South of the Border, West of the Sun: A Novel (Vintage International)

by Haruki Murakami

1 My birthday’s the fourth of January, 1951. The first week of the first month of the first year of the second half of the twentieth century. Something to commemorate, I guess, which is why my parents named me Hajime— “Beginning,” in Japanese. Other than that, a 100 percent average birth. My father worked in a large brokerage firm, my mother was a typical housewife. During the war, my father was drafted as a student and sent to fight in Singapore; after the surrender he spent some time in a POW camp. My mother’s house was burned down in a B-29 raid during the final year of the war. Their generation suffered most during the long war. When I was born, though, you’d never have known there’d been a war.

until I moved to Tokyo to go to college, I was convinced everyone in the whole world lived in a single-family home with a garden and a pet and commuted to work decked out in a suit.

more unusual were families with only one child. I happened to be one of the unusual ones, since I was an only child. I had an inferiority complex about it, as if there was something different about me, that what other people all had and took for granted I lacked. I detested the term only child.

In the world I lived in, it was an accepted idea that only children were spoiled by their parents, weak, and self-centered. This was a given—like the fact that the barometer goes down the higher up you go and the fact that cows give milk. That’s why I hated it whenever someone asked me how many brothers and sisters I had. Just let them hear I didn’t have any, and instinctively they thought: An only child, eh? Spoiled, weak, and self-centered, I betcha. That kind of knee-jerk reaction depressed me, and hurt. But what really depressed and hurt me was something else: the fact that everything they thought about me was true. I really was spoiled, weak, and self-centered.

In the six years I went to elementary school, I met just one other only child. So I remember her (yes, it was a girl) very well. I got to know her well, and we talked about all sorts of things. We understood each other. You could even say I loved her. Her last name was Shimamoto. Soon after she was born, she came down with polio, which made her drag her left leg. On top of that, she’d transferred to our school at the end of fifth grade. Compared to me, then, she had a terrible load of psychological baggage to struggle with. This baggage, though, only made her a tougher, more self-possessed only child than I could ever have been. She never whined or complained, never gave any indication of the annoyance she must have felt at times.

Our school’s policy was for the child who lived nearest any transfer student to help him or her out; my teacher took me aside to let me know that he expected me to take special care of Shimamoto, with her lame leg. As with all kids of eleven or twelve talking with a member of the opposite sex for the first time, for a couple of days our conversations were strained. When we found out we were both only children, though, we relaxed. It was the first time either of us had met a fellow only child.

“Somebody said that to me. A long time ago. Parents who don’t get along very well end up having only one child. It made me so sad when I heard that.”

Off in the distance, Nat King Cole was singing “South of the Border.” The song was about Mexico, but at the time I had no idea. The words “south of the border” had a strangely appealing ring to them. I was convinced something utterly wonderful lay south of the border. When I opened my eyes, Shimamoto was still moving her fingers along her skirt. Somewhere deep inside my body I felt an exquisitely sweet ache. “It’s strange,” she said, “but when I think about children, I can only imagine having one.

in the first three months after I moved I went to see her three or four times. But that was it. Finally I stopped going. We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we were attending different schools and living two train stops away was all it took for me to feel our worlds had changed completely.

Shimamoto and I thus grew apart, and I ended up not seeing her anymore. And that was probably (probably is the only word I can think of to use here; I don’t consider it my job to investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is correct and what isn’t) a mistake. I should have stayed as close as I could to her. I needed her, and she needed me. But my self-consciousness was too strong, and I was too afraid of being hurt. I never saw her again. Until many years later, that is. Even after we stopped seeing each other, I thought of her with great fondness. Memories of her encouraged me, soothed me, as I passed through the confusion and pain of adolescence. For a long time, she held a special place in my heart. I kept this special place just for her, like a Reserved sign on a quiet corner table in a restaurant. Despite the fact that I was sure I’d never see her again.

2 In high school I was a typical teenager. This was the second stage of my life, a step in my personal evolution—abandoning the idea of being different, and settling for normal.

I could be pegged a stuck-up

Not that I was a total loner. I managed to make some close friends at school, a few, at least. School itself I hated. I felt as though these friends were trying to crush me all the time and I had to always be prepared to defend myself. This toughened me. If it hadn’t been for these friends, I would have emerged from those treacherous teenage years with even more scars.

And I made a girlfriend. She wasn’t particularly pretty,

You couldn’t see it in a photo, but she had a straightforward warmth, which attracted people.

Her father was a dentist, and they lived–no surprise–in a single-family home, with a dog. The dog was a German Shepherd named Karl, after Karl Marx, believe it or not. Her father was a member of the Japanese Communist Party. Granted there must be Communist dentists in the world, but the whole lot of them could probably fit in four or five buses. So I thought it was pretty weird that it was my girlfriend’s father who happened to be one of this rare breed. Izumi’s parents were tennis fanatics,

She placed her palm above my heart, and the feel of her hand and the beat of my heart became one. She’s not Shimamoto, I told myself. She can’t give me what Shimamoto gave. But here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair. 3 Izumi and I went out for more than a year.

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it’s a kind of power that snares people and reels them in.

that’s how the person I lost my virginity with happened to be my girlfriend’s cousin. And not just any old cousin, but the one she was closest to.

I wasn’t in love with her. And she didn’t love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was. I liked Izumi a lot, but not once did I experience that irrational power with her.

In truth, I damaged Izumi beyond repair. It didn’t take much to realize how hurt she was. With her grades, she should have breezed into a top university, but she failed the entrance exam and ended up attending a small, third-rate girls’ college.

it was a physical force that swept us off our feet. It didn’t even leave me with the sense of guilt about betraying you that you’d expect me to have. It has nothing to do with us.

Izumi wasn’t the only one who got hurt. I hurt myself deeply, though at the time I had no idea how deeply. I should have learned many things from that experience, but when I look back on it, all I gained was one single, undeniable fact. That ultimately I am a person who can do evil. I never consciously tried to hurt anyone, yet good intentions notwithstanding, when necessity demanded, I could become completely self-centered, even cruel. I was the kind of person who could, using some plausible excuse, inflict on a person I cared for a wound that would never heal.

College transported me to a new town, where I tried, one more time, to reinvent myself. Becoming someone new, I could correct the errors of my past. At first I was optimistic: I could pull it off. But in the end, no matter where I went, I could never change. Over and over I made the same mistake, hurt other people, and hurt myself in the bargain.

Just after I turned twenty, this thought hit me: Maybe I’ve lost the chance to ever be a decent human being. The mistakes I’d committed—maybe they were part of my very makeup, an inescapable p...

Once I was out of college, a friend helped me get a job on the editorial staff of a textbook company. I got a haircut, shined my shoes, and bought a suit. It wasn’t much of a company, but jobs for literature majors being few and far between that year, and considering my lousy grades and lack of connections, I had to settle for what I could get.

Four or five years passed in a flash. I had several girlfriends, but nothing lasted.

I consider this the third stage of my life—the twelve years between my starting college and turning thirty. Years of disappointment and loneliness. And silence. Frozen years, when my feelings were shut up inside me.

I racked my brains wondering how to get back together with Izumi, how to see Shimamoto again.

The two of them were lost to me forever.

There I was, listening to this girl, all the time thinking of Shimamoto. I knew I shouldn’t be, but there it was. Just thinking of Shimamoto made me shiver all over, all these many years later.

“Why, may I ask, were you following her for so long?” he asked me politely. I couldn’t answer.

“Just take this, and don’t say a word. I know someone put you up to this, and I’d like to settle the whole matter amicably. Not a word about what’s happened. Nothing special happened to you today, and you never met me. Understand? If I ever do find out you’ve said anything, you can rest assured I will find you and take care of the matter. So I’d like you to forget about following her. Neither one of us wants any trouble. Correct?” Saying this, the man laid the envelope in front of me and stood up. Snatching up the check, he paid the cashier and strode out of the coffee shop. I sat there dumbfounded. Finally I picked up the envelope on the table and looked inside. There were ten ten-thousand-yen bills.

I got married when I was thirty. I met my wife one summer vacation while I was traveling alone.

Yukiko and I were attracted to each other from the start.

We’d always go to some quiet place and talk. I could tell her anything, up front, no holds barred. I could feel the weight of all I had lost those past ten years, all those years down the drain, bearing down on me. Before it was too late, I had to get some of it back. Holding Yukiko, I felt a nostalgic, long-gone thrill racing through me. When we said goodbye, I was lost once again. Loneliness pained me, silence had me exasperated. A week before my thirtieth birthday, after we’d been dating for three months, I proposed to her. Her father was the president of a medium-size construction company, and a real character. He’d hardly been to school, yet was a go-getter—a bit too aggressive for my tastes. Still, I was impressed by his unique outlook on life. I’d never met anybody like him.

I was thinking maybe you could open some kind of store there. It’s company property, so I’ll have to take the going rate for the down payment and rent, but if you’d like to have a go at it, I can lend you as much as you want.” I thought about it for a while. The possibilities were intriguing. That’s how I came to open an upscale jazz bar in the basement of a brand-new building in Aoyama.

The bar was more successful than my wildest dreams, and two years later I opened a second one, also in Aoyama.

Yukiko and I bought a four-bedroom condo in Aoyama and a BMW 320. And had a second child. Another girl. Before I knew what hit me, I was the father of two little girls.

he suggested I put any extra money into stocks and real estate. It takes hardly any time or effort, he told me. But I knew absolutely zilch about the stock market or real estate. So he said, “Leave the details to me. If you just do as I say, you’ll wind up doing okay. There’s a knack to these kinds of things.” So I invested as he told me to. And sure enough, in a short time I’d racked up a healthy profit.

In order to succeed, you need luck and brains. Those are the basics. But that’s not enough. You need capital.

If I hadn’t met my father-in-law, I’d still be editing textbooks. Still living in a crummy little apartment in Nishiogikubo,

While my wife was pregnant I’d had a few flings, but nothing serious. I never slept with any one woman more than once or twice. Okay, three times, tops. I never felt I was having an affair with a capital A. I just wanted someone to sleep with, the same thing my partners were after. Avoiding entanglements, I chose my bedmates with care. Maybe I was testing something by sleeping with them. Trying to see what I could find in them, and what they could find in me.

“I went to Toyohashi because my younger sister lives there. I was on a business trip to Nagoya, and it was a Friday, so I decided to go over to her place to spend the night. And that’s where I met Izumi. She was in the elevator of my sister’s apartment building. I was thinking: Wow, this woman’s the spitting image of that Ohara girl.

“Izumi Ohara is the apartment house’s mystery woman, I found out. No one had ever spoken with her. If you say hello to her as you pass in the corridor, she ignores you. She doesn’t answer the bell when you ring.

Let me put it this way: She’s no longer attractive.” I bit my lip. “What do you mean?” “Most of the kids who live in that apartment building are afraid of her.”

When he left, he clapped me on the shoulder. “Well, the years change people in many ways, right? I have no idea what went on between you and her back then. But whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault. To some degree or other, everyone has that kind of experience. Even me. No joke. I went through the same thing. But there’s nothing you can do about it. Another person’s life is that person’s life. You can’t take responsibility. It’s like we’re living in a desert. You just have to get used to it.

8 For ten days or so after the feature article with my name and photo appeared in Brutus, old acquaintances dropped by the bar to see me. Junior high and high school classmates.

I can’t say it was the most thrilling thing in the world to see these faces from the past. Not that I didn’t like talking with them. It put me in a pleasant, nostalgic mood. And they seemed happy to see me. But frankly I couldn’t care less about the subjects they brought up. How our old hometown had changed, what other classmates were up to now. As if I cared. I was too far removed from that place and time. Besides, everything they talked about brought back memories of Izumi. Every mention of my hometown made me picture her alone in that bleak apartment.

a couple of weeks after that, after all the hubbub of the article had been forgotten, the last friend showed up. Shimamoto.