Murakami Going for the Nobel?

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Scott Esposito

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting report that, using the platform of the International Catalunya Prize, Haruki Murakami made some very outspoken remarks regarding the recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan.

The Journal cites the remarks thus:

“The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is the second major nuclear detriment that the Japanese people have experienced,” Mr. Murakami said, according to Kyodo News reports. “However, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands.”

He donated the €80,000 ($117,000) prize accompanying the award to Tohoku relief efforts.

Mr. Murakami said Japan, having experienced the trauma of radiation, should have turned away from nuclear power.

“Yet, those who questioned nuclear power were marginalized as being ‘unrealistic dreamers’,” he said, according to Kyodo.

The report also raises the possibility of Murakami as a Nobel contender, a possibility also raised by Japanese translator Stephen Snyder in our Two Voices event with him in May. There, Snyder explicitly calls Murakami's most recent book, 1Q84, to be released in English translation this fall, Murakami's attempt at winning the Nobel. Per reports, it's a much more ambitious, more politically involved book than have been his recent efforts, recalling hsi last giant opus, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

It seems that Murakami is emerging as a much ore outspoken, politically active writer than he has been for most of the '00s. It remains to be seen where he will head next, and if these sentiments will help him win a Nobel.