—
In 1978, when the team won its first championship, I was living in Sendagaya, a ten-minute walk from the stadium, so I went to see games whenever I was free. That year the Yakult Swallows (they’d changed their name to the Yakult Swallows by then) won their first league championship in the twenty-nine-year history of the franchise, and rode that wave all the way to victory in the Japan Series. A miraculous year, for sure. That was the same year (when I was twenty-nine, too) that I wrote my first novel, entitled Hear the Wind Sing, which won the Gunzo Newcomer’s Prize. I suppose that’s when you could call me a novelist, starting then. I know it’s just a coincidence, but I can’t help feeling there’s some connection, some karma, at work in all this.
But this was all much later. In the ten years that led up to that moment, from 1968 to 1977, I witnessed a huge number, an almost astronomical number (at least that’s the way it feels), of losing games. To put it another way, I steadily became accustomed to regular loss: “Here we go again—another defeat.” Like a diver carefully takes his time to acclimate to the different water pressure. It’s true that life brings us far more defeats than victories. And real-life wisdom arises not so much from knowing how we might beat someone as from learning how to accept defeat with grace.
“You’ll never understand this advantage we’ve been given!” I often used to shout at the Giants’ cheering section. (Of course I never actually shouted it aloud.)
—
During those long dark years, like passing through an endless tunnel, I sat in the outfield seats. To kill time while I watched the game, I scribbled down some poem-like jottings in a notebook. Poems on the topic of baseball. Unlike soccer, with baseball there can be a lot of down time between plays, so I could look away from the field, jot down my ideas on paper without missing any runs. Let’s face it—baseball is a sport done at a leisurely pace. Most of these poems were written during tiresome, losing games when one pitcher after another was brought in to try to salvage the game. (Oh, man, how many times did I watch that kind of game?)
—
The first poem in my collection was the following one. There are two versions of the poem—a short version and a long one—and this is the long version. I added a few things later on.
Right Fielder
On that May afternoon
You’re holding down right field at Jingu Stadium.
The right fielder for the Sankei Atoms.
That’s your profession.
I’m seated in the back of the right field’s seats,
Drinking slightly lukewarm beer.
Like always.
The opposing team’s batter lofts a fly to right field.
A simple pop fly.
It arcs high up, a lazy fly ball.
The wind has stopped.
And the sun isn’t an issue.
It’s a piece of cake.
You raise both hands a bit,
And step forward about three yards.
You got this.
I take a sip of beer,
Waiting for the ball to drop.
As straight as a ruler the ball falls
Precisely three yards behind you.
Like a mallet lightly tapping the edge of the universe,
There’s a slight plunk.
It makes me wonder—
Why in the world do I cheer on a team like this?
This itself is a kind of—
Riddle as huge as the universe.
I have no idea if this could be called a poem. If you did, it might make actual poets upset, make them want to string me up from the nearest light pole. I’ll pass on that, thank you very much. Okay, but then what should I call these? If there’s a better name for them, then I’d like to know it. So, for the time being, at least, I labeled them “poems.” And I gathered my poems into a book called The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection and published it. If poets want to get all bent out of shape over it, then be my guest. This was in 1982. A little before I finished writing my novel A Wild Sheep Chase, three years after I’d debuted as a novelist (if you could call it that).
Major publishers were wise enough, of course, not to show even a smidge of interest in putting out my book of poems, so I ended up basically self-publishing it. Fortunately a friend of mine ran a printing company, so I could print it up on the cheap. Simple binding, five hundred numbered copies, each and every one signed by yours truly. Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami, Haruki Murakami…Predictably, though, hardly anyone paid it any attention. You’d have to have pretty odd taste to lay down good money for something like that. I think I sold about three hundred copies, all told. The rest I gave away as souvenirs to various friends and acquaintances. Nowadays they’ve become valuable collector’s items, and fetch unbelievable prices. You never know what’s going to happen. I only have two copies myself. If only I’d kept more, I’d be rolling in dough by now.
.
After my father’s funeral, three of my cousins and I drank a ton of beer. Two of my cousins were on my father’s side (around the same age as me), and the third was a cousin on my mother’s side (about fifteen years younger). We sat around till late at night, throwing back the beers. Beer was all we drank. And no snacks, either. Just an endless parade of beer. I’d never drunk that much beer in my life. By the end, about twenty of those large, twenty-one-ounce Kirin bottles stood empty on the table. How my bladder held out, I have no idea. On top of that, while we were downing all this beer, I stepped out to a jazz bar near the funeral home and had several Four Roses whiskeys on the rocks.
I
