Writing a diatribe on my doubts and fears of reading Haruki Murakami's1Q84 in English must've been cathartic, because I read the whole damn thing over the New Year's holiday. 925 pages in seven days. Estimating it took me over 14 months to read 1,650 pages of Japanese text, the time practically flew.

Overall, it's quite similar to Murakami's original, though I find the lack of humor magnified in English. I'm pinning this on the omniscient third-person POV, a departure from his well honed first-person narration. Not to say it reads blandly: both translators, Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel, have some fun. Like this naughty gem from Book 1 Chapter 22:

Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs, theorems sent warm breath into their ears. Since meeting Fuka-Eri, however, Tengo no longer felt sexual interest in such girls, nor did he have any urge to smell their pajamas.

Needless to say, I immediately referred to my own translation:

Tengo looked around the classroom, at the 17- and 18-year-old girls staring at him with awe and respect. He realized he could seduce them by channeling mathematics. His speech was a kind of intellectual foreplay. The functions were a stroke on the back, the theorems warm breath in their ears. But when he met Fukaeri, he lost all sexual interest in these girls. He didn't care to think how they smelled in pajamas.

Here's a gem for you language buffs: 知的な前戯 (“intellectual foreplay”). But I gotta give it to Rubin, hooking in action verbs (“functions stroked”, “theorems sent”) that I glossed over. And that last sentence...no comment.

Rubin and Gabriel split translation duties on Murakami's short-story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. But, as Gabriel tells The Atlantic,1Q84 is their first collaborative effort on a single novel. Which might explain a few funny discrepancies.

Like the name of Tengo's favorite bar. Murakami's characters internalize their thoughts (even in third-person), and drink whilst thinking. When they're not pouring drams into bedside tumblers, they're out at some bar. In 1Q84, Tengo frequents this one joint near a Kinokuniya (paperbacks at the bar, something I'm emulating in 2012) no less than three times. Murakami calls it 「麦頭」(supplied with tiny furigana adjacent to identify its unique pronunciation), which I translated as “Wheat-Head”. If we're getting nitty-gritty, the first character means “wheat” and is used on beer labels, and the latter “head,” so it could signify the frothy foam atop a draft. Rubin calls it “Barleyhead.” Fine, I'll bite.

In Book Three (Gabriel's translation), this becomes “Mugiatama” (the phonetic translation of those characters), which Gabriel derives into “Ears of Wheat”! I checked the Japanese text and my translation and, yeah, same joint. Tengo's even quaffing the same draft (Carlsberg). Next time he visits, midway through Book Three, Gabriel leaves it as “Mugiatama.”

Finally, that whole “cat town” vs. “town of cats” drama that set me off againstreading 1Q84 in English. Rubin's translation flows predictably enough, like this exchange:

“Did you go to a town of cats,” Fuka-Eri asked Tengo, as if pressing him to reveal a truth.
“Me?!”
“You went to your town of cats. Then came back on a train.”

My own translation practically mirrored this:

"you went to cat town" she said to Tengo as if challenging him.
"I did??"
"you went to your cat town. then you took the train back home"

The original Japanese is 「咎めるように言った」; I called it “said as if challenging” and think Rubin's poetic nudge is a tad excessive. Yet several chapters later, Rubin translates:

“You'll be leaving tomorrow,” Fuka-Eri asked.
Tengo nodded. “Tomorrow morning I have to take the train and go to the cat town again.”
“You're going to the cat town,” Fuka-Eri asked without expression.
“You will be waiting here,” Tengo asked. Living with Fuka-Eri, he had become used to asking questions without question marks.

Imagine my surprise! I feel this reads so much more naturally, calling this far-flung location “cat town.” My translation:

“you're going tomorrow” Fukaeri inquired, looking at him.
Tengo nodded. “I'll take a train tomorrow morning. I have to go back to cat town once again.”
“you're gonna go to cat town” Fukaeri replied, expressionlessly.
“You'll wait here,” asked Tengo. Living with Fukaeri, he'd picked up the habit of leaving the question-marks off his questions.

And several dozen pages later, in Book Three, Gabriel dispenses with “town of cats” mentions altogether, utilizing only “cat town” in Tengo's thoughts and in a letter from Fuka-Eri to him. Best I can do for a response is 「当たり前」, which in slangified English might go “obvs.”

Photo: Mr. Fee

I'd nearly completed reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in Japanese when I found this impressive "liveblog" of Haruki Murakami's magnum opus1Q84 on Daniel Morales' site howtojapanese.com. Oh yeah, I thought, I need to get on this. In September 2009, I picked up the first two volumes of1Q84 (volume three was published in Japan in April 2010) and made it my goal to tackle 'em. I noted the English translation wouldn't be out until fall 2011. What the hell, I'll read and translate!

The translation was arduous, funny at times and painful in others. Example: spending ten minutes chipping away at a paragraph, cringing as 睾丸(testicles) gave way to 蹴る (to kick). Another recurring hiccup was Murakami's aforementioned pop culture name-dropping, peppering the text with names like バーニー・ビガード (jazz clarinetist Albany Leon "Barney" Bigard) and トラミー・ヤング (trombonist James "Trummy" Young). I have a newfound appreciation for Louis Armstrong's All-Stars. Plus, I learned tons of vocabulary, which helped hugely in my coursework at the Japan Society (and hopefully impressed some girls). Translating forced me to read1Q84 slowly, savoring each surreal, mundane or salacious passage. It also ensured a very personal way of understanding Murakami's text.

When The New Yorker ran an excerpt from 1Q84 in early September 2011, nearly two months ahead of its English publication, I felt oddly wary. It was "Town of Cats," originally Chapter 8 of Book 2 (and over 700 pages deep) in the Japanese text. Murakami calls this place and its namesake in-text fable 「猫の町」, which I worded as "Cat Town." Now it's in print as "Town of Cats." I suppose both "sound" like a fable, but this simple incongruity didn't sit too well with me. I read "Town of Cats," enjoyed it overall, but now awaited the English publication guardedly.

So guardedly that I've yet to read fully the English 1Q84, translated by Jay Rubin and Philip Gabriel. I've spent hours flipping through the pages, remarking on its considerable heft and Chip Kidd's awesome design. But those bits I was worried about? Here's my take on an early passage, from Chapter 1 of Book 1:

Aomame inhaled deeply and then exhaled. She then climbed over the railing while continuing to chase the melody of "Billie Jean" in her ears. Her miniskirt rolled up over her hips. "Who cares!" she thought. If they want to look, let them look. It's not like they're going to see what kind of person I am just from seeing under my skirt. Besides, her firm, alluring legs were the part of Aomame's body that she was most proud.

And the official translation:

Aomame took in a long, deep breath, and slowly let it out. Then, to the tune of "Billie Jean", she swung her leg over the metal barrier. Her miniskirt rode up to her hips. Who gives a damn? Let them look all they want. Seeing what's under my skirt doesn't let them really see me as a person. Besides, her legs were the part of her body Aomame was the most proud.

Incidentally, I didn't add that "firm, alluring" part: that's in the original. It's the little rhythmic jazz, like "railing" vs. "metal barrier", "chase the melody" vs. "to the tune"—inherent in Murakami's words—that's missing in the official translation.

Murakami's classic weirdo teenage girl here is ふかえり, which for language students is written entirely in hiragana (like long-form Japanese script, often seen in some degree in women's proper names). It's her nom de plume, a takeoff from her real name 深田絵里子, or Fukada Eriko. I translated it as Fukaeri, running the sounds together rather mellifluously. That's how it would sound in Japanese! Nope: in English 1Q84, it's Fuka-Eri, overemphasizing that fact she's contracted her given and family names together.

Also: how Fukaeri/Fuka-Eri speaks. Murakami emphasizes her flat, laconic tone by writing her dialogue in only in hiragana/katakana, the two syllabic Japanese writing systems, versus intermingling them with kanji. Here's my version of one of her exchanges with Tengo (the second major protagonist, one of Murakami's most classic thirtyish, slightly clueless males):

"You know me?" Tengo said.
"you teach math"
Tengo assented. "That's right."
"i've heard you twice"
"My lecture?"
"yeah"
There was something peculiar about her way of speaking. Her sentences were scraped of embellishment, and there was a chronic lack of accent, limited (or at least presenting that limited impression to others) vocabulary. Like Komatsu had said, certainly odd.

And the official translation:

"You know me?" Tengo said.
"You teach math."
He nodded. "I do."
"I heard you twice."
"My lectures?"
"Yes."
Her style of speaking had some distinguishing characteristics: sentences shorn of embellishment, a chronic shortage of inflection, a limited vocabulary (or at least what seemed like a limited vocabulary). Komatsu was right: it was odd.

This girl speaks, like, teenage-angsty cool. Even changing that trite "yeah" into a "yes" feels a bit polite. Murakami has a history of writing characters with unusual ways of speaking, like the Sheep Man in Dance, Dance, Dance(depicted in English conversing in long run-on phrases), the plucky old scientist in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (hillbilly accent), and old savant Nakata in Kafka on the Shore (simple English, even simpler than Fukaeri/Fuka-Eri). But how much of their conversational quirkiness makes it into the English?

It's not totally surprising I feel so strongly about my first Haruki Murakami novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I read in English, and reading1Q84 entirely in Japanese ahead of its English translation. I can practically recite from memory passages from both, and though I'm pleased to have read ねじまき鳥クロニクル belatedly in Japanese, Rubin's English text will forever remain close. I'm sure I will come around to fully reading the Rubin/Gabriel translation of 1Q84, though I'll be unable to shake the notion that what I'm reading is just their interpretation.

Photo: Mr. Fee

A few fun-facts about Haruki Murakami, Japan's most celebrated contemporary author and the man behind the year-end publishing sensation1Q84: he name-drops classical études as frequently as 20th century jazz and rock greats; he once ran a coffeehouse-jazz bar in Tokyo; and he's a triathlete. The man is a well-rounded badass.

I knew little of Murakami when I began reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle—some six hundred pages of potent modern-day Surrealism—back in university. Jay Rubin, one of his three longtime translators, handled the English edition, a necessary thing for me then as a just-budding student of Japanese. In addition to the silky prose, I was enraptured by the directness of dialogue and description despite Murakami's continual bending of reality.

I compared Rubin's translation with an earlier one by Alfred Birnbaum, who'd translated the first chapter of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women (it originally ran in The New Yorkerseveral years prior but reappeared in the short story collection The Elephant Vanishes), and instantly sided with Rubin. The interplay between Murakami's classic thirtyish male protagonist, Toru Okada, and the author's equally classic weirdo teenage girl, May Kasahara, just felt better in Rubin's words:

Strange, the girl's voice sounded completely different, depending on whether my eyes were open or closed.
"Can I talk? I'll keep real quiet, and you don't have to answer. You can even fall asleep. I don't mind."
"OK," I said.
"When people die, it's so neat."
Her mouth was next to my ear now, so the words worked their way inside me along with her warm, moist breath.
"Why's that?" I asked.
She put a finger on my lips as if to seal them.
"No questions," she said. "And don't open your eyes. OK?"
My nod was as small as her voice.
She took her finger from my lips and placed it on my wrist.

Compare that with Birnbaum's earlier translation. That directness, that humidity-induced curtness, is lost:

Strange, I think, the girl's voice with my eyes closed sounds completely different from her voice with my eyes open. What's come over me? This has never happened to me before.
"Can I talk some?" the girl asks. "I'll be real quiet. You don't have to answer, you can even fall right asleep at any time."
"Sure," I say.
"Death. People dying. It's all so fascinating," the girl begins.
She's whispering right by my ear, so the words enter my body in a warm, moist stream of breath.
"How's that?" I ask.
The girl places a one-finger seal over my lips.
"No questions," she says. "I don't want to be asked anything just now. And don't open your eyes, either. Got it?"
I give a nod as indistinct as her voice.
She removes her finger from my lips, and the same finger now travels to my wrist.

Years later, after moving to New York, I re-engaged my Japanese language studies hardcore. I picked up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in its original Japanese at Kinokuniya. This was my first attempt at reading novel-length Murakami, and I reveled in it. His prose is delightfully unembellished, and while it will prove difficult to first-time language students accustomed tomanga or Harry Potter in Japanese, I found myself speeding through it. Comparing the original Toru-May passage to the translations, I believe Rubin still captures its mood better than Birnbaum. He nails the girlish, fearless 'tude of May's back-and-forth with this older, slightly naïve guy.

I felt confident that I was reading Murakami as he intended with Rubin's translation. It's a fairly well-known fact that large chunks were excised in the English text (highlighted here in a roundtable email conversation between Murakami translators Rubin and Philip Gabriel, with Knopf editor Gary Fisketjon). Did I miss these sections when I first read it in English? No, but discovering them in Japanese—like an entire chapter's worth—was welcoming. Still, I've spent so much time living in Rubin's translations, navigating well-worn pages, that I return to the comforts of the English-language book without hesitation.

(Part two, on my introduction to 1Q84 in Japanese, to follow)

Photo: Mr. Fee