This story was originally published on 10 January 2023. We are republishing it to mark the UK release of ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’.
As the author of world-renowned classics like Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami’s literary reputation is already well-established. In 45-odd years of writing, his ability to carve page-turning narratives out of mundane scenarios, curious characters, everyday musings and surrealist daydreams has earned him millions of fans across the globe. But this appeal has also long been considered incompatible with that of visual filmmaking. “His writing is wonderful at expressing inner emotions,” said Drive My Car director Ryusuke Hamaguchi at the New York Film Festival in 2021. “But it’s really difficult to re-create those inner feelings in film.”
In 2023, a ballooning Murakami-verse of shorts and feature films is now turning the tide on this once-dominant narrative. A new animated film from French director Pierre Földes will further cement the reality that Murakami’s introspective storytelling has, in fact, become a prime foundation for innovative arthouse cinema.
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is an anthology set in the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, adapted from a series of short stories from across Murakami’s various collections. It follows everyday characters like a bar-dwelling husband, his television-loving wife, and an awkward white-collar worker as they reflect on existential crises through memories, dreams and fantasies involving man-sized frogs and giant earthworms. Told through intricate illustration and rotoscoping, the film won the Jury prize at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2022.
Ahead of the film’s UK and Ireland cinema release on 31 March (with a premiere at BFI Southbank on 6 Feb), we’re looking back on five other classic Murakami adaptations that mark out the author’s journey from page to screen.
A Girl, She Is 100% (Naoto Yamakawa, 1983)
Murakami rarely sanctioned adaptations of his work in the 80s but, nonetheless, one filmmaker in Japan managed to get permission to transform two of the writer’s stories into short films early on in that decade.
In 1982, Naoto Yamakawa’s Attack on a Bakery concerned two hungry men whose plan to rob a bakery is disrupted by an indecisive woman ordering croissants. The following year, A Girl, She is 100% — inspired by the five-page story that later inspired Murakami’s opus 1Q84 — combined stop-motion editing, colourful collaging, and the sights and sounds of booming 80s Japan for a 10-minute creative explosion that harks back to the French New Wave.
The latter story concerns a man who spots a girl on a Harajuku backstreet, only to then imagine them drinking cocktails at hotel bars and watching Woody Allen movies together. The short film would go on to reach international film festivals in Edinburgh, London and New York upon release; you can find it (alongside Attack on a Bakery) on YouTube today.
Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004)
Tony Takitani stars Issei Ogata (Yi Yi) as the lonely son of a wartime jazz trombonist, whose chance for happiness as a married man is spurned by his wife’s excessive spending on designer clothes. In 2004. the film won director Jun Ichikawa two major prizes at Locarno Film Festival.
Ichikawa’s minimalist film offers a hypnotic viewing experience — thanks to the washed-out colour palette and nostalgic tone, and camerawork that repeatedly pans from left-to-right, as if slowly turning through the pages of a book. A transcendent score by veteran composer and Oscar-winner Ryuichi Sakamoto (Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence), meanwhile, seeps the film in an atmospheric blend of delicate jazz piano.
Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung, 2010)
In 1987, Norwegian Wood would mark Murakami’s major international breakthrough while increasing his readership to millions at home in Japan. It is the contemplative story of a university student who clutches at romantic relationships with two young women in the wake of his best friend’s suicide: one is a traumatised childhood companion, the other an attractive and outgoing classmate.
Nascent fashion icon and rumoured former Harry Styles flame Kiko Mizuhara stars as one of the more captivating characters in Tran Anh Hung’s 2010 film. The then-19-year-old portrayed manic pixie dream girl Midori opposite Kenichi Matsuyama (Death Note)’s lead Toru Watanabe.
The film was notably the third to be scored by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. His chiming guitar fingerpicking and sweeping chord changes are essential in the building of its dreamy atmosphere. Dissonant strings later foster a sense of dread as the film glides towards its climax.
Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
A year before Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite transformed the status of Korean cinema in the West, another outstanding Korean film deserving of similar praise bowed. That film was Burning, a psychological thriller that observed a mysterious and magnetic love triangle between characters played by Yoo Ah-in (Hellbound), Jeon Jong-seo (The Call) and then-rising star Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead; Nope).
Adapted from the Murakami short story Barn Burning, written in 1983 and later found in the 1993 collection The Elephant Vanishes, this brooding and enigmatic 2018 film adaption is a masterwork by the esteemed director Lee Chang-dong, himself a former novelist. Regarded as one of Korea’s all-time greatest filmmakers (his prior accolades include a Silver Lion at Venice Film Festival for Oasis, and a Best Screenplay win at Cannes Film Festival for Poetry), Burning was his comeback after an eight-year break from directing.
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The film competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2018, and took home the FIPRESCI Prize. It subsequently became the first Korean film to make the final nine-film shortlist for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, while prestigious UK film criticism publication Sight & Sound named it the third best film of the year.
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
Unless you were sleeping under a rock, you probably already caught wind of this arthouse sensation from Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi, which stormed both Cannes in 2021 (winning three awards) and the Oscars in 2022 (winning Best International Feature Film). A modern arthouse classic, it’s one of the best Murakami adaptations out there.
Drive My Car tells the story of stage performer Yūsuke Kafuku (Japan Academy Film Prize-winner Hidetoshi Nishijima), who listens to recordings of his late partner’s line readings while being driven around Hiroshima in a red Saab 900 Turbo. Ostensibly, he’s preparing for a multilingual performance of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya, a play for which he is also training an ensemble of actors. But between the lines, this engrossing three-hour drama offers a delicate exploration of loss and grief that feels faithful to Murakami’s sprawling and dreamlike writing. “I was drawn in from beginning to end,” Murakami told the New York Times in 2021. “I think that this alone is a wonderful feat.”