Did you know that Neil Young is the ideal music for sautéing carrots? Likewise, Prince is perfect for making rolled cabbage. At least according to the kitchen listening philosophies of Haruki Marukami.
It’s no secret that music is synonymous with the body of work of legendary novelist. We don’t need to name book titles and specific references from the books. Journalists have painstakingly mapped out the latter in a scholarly fashion. A well known photo perpetually makes the rounds in both audiophile and literary circles, with the author seated at home in front of his hi-fi speakers and sprawling wall of vinyl records. In his 1997 book Portrait of Jazz, Murakami uses personal anecdotes to profile a wide range of jazz musicians ranging from Billie Holiday to Miles Davis to Eric Dolphy (each accompanied by a wonderful painting by the late illustrator Makoto Wada). And, of course, there’s drummer Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers, whom the author saw in concert in 1964 which sparked his infatuation with contemporary jazz.
Like the book I’m about to delve into, Portrait of Jazz was never translated to English, though back in 2008 a couple of essays were translated in one of the annual “music issues” of The Believer magazine (Holiday, Stan Getz and Thelonious Monk). In fact, Murakami and his wife first opened a hybrid coffeehouse & jazz club near Sendagaya Station in western Tokyo, the area at the time described as a counterculture hub for students and dropouts. The live jazz nights that occurred on the weekend were possible due to putting the old grand piano from Murakami’s parents’ house that was set up on the second floor.
In a three-story Midwestern used bookstore, I recently stumbled upon a Japanese copy of Murakami Radio, published in 2001 (a year before the classic Kafka on the Shore). The farm animal-adored cover artwork made it initially seem like perhaps a vintage children’s book. It seemed as though someone had just donated a box of their Murakami collection, but this was a peculiar find. Rather than finding the book alongside other Japanese editions, it was next to standard, mass market English repressings of Norwegian Wood and The Strange Library. The title might resonate differently today, as Murakami Radio would in recent times take on a second life when it literally became a successful, recurring radio broadcast over the airwaves of the Tokyo FM in Japan. The inaugural program in 2018 featured selections like early Beach Boys and a cover of “Light My Fire” by German Violinist Helmut Zacharias. Naturally, the seemingly infinite selections have been archived and collected into countless playlists and digital archives.
The book, though, is only sometimes about music. That’s the beauty of it. Other times, it’s about antique shopping, cats, renting a car in Stockholm and recurring Robert Altman actress Sally Kellerman. The pocket-sized paperback is a relic of breezy mini-essays accompanied by copperplate engravings by artist Ayumi Ohashi, an artist later known for her work in the sartorial field. This collection is actually the first in a trio of the “Radio” series, the sequels featuring subtitles like “Giant Turnip, Different Avocado” and “The Salad-Loving Lion”. Such personal, almost stream of consciousness snapshots almost come across as a proto-blog in physical form, and apparently began as a recurring column for a women’s magazine called anan. While at first I was simply glad to own the copy and gawk at Ohashi’s charming artwork scattered throughout, I discovered that the essays had been translated to English for the first time via a blog called Mojidoori. The author is an American student of Japanese Studies who studied abroad in Osaka for a year.
Essay 太巻き寿司と野球場 (translation: Thick Sushi Rolls And Baseball Parks) romanticizes and expands on the exact setting where Murakami decided to choose his creative profession in 1978: Jingu Stadium in Shinjuku. Specifically, the singular thick sushi rolls that could be acquired outside the stadium. As detailed in the introduction of 2015’s bundle Wind/Pinball: Two Novels, Murakami first stopped off to pick up a fountain pen and ream of manuscript paper after leaving an NPB game between the Hiroshima Carp and his beloved Yakult Swallows at Jingu. But the next six months of that ’78 baseball season corresponded with the initial writing sessions that led to the first draft of debut novel Hear the Wind Sing. Specifically, it was a double hit by American infielder and former San Diego Padre Dave Hilton that sparked the initial concept.
Unlike most “instantly captivated” Beatles exposure stories (from both domestic and non-western perspectives), Murakami confesses resistance to the initial global phenomenon due to the radio oversaturation and more so his formative preferences of jazz and classical music. Thus, the essay about the polarizing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da track from The White Album takes a fascinating turn when Murakami recalls running into a marching band performing the song while he was out running errands. Like an actual composer or critic, he noticed that the traditional ensemble looped the section of the song that didn’t include the hook.
One of the more fascinating essays exploring Murakami’s personal philosophies on music is the aforementioned piece about sautéing carrots to the sounds of Neil Young. It’s a piece on the concept of specific genres being situational, such as his preference for rock music in the car. He states that he likes “simple” American rock music, and mentions currently enjoying (then) contemporary artists like Wilco and R.E.M. It reminded me of a car ride three years ago, when I was visiting my friend Justin Gage in Los Angeles, who runs the Aquarium Drunkard publication that I write for.
Justin had Miles playing in the car, I think it might have been the expanded In a Silent Way Sessions. He mentioned that he was in one of his periods where he only listens to jazz for perhaps a month at a time. It stuck with me because my own preferences mirror Murakami’s. In the car I like the 3-4 minute upbeat song almost exclusively. Jazz is more reserved for the turntable and limited volume control. One of the songs mentioned in the essay, the anti-war anthem “Sky Pilot” by Eric Burdon and The Animals, would also be played on the first episode of the actual Murakami Radio broadcast seventeen years later.
There was something downright uplifting about digging through these essays, which existed in such an unguarded capacity. In a clothing collaboration for the Murakami Radio music program, a cat sits at a writing desk pondering. On the back, the tagline mantra reads “Books, music and cats have been my friends from way back”. Sure, the book was a reminder of such small things. Perhaps it was also romanticizing the exceedingly rare experience of finding such a surprising relic in the brick & mortar wild, and the research that led to actually deciphering what it said. And on a more visceral level, reading about what food pairs best with Marvin Gaye feels a lot more insightful than simply discovering one of his songs on a vast Spotify playlist featuring a thousand other songs.
Mark Neeley is a writer, animator and illustrator from Cincinnati, Ohio. Working at the juxtaposition of sound and vision, he is a contributor for music & arts publication Aquarium Drunkard. His most recent short film Pure Animation for Now People is currently on the film festival circuit. You can follow his work at markneeley.com and on Instagram at @markaneeley