Two thousand and nine was a good year to be a Haruki Murakami fan. Seven years after writing his last epic novel, "Kafka on the Shore," with only the bite-sized 2004 "afterdark" to tide over his readership, the author published the massive two-volume "1Q84." Looking back now, it's also clear that Murakami was in between two crests of his career.
In 1987, he went from a well-known niche author to a pop-culture rock star in Japan with the release of "Norwegian Wood." With the novels that followed he then went on to gain global popularity, being translated into over 40 languages around the world, and settled into stardom abroad with a stint as a writer in residence at Princeton University and life as a literary recluse in Japan. With "1Q84," publishers kept a tight seal on the content of the story to prevent the kind of leaks that occurred prior to the release of "Kafka on the Shore," and the secrecy fueled curiosity about the book.
Yet, despite his stardom and the anticipation surrounding "1Q84," before the release of that novel Murakami had, in a sense, become obscurely popular in Japan; many knew his name and some read his books, but it was far from the days of his "Norwegian Wood" fame. I lived and worked in Tokyo at the time and as an unabashed Murakami fanboy I was looking forward to the release of "1Q84"; I even took the day off work to celebrate the event. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I left my office in Shimbashi, Tokyo, on the Wednesday before the official Friday release, and discovered that a bookstore around the corner had put the book on display two days early. Instead of herds of Murakami fans ravenously waiting in line, there was no one there except a few people standing reading comics and magazines. I was the only one who even seemed to notice the novel. I hesitantly bought a copy, thinking that I might get caught for having the book early, and rushed home.