A Wild Sheep Chase

by Haruki Murakami

Some things are forgotten, some things disappear, some things die. But all in all, this was hardly what you could call a tragedy.

Bizness, the man enunciated, which marked him as a foreign-born Japanese; most Japanese Japanese will say bijiness.

“To hold down advertising is to have nearly the entire publishing and broadcasting industries under your thumb. There’s not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn’t depend in some way on advertising.

“No, that’s not it. What I mean is, I don’t really know if it’s the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more oceanfront filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?” “That’s only the dark side of things. Good things happen too, good people can make things worthwhile.”

Now all I know about her is my memories of her. And these memories fade further and further into the distance like displaced cells. Was it all biology?

The Ainu youth came upon a band of Ainu hunters passing through the area. “What is this area called?” he asked them. “Do you really think this asshole of a terrain even deserves a name?” they replied.

“Looking at things this way,” she said, comparing the left and right sides of the chronology, “we Japanese seem to live from war to war.”

“Take this spur line, boy, before they shut us down, which may be any day. Come what may, we’re the third deepest in the red of any line in the country,” the elder said with finality. I was surprised to hear that there were train lines more run-down than this one. We thanked them and left.

Hokkaido’s short autumn season was drawing to a close. The thick gray clouds in the north were intimations of the snows to come. Flying from September Tokyo to October Hokkaido, I’d lost my autumn. There’d been the beginning and the end, but none of the heart of autumn.

As if a great creature had grown old without being able to express its feelings. Not that it didn’t know how to express them, but rather that it didn’t know what to express.

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas—if I like these things, why should I apologize. The same with having a beer with you …” The Rat swallowed his words. “I don’t know why.”