The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

Every time I see rain falling on the sea a certain emotion washes over me. Probably because the sea eternally—or at least for a period of time that’s nearly eternal—never changes. Seawater evaporates and forms clouds, and the clouds rain, in an endless cycle. In that way the water in the sea is replaced again and again. Yet the sea as a whole doesn’t change. The sea is always the same sea. An actual substance you can touch, yet at the same time a pure, absolute concept. What I might feel when I watch rain falling on the sea is (probably) that sort of solemnity.

Standing there alone, I always felt sad, a deep sadness I’d felt before, long, long ago. I remembered that sadness very well. A sadness that can’t be explained, that doesn’t melt away over time, that quietly leaves invisible wounds, in a place you cannot see. And how can you deal with something you can’t see? I looked up, listening carefully to see if I could catch the sound of the flowing river. But I heard nothing, not even the wind. Clouds were pinned in place in the sky. I quietly closed my eyes, waiting for tears to well up and trickle down my face. But that unseen sadness wouldn’t even allow me to cry.

If the baby was a boy, he’d name him Shin, the character for “forest.” If the baby was a girl, then the name would be Rin, meaning “woods.” Perfect names, he felt, for a child born in a small mountain town full of nature.

“Sometimes I just don’t understand myself,” I admitted honestly. “Maybe I’ve lost sight of me. I don’t have a sense that I’m living this life as myself, as the real me. Sometimes I think I’m merely a shadow. When I feel that way, I get this restless feeling, like I’m simply tracing an outline of myself, cleverly pretending to be me.”

What I can say is one more thing—never give up believing. If you can believe strongly, deeply, in something, the road ahead will become clear. And then you can prevent the terrible, inevitable fall to come. Or at least cushion the shock of it.”

Fate had not been kind to him, yet he never lapsed into self-pity but did his utmost to make his life—for himself, and for those around him—something meaningful. His life was quite isolated, yet he cherished his emotional exchange with others.

Writing Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was a thrilling experience for me. And a lot of fun, as well. I published it as a book in 1985. I was thirty-six then. A period when all sorts of things forged ahead on their own. — As the years passed by, though, and as I gained more experience as a writer and grew older, I couldn’t help but think that I hadn’t seen this unfinished, or perhaps immature, work, The City, and Its Uncertain Walls, through to its conclusion. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was one response to the original story, but I thought a different form of response might be worth doing, too. Not overwriting the earlier work but instead creating a story that coexisted with it, so that the two complemented each other. Yet a vision of what form that other response would take still eluded me.

Note from afterward

As Jorge Luis Borges put it, there are basically a limited number of stories one writer can seriously relate in his lifetime. All we do—I think it’s fair to say—is take that limited palette of motifs, change the approach and methods as we go, and rewrite them in all sorts of ways. Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement. Isn’t this the quintessential core of what stories are all about? At least that’s how I see it. Haruki Murakami December 2022