What Haruki Murakami Talks About When He Talks About Women

I’d like to tell a story about a woman.

She was a small, slim girl. More cute than beautiful. The kind of face that, if you saw her on the street, you’d forget as soon as you passed by. A wide forehead, beautiful straight hair, her ears on the large side for her build. A small nose, out of balance with the size of her mouth.

She was wearing a sleeveless white dress and her hair had a citrusy shampoo scent. Her accessories and makeup, too, were low-key yet refined. Plus, she wore thick glasses.

She practiced yoga every other day at a gym and had a flat, toned stomach. One afternoon I kissed her small yet full lips and touched her breasts through her bra. Her breasts weren’t particularly big, or particularly small. When she smiled, two charming little lines formed beside her lips.

She reached out and gently took my hard penis in her hand. Her vagina was wet, and moved smoothly, naturally, like some living being. She was on the pill, so I could come freely inside her. She had four orgasms in total, every single one genuine, if you can believe it.

While we had sex we hardly said a word. When she looked at me, it was as though she was ignoring the outside (granted it wasn’t much to look at anyway) and could see right through me, down to the depths of my being.

I think what makes me feel sad about the girls I knew growing old is that it forces me to admit, all over again, that my youthful dreams are gone forever.

[Taken from the following works by Haruki Murakami: the short stories On A Stone Pillow and With The Beatles; and the novels Killing Commendatore and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years of Pilgrimage]

This first girlfriend of mine was petite and charming.

There was nothing special about her face. Her features were not unattractive, but her face lacked focus, so that the impression she left was somehow blurry. She had really strong, healthy-looking teeth. Her large, protruding ears were like satellite dishes placed in some remote landscape. Dressed or undress, she looked five years younger than she was, with pure white skin and beautifully rounded, modestly sized breasts.

That day she wore a white T-shirt, faded jeans, and pink sneakers. Her black hair tossed about, supple as a willow branch in a strong wind. It was hard to believe that this girl – small, bony, with a not-so-great complexion – was the same girl who, the night before, had screamed out passionately in my arms, in the winter moonlight.

[Taken from the following works by Haruki Murakami: the short stories With The Beatles, Scheherazade, On A Stone Pillow and Drive My Car; and the novels Killing Commendatore and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years of Pilgrimage]

The waitress had mammoth breasts, the buttons on her uniform ready to burst. She was a housewife from a provincial city well on the road to middle age and running to flab (in fact it looked as if every nook and cranny had been filled with putty), with jowls and lines webbing the corners of her eyes. The rolls of fat started just below her ears and sloped gently down to her shoulders. No matter how you looked at her she was hardly a beauty, and there was something off-putting about her face, as Oba had suggested.

She was watching me and waved. Her long hair was a silky lustrous black. She had on a white blouse with a round collar and a navy-blur cardigan. It always surprised me, the variety of clothes mature women wore.

Her legs were beautiful, and her stockings matched her black high-heeled shoes. She had on very simple white panties. But, when she took them off, the crotch was damp. It was so beautiful I had to look away.

[Taken from the following works by Haruki Murakami: the short stories Scheherazade, Hunting Knife, Drive My Car, Where I’m Likely To Find It, and Yesterday; and the novels Killing Commendatore and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years of Pilgrimage]

The first woman I slept with was in her late twenties. She wasn’t exactly a standout in terms of looks.

My guess was she had recently had plastic surgery. Stuck up, flat-chested, with a funny-looking nose and a none-too-wonderful personality. A detailed examination of her face from the front revealed that the size and shape of her ears were significantly different, the left one much bigger and malformed. Her eyes were big for the size of her face (with large pupils, which made her resemble a fairy). Ten years earlier, she might well have been a lively and attractive young woman, perhaps even turned a few heads.

The mere sight of her sent a violent shudder through me. Which, in turn, conjured up vague memories of oral sex. I may have felt that way because I really did have shame and guilt in my heart.

[Taken from the following works by Haruki Murakami: the short stories Where I’m Likely To Find It, Yesterday, Scheherazade and With The Beatles; and the novels Killing Commendatore and 1Q84]

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Notes:

1. These were put together on December 15th, 2021
2. From various works by Haruki Murakami (as noted beneath each vignette)
3. For other similar cut up experiments to these, please see In The Terminals OF Minraud (a William Burroughs cut up trilogy), The New Brothers Grimm, Five Tributes To The Works Of Daniil Kharms, and Five Entries Recovered From Jorge Luis Borges’ Imaginary Book Of Beings.
4. Every sentence here is taken verbatim from the original source, the only changes being a few changes from third person to first person, or vice versa.
5. No two consecutive sentences from the same piece are used
6. Although occasionally two non-consecutive sentences from the same piece are used

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Tale #108: The Woman In The Bookshop

There was a woman who was born in a bookshop. She dreamt in words, spoke in pictures, and always knew a liar when she saw one.

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Notes:

1. Written on June 28th, 2019

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Tale #89: The Poor Woman

There was a woman who lived in the woods. She had no money, and could find little work, and those that paid her paid her very little.

One day an old lady knocked at her door and begged for some food to help her through the cold winter’s night, for she was far from home and farther still from reaching her way. The woman who lived in the woods said, “Alas, I haven’t enough even for one, let alone two, but you may have what little there is, although whether it will do you any good or not I cannot say. And you may sit by my fire and warm your bones, although the wood is already burning low, and the night has barely yet begun.”

The old lady came in and together they sat by the fire, which seemed to burn brighter than ever, and ate the last of the bread, which seemed to fill the bellies of them both. After an hour the old lady got up and said that she must again be on her way. “In repayment for your kindness I will leave you a gift,” the old lady said. “So you may earn that which your kind spirit deserves, each time you receive payment for your work you shall become twice as beautiful as before, and subsequently earn twice as much, the next time circumstances allow.”

With that the old lady made her way to the heart of the woods, where she disappeared from this world and went on her way to the next.

At first the woman noticed very little change. She still struggled to find work, and for many weeks she starved away, surviving on scraps scavenged from the forest, and if anything when she looked at herself in the waters of the brook she thought that rather than becoming any fairer her famishment had made her ever fouler.

In the early days of spring, however, after the snows had melted and the flowers of the forest had begun again to bloom, a woodsman from the nearest town knocked at the door of her house and she invited him in and provided him with what he desired. As he left she asked him for a shilling, but he looked her up and down sadly and paid only a penny.

She wept that night, but the next day, when she caught sight of her reflection she was surprised by the vitality of her appearance. When the woodsman knocked again, he gladly paid the price she asked, and the day after he gave her double. “A tip,” he said, “for one so pretty.” And he even asked her to walk back with him to town, for rather than being ashamed by his patronage he now was overcome with pride.

After she saw him to his house she tarried awhile in town, and by the end of her stay her beauty was greater than any the town had ever known, and her purse fuller than she had ever dared dream.

Soon only the local Lord could afford to pay her. He took her into his house, and by the end of the week the house was hers and the Lord a beggar, much to the satisfaction of his staff, and the spiteful delight of his wife. The woman, who no longer lived in the woods, was generous with her money, and kind to all in her care, for she knew the horrors of poverty, and the humiliations of servitude.

Eventually the King came calling, for by now stories of her otherworldly glamour had spread far and wide. As his treasuries emptied over the subsequent weeks, and her beauty multiplied, the King began to despair, for soon he would no longer be able to afford her services, and he could not bear to return to the drabness of his court. “How could I live, knowing this beauty was out there, beyond my reach?” he sighed.

He ordered his treasurer to mint him a million pound coin, and then two more. By now the currency of the land and the entire economy of the country was on the verge of collapse. No matter how much of the money lavished on her by the King she spent trying to alleviate the suffering she saw around her, the country continued to collapse into despair and horror. And all the while the King tried ever more desperately to finance the further satiation of his lust.

For him the end came quickly. The people rose up and threw him into the sea without ceremony or regret.

In the ensuing days, they crowned the woman their Queen. She used her money and her wisdom to rebuild the country into something far greater than it had ever been before, and she ruled divinely for the rest of her days, delighting in way her country now prospered. She spent the rest of her life enjoying the many friendships she formed with the subjects of her land, and occasionally bankrupting other countries when politics and desire demanded.

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Notes:

1. Written on February 9th, 2015

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Tale #76: Of Wolves And Women

I heard the following tale from both my aunts when I was a child, a year or so apart.

I’m not sure if you’re supposed to think of your aunts this way, but I always did, when I was young – one of them was from within the family (my mother’s sister), the other from without (my dad’s brother’s wife). That one of them was a real aunt, the other merely playing one.

Nowadays, I’m not sure what to think.

Anyway, they both told this story slightly differently – different setting, different details, different phrases, different folksy claims of authenticity – but beyond that, they were the same tale, in all the ways that mattered.

The same body clothed in different clothes.

The story went like this.

A long time ago in a land far away (or, in the other telling, in the town where I grew up), there lived a princess (or a girl, just like you or me) in a castle (or a house). She had no brothers (nor any sisters) and her parents were too busy with the affairs of state (or, quite simply, too dead) to pay her any mind. So the girl/princess would wander the halls of her castle (or the streets of her town) all on her own, searching, always, for something, some sign, some proof that she was loved (or had been loved).

One day a woman came to see the princess at court (or, more simply, knocked on her front door) and said, “I’m your aunt, and I love you as if you were my one and only child.” And the woman stayed with her for the rest of the year, accompanying her on her walks, reading her stories before bed, helping her get dressed in the morning, and always, always, treating the lonely girl with love and tenderness and the utmost care.

On the princess’s 8th birthday (or the girl’s 9th), the aunt said, “I must return to the land where I live. Come with me, little girl, and leave this sadness (and loneliness) behind. Be free of your neglect, and stay by my side.”

And it was here that the tales diverged.

The tales ended very differently, and these were differences that were genuine rather than merely cosmetic. Not different hats so much as entirely different faces. A wolf revealed beneath the mirrored kindnesses of my aunts’ smiles.

In the first, the princess goes with her aunt. But when she arrives in the distant land her aunt called home, the aunt’s demeanour changed. “Obey me, now-child-of-mine, and do as I say. Serve me as a servant and a slave, from dawn until dusk, else I’ll eat you up for my dinner and that will be that.”

So the girl lived in fear, for the rest of her days. And no-one came to save her, for none knew where she had gone.

The moral of this tale as I perceived it then, whether or not that was what was intended: quit your whining, accept your place, for there’s a world out there worse than whatever you hate about home.

The second telling, the one I preferred, the orphan girl again goes with her aunt. She leaves behind her empty house, her lonely town, and walks with her aunt across the country.

Each time the girl feels discomfort, her aunt moves to help. The sun shines too brightly, so she gives the girl her wide-brimmed hat. At night it is too cold, so she gives the girl her coat. To stop the girl being pricked by thorns as they make their way through the woods, she gives the girl her gloves. When the girl loses her shoes in the mud of the brook, she gives the girl her boots.

Finally, the girl can walk no more and collapses to the ground. The aunt removes her clothes, takes off her mask, gets down on all fours, and leans over the girl, her jaw wide, her teeth sharp, her tongue as red as blood. And in her lupine voice, she says, “I’m not your aunt, I never was. I came to you because you were alone and unprotected.”

The mouth gets closer, opens wider. The girl waits for the snap of the jaw, the rasp of the tongue, the bite of the teeth, the pain that will surely come as she’s gobbled up and eaten whole.

But instead, the wolf says, ”I will carry you the rest of the way, my child.”

And with a deft flick of her head she flips the girl into the air and onto her back, and together they travel over the hills, into the woods, far, far away, living happily together ever after.

It was a fairy tale, after all.

The moral of this one: there is kindness in strangers, there is love out there if you will let yourself look.

After I heard this second telling, I wondered which of my aunts was the woman, which the wolf. Always, from then on, I’d be looking, checking, staring, hoping to see some slip of the mask, whether real or metaphorical, to catch the truth of the smile, see a glimpse of the real teeth beneath the false.

To see if their kindness masked cruelty, or if it hid an even deeper kindness, hid love without want, without need, without end.

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Notes:

1. Written in June 2018
2. There was a documentary about Angela Carter on BBC Two with the same title as this
3. Which was first shown in August 2018
4. My use of the same title is purely coincidental
5. But nicely serendipitous

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Tale #75: The Woods In The Woman

There were some woods that lived in a woman.

They hadn’t always been there. But once she ate an apple and with it swallowed some of the pips, and then a few weeks later she ate some grapes that were supposed to be seedless but were not. One spring afternoon she swallowed some grass by accident while mowing the lawn, and a few weeks afterwards ingested a surprising amount of pollen while cycling around the Norfolk broads.

They all took root inside her, and as they grew they thought that the walls of her body were the walls of the world. They never imagined there was anything more, never imagined any world above, dreamt of no worlds beyond.

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Notes:

1. Written on August 13th, 2014

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