‘Norwegian Wood’ – the movie

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Lisa Mullins talks with Roland Kelts in Japan about the release of the film adaptation of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami’s 1987 bestseller “Norwegian Wood.” The book is one of Japan’s bestselling novels and the movie just opened in Japan. Download MP3

• Haruki Murakami’s fans, confessions of a kanji-holic, and kwassa kwassa (2009)
• 2008 profile of Murakami by The World’s Patrick Cox
• Guardian review of the movie
• Norwegian Wood (book) on Amazon

Read the Transcript
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LISA MULLINS: It seems that a film that Hollywood publicists deem the most anticipated movie of the year opens about every other week. But a picture that premiered this past weekend in Japan truly deserves the hype. It’s an adaptation of one of Japan’s all time best selling novels Norwegian Wood.[Speaking{Japanese}]. Norwegian Wood is already a hit. Presumably in part because of the popularity of the book by the same name. Roland Kelts is the author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. is a visiting scholar at the University of Tokyo.

ROLAND KELTS: To some extent, Norwegian Wood is something of The Catcher In The Rye in post World War II Japanese literature. It’s a coming of age tale; it’s also a love story. When it was first published in 1987, it sold millions of copies. It’s an iconic work of Japanese literature and it turned its author into celebrity. The author, Haruki Murakami is something of a man of international mystery in Japan. I’m frequently asked where he actually lives. The fact is he does live in Japan, and he keeps a place in Hawaii. He doesn’t do a lot of public events in Japan, and so he himself is considered something of a recluse in Japan. So, there’s a lot of energy behind the release of the film and behind the modern myth of Haruki Murakami and this particular book, Norwegian Wood.

MULLINS: Yeah, it’s kind of interesting because this is the guy who, when he does come out in public for book readings or whatever, he doesn’t want any cameras around, doesn’t want any recording equipment; he is very kind of elusive. On the other hand, he gets on the Web whenever he has a new book out and will answer pretty intimate questions about his work habits and what he likes to have for lunch, which I understand from a report we did a couple of years ago is eel. And yet it took him a long time to say yes to having this film made of the book. And this one particular Vietnamese-French director Tran Anh Hung, he managed to convince Haruki Murakami. What did he say that finally made Murakami say yes?

KELTS: I don’t think it was so much anything he said. What Haruki told me was it was his tenacity and the fact that he was, in Haruki’s own words, a hard nut. He was tough minded, he knew what he wanted to do with the film, and so that once Haruki signed of on it, he knew that Tran Anh would do it his own way and wouldn’t ask Haruki for advice.

MULLINS: Tell us a little bit more about the book itself. It’s a very much a book of appeal, especially to young people.

KELTS: It is. The book, first of all, is told as a kind of memoir in a way of a 37-year old who is thinking back on rather tragic years of his youth. In which one of his best friends committed suicide and then his best friends’ girlfriend, who eventually takes up with the narrator, herself commits suicide. So, it’s a book that’s weighed down by this sorrows, but it’s also very romantic and, I think, really because the voice of this book, the narrative voice of this book, it’s quite charming and warm and funny.

MULLINS: Roland Kelts, you’re a cultural commentator. You are not necessarily a film critic, but you saw the film over the weekend. What was it like to be there and what was the film like itself?

KELTS: It was a full house on a mid Monday, so clearly they are attracting audiences. A lot of young people in the audience. Haruki once joked to me that as he gets older his audience gets younger. And that seems to be the case. And the film itself, I would say is exquisite visually and the performances are very strong. The challenge, I suppose, with any transposition from novel to screen is capturing a narrative voice. And I thing that’s a real challenge of this film. It’s beautiful, it’s moving, but Haruki’s voice is very hard to catch.

MULLINS: How so?

KELTS: Well, the narrator in most of Haruki’s novels is self reflexive, funny, usually a little bit detached. And this is the character looking back on his college and high school days in Norwegian Wood. In the film you are more or less close up with the adolescent characters in the story and so their melodramas are not filtered through the great Murakami voice and I don’t know how you’d achieve that in a film.

MULLINS: Thank you very much. Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded The U.S, speaking to us about the release this weekend of the film Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. A 1987 novel finally made into a film. Roland, thank you.

KELTS: Thank you Lisa.

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