{"id":1548,"date":"2014-06-15T19:24:17","date_gmt":"2014-06-15T19:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2014-06-15T19:24:17","modified_gmt":"2014-06-15T19:24:17","slug":"yesterday-by-haruki-murakami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/yesterday-by-haruki-murakami","title":{"rendered":"YESTERDAY BY HARUKI MURAKAMI"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

JUNE 9, 2014<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nPhotograph by Michael Marcelle.
\nAs far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song \u201cYesterday\u201d (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) was a guy named Kitaru. He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath.
\nYesterday
\nIs two days before tomorrow,
\nThe day after two days ago.
\nThis is how it began, as I recall, but I haven\u2019t heard it for a long time and I\u2019m not positive that\u2019s how it went. From start to finish, though, Kitaru\u2019s lyrics were almost meaningless, nonsense that had nothing to do with the original words. That familiar lovely, melancholy melody paired with the breezy Kansai dialect\u2014which you might call the opposite of pathos\u2014made for a strange combination, a bold denial of anything constructive. At least, that\u2019s how it sounded to me. At the time, I just listened and shook my head. I was able to laugh it off, but I also read a kind of hidden import in it.<\/p>\n

I first met Kitaru at a coffee shop near the main gate of Waseda University, where we worked part time, I in the kitchen and Kitaru as a waiter. We used to talk a lot during downtime at the shop. We were both twenty, our birthdays only a week apart.<\/p>\n

\u201cKitaru is an unusual last name,\u201d I said one day.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, for sure,\u201d Kitaru replied in his heavy Kansai accent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lotte baseball team had a pitcher with the same name.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two of us aren\u2019t related. Not so common a name, though, so who knows? Maybe there\u2019s a connection somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was a sophomore at Waseda then, in the literature department. Kitaru had failed the entrance exam and was attending a prep course to cram for the retake. He\u2019d failed the exam twice, actually, but you wouldn\u2019t have guessed it by the way he acted. He didn\u2019t seem to put much effort into studying. When he was free, he read a lot, but nothing related to the exam\u2014a biography of Jimi Hendrix, books of shogi problems, \u201cWhere Did the Universe Come From?,\u201d and the like. He told me that he commuted to the cram school from his parents\u2019 place in Ota Ward, in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\u201cOta Ward?\u201d I asked, astonished. \u201cBut I was sure you were from Kansai.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way. Denenchofu, born and bred.\u201d<\/p>\n

This really threw me.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen how come you speak Kansai dialect?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI acquired it. Just made up my mind to learn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAcquired it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I studied hard, see? Verbs, nouns, accent\u2014the whole nine yards. Same as studying English or French. Went to Kansai for training, even.\u201d<\/p>\n

So there were people who studied Kansai dialect as if it were a foreign language? That was news to me. It made me realize all over again how huge Tokyo was, and how many things there were that I didn\u2019t know. Reminded me of the novel \u201cSanshiro,\u201d a typical country-boy-bumbles-his-way-around-the-big-city story.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nFROM THE ISSUEBUY AS A PRINTE-MAIL THIS
\n\u201cAs a kid, I was a huge Hanshin Tigers fan,\u201d Kitaru explained. \u201cWent to their games whenever they played in Tokyo. But if I sat in the Hanshin bleachers and spoke with a Tokyo dialect nobody wanted to have anything to do with me. Couldn\u2019t be part of the community, y\u2019know? So I figured, I gotta learn Kansai dialect, and I worked like a dog to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was your motivation?\u201d I could hardly believe it.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight. That\u2019s how much the Tigers mean to me,\u201d Kitaru said. \u201cNow Kansai dialect\u2019s all I speak\u2014at school, at home, even when I talk in my sleep. My dialect\u2019s near perfect, don\u2019t you think?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely. I was positive you were from Kansai,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019d put as much effort into studying for the entrance exams as I did into studying Kansai dialect, I wouldn\u2019t be a two-time loser like I am now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He had a point. Even his self-directed putdown was kind of Kansai-like.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo where\u2019re you from?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cKansai. Near Kobe,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNear Kobe? Where?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAshiya,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cWow, nice place. Why didn\u2019t you say so from the start?\u201d<\/p>\n

I explained. When people asked me where I was from and I said Ashiya, they always assumed that my family was wealthy. But there were all types in Ashiya. My family, for one, wasn\u2019t particularly well off. My dad worked for a pharmaceutical company and my mom was a librarian. Our house was small and our car a cream-colored Corolla. So when people asked me where I was from I always said \u201cnear Kobe,\u201d so they didn\u2019t get any preconceived ideas about me.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan, sounds like you and me are the same,\u201d Kitaru said. \u201cMy address is Denenchofu\u2014a pretty high-class place\u2014but my house is in the shabbiest part of town. Shabby house as well. You should come over sometime. You\u2019ll be, like, Wha\u2019? This is Denenchofu? No way! But worrying about something like that makes no sense, yeah? It\u2019s just an address. I do the opposite\u2014hit \u2019em right up front with the fact that I\u2019m from Den-en-cho-fu. Like, how d\u2019you like that, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n

I was impressed. And after this we became friends.<\/p>\n

From: http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/fiction\/features\/2014\/06\/09\/140609fi_fiction_murakami?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=twitter&mbid=social_twitter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  JUNE 9, 2014 Photograph by Michae … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[161],"tags":[392,393],"views":1500,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1549,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions\/1549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinesepen.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}