In 2015, Haruki Murakami took the unexpected step of rereleasing in English his earliest novels, ¡°Hear the Wind Sing¡± (1979) and ¡°Pinball, 1973¡± (1980) ¡ª written while he was still managing a jazz bar ¡ª accompanied with a curious introduction.
In it, Murakami recalled a moment in April 1978 when he was sitting on a grass slope at Jingu Stadium, drinking a cool beer and watching a baseball match between the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and Hiroshima Carp. At the exact moment the batter sweetly struck ¡°a clean double¡± ¡ª in a moment of Zen enlightenment ¡ª Murakami suddenly realized, ¡°I think I can write a novel.¡±
Should we consider this scene to be a quintessentially Murakami-esque creation? We would be dismissive to do so, for the baseball anecdote connects to a far deeper vein of interconnection with baseball in Japanese literary history. A starter¡¯s lineup of important Japanese writers have announced their arrival to the sound of a baseball being struck satisfyingly high into the air.
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