Posts tagged with haruki murakami
- this is not the most accurate translation you’ll ever find. my interest in the project is mostly literary, and my japanese might be called “studied but inept,” like a novice monk in 1500’s latin
- i know of the other partial translation online, but i’m not consulting it, for same reasons as above
- respecting authorial intentions, as expressed in the books foreword, i will not be marking who wrote what on this page. that’s only there with the stories themselves
- let me know what you think, imagined reader. contact link’s there in the menu
- Eisenhower
- Assistant
- Asparagus
- Apartment
- Work
- Allergies
- Encore
- Antithesis
- Interview
- Indian
- Interior
- West Coast
- Etiquette
- Elite
- Elevator
- Sardines in Oil
- All Night
- Onion Soup
- Carpet
- Kama Sutra
- Cutlet
- Camp Fire
- Quiz Show
- Cool Mint Gum
- Club
- Grape Drops
- K
- Coin
- Coffee
- Coffee Cup
- Coca Cola
- Condor
- Surfer
- Sudden Death
- Salary Man
- Season
- Off-Season
- Shaving Cream
- Shigesato Itoi
- City Boy
- Shower
- Jungle Book
- Shortstop
- Jinx
- Squeeze
- Superman
- Star Wars
- Stereotype
- Straight
- Special Issue
- Sweater
- Xerox
- Soft Serve
- Softball
- Direct Mail
- Taxi
- Talcum Powder
- Charlie Manuel
- Chewing Gum I
- Chewing Gum II
- Disney Land
- Debt
- Death Match
- Tent
- Donuts I
- Donuts II
- Dog Food
- Nickname
- Knock
- Highway
- High Heel
- Haruki Murakami
- Bread
- Handsome
- Beer
- Philip Marlowe
- Blue Suede Shoes
- Blueberry Ice Cream
- Playboy Party Joke
- Baseball
- Penguin
- Whale
- Hotel
- Pony Tail
- Margarine
- Masquerade
- Match
- May
- Disco Ball
- Mozart
- Moral
- Rack
- Love Letter
- Last Scene
- Lunch
- Runway
- Raincoat
- Wham!
- Bow Wow
Beer, by Haruki Murakami
-- In honor of
Jingu Stadium
Matsoka's home runs are not
hit for me
—— So the unhappy
beer vendor tells us
1981/5/16
from “An Anthology of Yakult Swallows Poetry”
my translation of the seventy-fifth 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!
Star Wars, by Haruki Murakami
A long time ago
At the limits of the Milky Way
The Yakult Swallows acheive victory…
1986/3/24
from “An Anthology of Yakult Swallows Poetry”
my translation of the forty-seventh 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!
Grape Drops, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the twenty-sixth 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!
In 1806, when my Grape Drop father died, I was only ten. I became an orphan.
You’d think I’d have gotten sympathy, but no. This was a time many orphans, Grape Drops or not. Anywhere I went, with any person, one question hovered in the air: does tis world have any place for a Grape Drop orphan?
Even at the local orphanage I was bullied. There, Orange Drops and Lemon Drops held sway.
So we’ve got us a Grape Drop, huh? those types would say. Not heard of that one.
Soon enough, I ran away to the circus. I became a cowpuncher for them. The docile cattle there treated me nicely. The oldest fed me leftovers and heard out my Grape Drop woe.
I’m sure to have a mother somewhere, I told him. I’m certain she’s the best Grape Drop there is.
Ah, so you’d like some milk? said Papa Cattle. He was old for a cow, so his hearing had worn down.
Unfortunately, life wouldn’t stay easy so long. Papa Cattle was slaughtered soon and partitioned into cutlets. These cutlets were fed to the terrible lion. Perhaps you’d rather call him the great persnickety lion, as to all but beef he’d turn his head and growl. Anyhow, I was shattered and so I fled the circus. I joined the army, became a calvary dog. In 1889, versus Apache in battle, I tore three adult Indians to death with my teeth only, thus was given the sobriquet “White Fang”. The President invited me to the White House, but I politely declined. I had decided I had to find my mother.
The first I even heard of another Grape Drop was 1936, in the Spanish Civil War. I was in Madrid with Ernest Hemingway, drinking sherry.
Hey Ernest, I asked him. Can we talk?
He was dead drunk, head on table, face turned down. Therefore I smacked his head with my revolver, splashed ice water where the bruise would form.
Grapefruit! he attempted.
Wrong! I called. I smacked him one more time.
It would be three days before he sobered.
Grape Drops, he said. So you’re the Grape Drop child, huh.
Tell me, I demanded. Who’s the Grape Drop mom?
You shouldn’t ask. You don’t wanna know.
I pulled my revolver out again and clocked him.
Fine, he said. Oh fine. Your mother last summer, some revolutionary guys. They kidnapped her and used her for her body. It wasn’t nice. She fled and hid away as a tire repairman.
So I spent the next three years all the country, begging clues from every mechanic’s shop I found. I turned up nothing.
Dear Ernest, I wrote to Ernest Hemingway. Please, just tell me anything you can.
He didn’t know a thing. He said I’d have to ask John Steinbeck. So there I was, crashing the Nobel banquet in Stockholm. Afterwards, I waylaid him outside.
John, please tell me anything about Grape Drops.
Grape Drops, huh, he sighed. You know, I met one two years back, in a hamlet in Texas. I think she’d worn a hernia belt.
In order to cut back smoking, I recently tried sucking on grape drops. I wrote this story in their honor.
translator note: this ones an odd one. to try and recreate the zany tone, i went with a more orginal english voice, but i didn't change any details. give or take a thing, the story's this
Asparagus, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the third story 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!
Of all places on earth, we got lost in a field of asparagus. Our plan was to reach our village early that morning, but by the time we understood we were stuck in the vast asparagus the sun was sinking in the west. The passing wind carried a chill, along with the ominous scent of the asparagus.
In attempt to find our time and place I pulled a map out from my bag, but I learned nothing. No asparagus farm was listed there.
— What’s the point? I said. Even if we knew the way home, we’d never reach it.
My younger brother was lighter than me, so he climbed a tree that rose from the asparagus. He clung to its trunk with one hand, just like a monkey, and squinted into the distant horizon.
— I don’t get it, I can’t see nothing, he said. Not even lights.
— How’s that possible? my younger sister asked, tears in her eyes.
— It’s ok, don’t worry at all, I said. You all gather firewood for the night. I’ll see if I can dig us up a ditch, find some ground water.
As instructed, my siblings worked to gather sticks of dried asparagus, covering their mouths to prevent breathing its overpowering vapors. Meanwhile with a short shovel I started on my ditch. A dry, meter-deep ditch: it was hardly enought to be called a placebo, but what else did I have? Anything to soothe my frightened siblings.
The moon by now had risen in the sky, its light dyeing the mists that rose above the asparagus blue. Scattered birds now fell to the ground, began to flap their wings in terror. Soon—once the moon was all the way above us—they would be caught up in the roots of the asparagus. To think: a full moon on this of any night.
— Crouch your bodies low everyone, I said. Make sure your head’s under their gas. Don’t fall asleep. As soon as you fall asleep, the vines will grab you.
The longest night of our lives had just begun.
Meet Me in a Dream translatoion
a few notes on my translations of Meet Me In a Dream:
stories
(with links to translation, if available)
Eisenhower, or 1958's Place in Postwar History, by Haruki Murakami
my translation of the first story 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!
September 26, 1958, evening: it grows dark on the Brooklyn Bridge. Sonny Rollins is alone, practicing his scales on a tenor saxophone.
“Hey old man,” a child passing by asks him. “Whatcha up to?”
“Fightin the atomic beast,” Rollins says.
“I bet,” the child answers. “That’s a lie.”
…
At that very moment, President Eisenhower leads troops through the deserts of New Mexico, to struggle life and death against a repulsive and real atomic beast, which has four large, scissor-like pincers.
“Mr. President, if it keeps like this, the world will be destroyed,” the Secretary of the United Nation announces to the war room, exhaustion audible in his voice. “Our weapons cannot match it.”
“Lord, forgive us,” the president growls. “We’ve given birth to that which can’t be born.”
Snip snip snip snip snip: the beast advances. It crushes tanks and soldiers in its way.
…
“Hey, you got my donuts?” my nine-year-old self asks ask my mother. Her back is to me, in the kitchen, so I raise my voice.