read anything [other than Hard-Boiled
Wonderland and the End of the World], including Norwegian Wood” which he “would have understood only on the most superficial level” (Rubin 2000). It seems entirely possible that without the right kind of context, the “literary merits” of Norwegian Wood would have gone unnoticed. While the influence of the general reader on literary recognition appears to be on the rise, there is also no question that Murakami’s works would not enjoy the kind of critical (and commercial) success they do today without the acceptance and support of America’s literary “gatekeepers”.
Needless to say, however, this initial positioning of Murakami’s work as “literature” did not begin with these key individuals and institutions in the United States. While authors such as Ha Jin and Yiyun Li went straight into the US system, Murakami went through (and still goes through) the Japanese literary system before entering the Anglophone and international markets. And it was within the Japanese system that Murakami’s work was first recognized “as literature”. In the following chapter we will examine how the Japanese literary system served (and continues to serve) as a launching pad for Murakami’s international career.