In 2000 producer Matt Thompson travelled to Tokyo to interview the reclusive author Murakami for an extended BBC Radio 3 profile. The 45' documentary has been a fascinating source of inspiration for those who love his odd fables and want to find out something of the process behind them.
Publicity from original programme:
His books sell by the millions but traditionalists don’t care for his shallow and flashy protagonists who mimic the attitudes of Chandler’s hard boiled Philip Marlowe and find the answers in sex, men dressed as sheep, and bizarre lumber rooms of the subconcious. ‘The Wind up Bird Chronicle’ took Murakami’s dissaffected anti-hero into the unpopular territory of Japan’s past. ‘Underground’, Murakami’s account of the Tokyo Gas Attack, analysed how a guru hijacked ordinary people’s own stories and replaced them with fantasies, something he thinks society itself does. Can the virtuoso storyteller Murakami help readers find themselves? And why does he feel responsible for the dead people he has known? With Jungian Prof. Hayao Kawai, Kawasaki Kenko and Prof. Motoyuki Shibata.
Readers:
Hilary Neville-Towle
Nigel Acheson
Fixer in Tokyo:
Mai Nishiyama
Producer:
Matt Thompson
Loftus/Rockethouse Production for BBC Radio 3.
This programme is for strictly educational purposes only.
