Haruki Murakami’s most recent novel, The City and its Uncertain Walls, revolves around two parallel stories, one focusing on a 17-year-old boy, the other on a 45-year-old man. Readers of the translated English version will gradually become aware of the two worlds, as each first-person narrator establishes his respective setting within the novel. For readers of the original Japanese, the parallel is, however, immediate from the first pages of chapter five.
In the original Japanese text of The City and its Uncertain Walls, when the first-person narrator shifts from using boku to using watashi, it suggests a clear handover from one narrator (that of the boy’s story) to another (of the man’s story). The change is both visual (written differently) and audial (pronounced differently), and so becomes a simple anchor of recognition for each of the two worlds. Due to the lack of possibilities in English, both words are translated as “I”.
Unlike many other languages, Japanese has several expressions for the first-person pronoun “I”. In addition to boku and watashi used by the younger and older narrators in The City and its Uncertain Walls, “I” can for example be expressed as watakushi, ore, atashi, uchi or washi. Speakers and writers of Japanese have, therefore, a range of choices when referring to the self.
Each of the Japanese pronouns is loaded with meaning, suggesting gender, age, rank or relationships between people (among other things). So, as in Murakami’s novels, the possibility of using various pronouns to refer to oneself can therefore become an expression of creativity.
At the beginning of chapter two, the narrator of the boy’s story says: “You and boku [I] lived not so far from each other.” In chapter ten, the narrator of the man’s story states “Watashi [I] was provided with a small home in the area called the Officials District.” How to interpret the difference between watashi and boku will partly be up to the reader, but it is clear that they are not quite the same.
In literary works, the choice of “I” is then an opportunity for analysis, allowing readers to interpret characters’ shifting identities and subjectivities. Such coded depth is, however, difficult to convey when Japanese texts are translated into languages like English, where there is only one way to say “I”.
Murakami’s Is
Within Murakami’s works, male characters primarily use the male pronoun boku and only sometimes the more gender-neutral and polite watashi, or the rougher male ore. By contrast female characters almost consistently use watashi.
Early Murakami works often show significant consciousness regarding the choice of first-person pronouns, especially when the text involves multiple narrative layers. For example, in his 1979 debut novel Hear the Wind Sing, the narrator, who uses boku in the main narrative, conveys a story made up by his friend the Rat, in which the story’s narrator calls himself ore.
As with The City and its Uncertain Walls, the various words for “I” in a Murakami text can also function to indicate parallel, split or double personalities. This is where translators are probably challenged the most by “I”.
We saw this issue first in Murakami’s 1985 novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which also features two parallel narratives. These stories are told through alternating chapters, first by a narrator using watashi, then by one using boku. The two “I”s of this novel have often been understood to express two sides of the same male protagonist – his outer world (watashi) and his inner world (boku) – and that their relationship is that of alter egos.
As Murakami wrote in the afterword to The City and its Uncertain Walls, his new novel is connected to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. For instance, the setting and premise of the town with the tall wall, which plays a central role in both works, is generally the same – to enter it, the protagonist must become separated from his shadow.
The two novels’ connection in the context of “I” is noteworthy too. Not only do we see two worlds described by narrators using watashi and boku, respectively. But also in both novels, the shadow of the narrator who enters the town becomes an independent character with a voice and identity of its own. This becomes clear since the shadow uses neither watashi nor boku, but instead ore to refer to himself.
Expressed through the richness of personal pronouns in Japanese, in both novels the protagonist is therefore split into a double narration, but in fact contains not just two, but three distinct selves – watashi, boku and ore – each with a clear potential for interpretation.
Translating ‘I’
Without alternative options for “I”, translators from Japanese to English have had to think carefully about how to re-create the distinctiveness of first-person voices and their respective worlds.
As a solution, in Alfred Birnbaum’s translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the watashi parts of the novel are written in the past tense, whereas the boku parts are written in the present tense. This controversial temporal approach allows English readers to clearly sense a difference between the two narrators and their worlds. Yet the difference between boku, watashi and ore is not achieved in English.
By contrast, in Philip Gabriel’s recent translation of The City and its Uncertain Walls, readers are not provided with an instant visual or audial aid to sense a difference between the parts about the boy and the man. Although readers will still get the point of the parallel worlds, connected through a protagonist split in time, the reading experience is rather different because “I” has only one look, sound and meaning. Whereas in Japanese, watashi and boku are different, and yet the same.
Murakami is now read in more than 50 languages. Some even call him a global writer. However, translation is always a process that turns one story into something new. The various words for “I” in the Japanese language is one issue that might ask us to acknowledge the specific Japanese context of Murakami’s works – even as they increasingly become part of global culture.
Gitte Marianne Hansen is a Reader in Japanese Studies at Newcastle University.
This article first appeared on The Conversation.
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