Taxi, by Shigesto Itoi
my translation of the 56th story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
—What am I, a rat? You trying to smoke me out? The cigarette!
—Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll put it out. [huun]
—Window! You gotta open the window. The car’s gone all fogged up. How’m I supposed to see ahead to merge? [skriiii]
—Ain’t that a bit dangerous there?
—Ah, come on. I’m running a business here. Don’t I got mouths to feed? [huuuu-huun]
—I guess the AC’s got me a bit cold. On edge, whatever.
—You’ll be outta here soon enough. Don’t be so selfish. I’m the one in here all day you know, sweating my ass off. [huuuuuun]
—Yeah, fair enough. I’m sorry.
—Sorry, sorry. Again with sorry. Apologies meant anything, we wouldn’t have the cops. [skrriiih] Ok, we’re here.
—Wait. I said Omote-sando. This is Aoyama.
—This is Omote-sando.
—No, I wanted Omote-sando station. This is Omote-sando an Meijidori. Different place. [huuu]
—That’s where we are, Omote-sando. You’re telling me there’s another Omote-sando? [huuuuuun]
—There is! It’s a whole street. Omote-sando. We’re where it crosses Meijidori.
—Then where’s the Meijidori shrine? You see that sign there? What’s it say? [huun]
—Omote-sando, I know, I get it. Just take me to Meijidori shrine, huh. [huuuuuun] I’m keeping the window open, it doesn’t close. Do whatever you want with the air conditioning.
—Sure. 900 yen.
—Here, fine.
—Five thousand? I don’t have change for that. I’m a busy guy. Too many customers, large bills.
—So then I can’t pay? What is it with you?
—Oh, come on. Old cabbie’s joke. Lighten up.
—Is that really how you treat a customer?
—Fall on your principles, huh? Customer’s always right? I know your type.
—God, just go and get my change already.
—Fine, asshole.
—What!? [clink. clink. shkkukkah]
—Ah, ouch, shit, fine. I don’t need change anyway. Stop hitting me.
—No. I got the money. [bwwp. clank. chinkah] Might as well get use of it. Go on, call the police if you so want.
–I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Please. Just stop.
—If you’re apologizing, why stop there? Why not just stop being an asshole? Ain’t that better?
This above may only be a story, but as I’m sure you see, it has a message. I am happy to have shared it.
translator's note: translation? no. localization. more or less. obviously i kept street names and currencies, a bit about tokyo locations as best as i could translate (i dont know tokyo that well), but Itoi really has such fun a voice, i cant resist the urge to americanize. he is voicey, i am voicey. you judge yourself if i changed whos "in the right"
Soft Serve, by Shigesato-Itoi
my translation of the 53rd story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
I wonder, are there criminals still who kidnap kids by offering them ice cream?
When I was that precious, young, kidnappable age, I heard the warnings all the time. And it made some sense. Who wouldn’t succumb to ice cream then?
Soft serve ice cream—the only kind a kid could care about—was discovered by artisan mistake. The cone was added after to give the cream a place to rest when your tongue needed a break from the cold. These were things I’d known. I knew that the white ice cream was vanilla, the brown was chocolate, the red was strawberry. I knew you could buy a swirl of any two. I knew if you ate it scrupulously from the top till you hit the cone, you’d condemned yourself to sticky hands. I knew you had to lick around the sides, to make a column.
All I didn’t know then was the taste.
When something tastes bad, it goes, you can’t forget it. When something’s good, the memory won’t stay.
Once I reached the bottom of any cone, its little recesses so much like netting… once I’d ate those last few crunchy bits… The taste of soft serve had already left me.
If only I could have had a cone three whole days in a row—no, even just two cones two days alone—then the taste would stay forever mine.
But no: such a dream was no more than delicious fantasy. The true sweet memory of soft serve ice cream would remain an abstract thing, no more than a tempting topic of discussion between friends.
Translator's Note: again, with Itoi, this: the way he strings his sentences together feels so natural in Japanese, but I can't adapt it to English quite the same, not without altering the casual voice. Instead, as usual, I fall to punctuation. See those ellipses there? I made them up. They're an original. Again, I err on the side of "a casual deal."
Jinxes, by Shigesto Itoi
my translation of the 44th story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Were any black cats to cross my path, I wouldn’t mind. I own a black cat, after all.
No: it’s days I lose the Nobel Prize I consider bad luck. Last year, for example, I put a quarter in a pay phone but my call didn’t go through. Worse, my quarter stuck and never tumbled back to me.
Days when I lose legs in bad car accidents: those are bad luck too. Last time that happened to me I dropped a hot dog not long after. Its meat went rolling down the asphalt.
Rainy days as well are never good—brand new umbrellas soaked right through.
Being mugged at midnight: what a horrible omen it always is! Last time I was robbed, I soon forgot to toss the compost.
What of entering a classroom, say, chock-full of the most beautiful coeds any eye could see? No good! Excitement overwhelms, one wets oneself.
No: but worst of all’s one’s dying day. Mine, for example, I happened to win the lottery, but I had no mortal way remaining to collect it.
translator's note: avid reader's will notice two quirks in my writing here which color the way this reads. 1) my overuse of the otherwise rare colon (punctuation) in these works, as a cheapo way of replicating the Japanese particle は (look it up if you must). I happen to like this construction in English and use it lots in my originals, but it tends to make this sound more Japanese than it would otherwise. 2) Itoi write with tongue-in-cheek indifference (not just here, where thats the joke), and in attempting to match that I go for voicy. Unfortunately, here I betray myself a "country boy", at least in origin. Pretend my slang ain't dated. Pretend its 28 years old and cool.
Shigesato Itoi, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the 39th story (out of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
Truth be told, I’ve only met Shigesato Itoi a couple times. I don’t know him so well. By nature of my work I’m often alone, and I’m also shy by my own nature, so this isn’t only true of Itoi: there are many like him I barely know. And yet so often do I see his face or read his work in magazines, I feel we’re in constant contact. He’s a familiar face.
I’ve been a fan of his prose since I first read it nearly a decade ago, in Friends of the Middle Classes in Treasure Island1. What a wonderful place to meet him: in his work.
In this world there’s good people who are terrible writers, same as there’s terrible people who write well. Where does Itoi fit in this spectrum? As always, he’s been a hard one to pin down. Perhaps we can say it like this: he in a different category than “novelist.”
As in a street fair for example (strange comparison, I know), once a “novelist’s” prose has closed up shop for the day, it’s lingering heat or shadow, perhaps, remains.2 Itoi’s work however, once it’s packed and left, doesn’t leave a trace. The street remains as empty as before. Existence is the same as non-existence, and in that way Itoi has caused a heavenly transformation, in my opinion. Daily life is celebration now.
Translator's note: this was a hard one for me (check the longer time since my last one!), as its less ironic and literary and more of an essay style. thus, in a stroke of terrified retreat, I've kinda sorta imitated other Murakami translators' Murakami voices, specifically the whole 'sentence length and vibe.' i hope you still like it, huh. hope it's familiar
Footnotes
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a Japanese counterculture magazine, to my understanding (which is not great). something like Rolling Stone or Playboy. Jun Togawa had some involvement with it though, which makes it cool to me ↩
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allow me this translator’s hubris: if i were doing more of a “localization” i’d compare this to more of a farmer’s market, and i’d say how a stand there leaves behind stems and trash ↩
K, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the twenty-seventh story (of 99) of 夢で会いましょう [Meet Me in a Dream] by Haruki Murakami and Shigesato Itoi, not guaranteed to be accurate. see the intro post to read more!
K: the eleventh letter of the alphabet.
Used in a sentence: That morning K woke from troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a door mat.
That morning K woke from troubled dreams to find himself transformed into a door mat.
What’s happened to me? he thought. Of all things, I’ve become a door mat?
The first to see his new form was a co-worker.
Is this some practical joke? his co-worker asked. Are you planning some prank for the Christmas party?
No, unfortunately not. It’s real, was K’s reply.
Well, ok. No need to yuck your yum, I guess. By the way, did you fill out your transformation intakes?
Transformation intakes?
Forms. Oh man, you’ll have to. Your tax bracket’s gotta change. Your base deduction shrinks by, oh what is it, ten percent I think for door mats.
Really?
Yep, unfortunately so. If only you’d become an ironing board. They only lose like three percent of it.
The next person K spoke to was a friend, a literary critic.
Hey, I can’t help but notice, this friend asked. Are you a door mat?
Yes, indeed, I am, was K’s reply.
You can’t be serious.
Wipe your feet.
His friend did just that: he wiped his feet across K’s surface. That was that: established fact.
Anyways, why a doormat? his friend asked.
It’s not my fault.
Not your fault? That feels more Camus than Kafka.
The last person to see him was his girlfriend, who worked in publishing. She tripped over the door mat, which was him, while stepping out. She hit her head against the mailbox.
Oh, I’m sorry, she said. I’ve been up all night putting finishing touches on a manuscript. They shifted the table of contents on me last minute. Anyways, why are you a door mat?
A total escape from life, was K’s reply.
What a pity. Is there anything I can do. Might true love’s kiss transform you back?
I’ve already tried that.
Ha ha. Funny.
Anyways, that’s such a backwards thought. Are we the British? Leave me at the door of some all-girls dormitory, if you must. That the only help I can afford.
Seems simple enough. If I do, will I inherit your cassette deck?
Sure, of course.
Your Boz Scaggs and Paul David records?
I won’t need ‘em.
I’ve always liked those Hawaiian shirts you have.
Well now they’re those Hawaiian shirts that you have.
And of course, I can borrow your car…
Now and then you’ll have to change the oil in it. Oh, and get the clutch checked. It’s been making this terrible noise.
You can count on me.
So K lived happily then on ever after as the door mat at a woman’s boarding house. No office, no more literature, no publishing at all. Not so bad an ending, come to think of it.
translator's note: at some event or another i jokingly called this book a collection of literary shitposts (might have even wrote it elsewhere on this blog), and nowhere is this truer than this little lark. a kafka parody that all the sudden loses interest in itself. a structure for half-assed little jokes. i love it. i did my best to keep a sort of full indifferent tone