Writer Haruki Murakami told the Mainichi in an exclusive interview that the four contemporary American classics he has spent the past few years translating -- J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," Raymond Chandler's "The Long Goodbye" and Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- have "really significant meaning" for his own writing.

"I realized even more that a story's framework needs to be solid in a physical sense," Murakami says.

"Of all the factors that attract people to novels, rhythm is the most important. Novels where the rhythm is disrupted are read by some people for a long time, or many people for a short time, but not read by many people for a long time," Murakami says.

Murakami has long been lauded for his readability and it seems this is the key to successful writing.

"Japanese and English are structured differently, so if you just translated directly, it's hard to get the rhythm right. It's up to the individual translator to work out how to get the right rhythm," he says.

Murakami likens translation to math.

"Translating from English into Japanese is like solving a math problem," he says. "Just like there are some math problems that people can spend an entire day trying to work out, it's possible to spend a long time thinking about why particular words are used the way they are. Some people are suited to this and others aren't. But I like that kind of thing."

Murakami, who has been credited with being one of the inspirations in the flood of recent new translations of classic works, says the trend is a progression of the "rearrangement of general education."

"Works that are worth translating anew get published. Once everything has been sorted out, I guess you see a new kind of learning," he says, adding that he is making progress on translating another Chandler work, "Farewell, My Lovely."

"It's a book I have wanted to translate for a long time," Murakami says.

There is a novel outside of American literature that Murakami has long held dear to his heart and has regarded, along with "The Great Gatsby" and "The Long Goodbye" as "one of the three most important books I have read in my life." That work is "The Brothers Karamazov," the final novel of Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

"If I personally had to pick one writer who I consider the greatest of all time, I would choose Dostoevsky," Murakami says. "What works like 'The Brothers Karamazov' or 'The Possessed' mean for me is the scope of their stories for a novel. It's just really special."

Murakami says Dostoevsky has qualities that put him apart from other great authors like Honore de Balzac and Charles Dickens.

Copyright 2005-2006 THE MAINICHI NEWSPAPERS. All rights reserved. Mainichi features the best news in Japan, current news in Japan, Japan news in English, Japan business news, Tokyo Japan news, and Japan entertainment news. Mainichi News is syndicated in accordance with editorial regulations: personal and noncommercial purposes.

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