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Murakami, in trademark obscurity, explains why he accepted Jerusalem award
Israel is not the egg.
Japanese novelist Haruki...

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami receives the Jerusalem Prize from Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, during the International Book Fair in Jerusalem, Sunday.
Photo: AP

Confused? This might be the only explanation we will ever hear from Japanese bestselling author Haruki Murakami - and in true Murakami style, even it will be somewhat vague.

Murakami on Sunday night defeated jetlag, political opposition and droves of photographers to accept the Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society at the opening of the 24th Jerusalem International Book Fair held at Jerusalem's International Conference Center.

Flanked by President Shimon Peres and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, he took the prize with quiet poise. Then, alone on the podium and free of camera flashes, the author got down to business.

"So I have come to Jerusalem. I have a come as a novelist, that is - a spinner of lies.

"Novelists aren't the only ones who tell lies - politicians do (sorry, Mr. President) - and diplomats, too. But something distinguishes the novelists from the others. We aren't prosecuted for our lies: we are praised. And the bigger the lie, the more praise we get.

"The difference between our lies and their lies is that our lies help bring out the truth. It's hard to grasp the truth in its entirety - so we transfer it to the fictional realm. But first, we have to clarify where the truth lies within ourselves.

"Today, I will tell the truth. There are only a few days a year when I do not engage in telling lies. Today is one of them."

Murakami's novels are surreal and imaginative, often bordering on bizarre. Reading his books is like gazing at a Picasso: a certain detachment from normalcy is required so that the objects and events in Murakami's world can settle into their own logic.

But at the heart of each novel, standing in stark contrast to the logical chaos around him, is a very human, self-aware, humble soul-searching individual - and one whose internal struggles are the same as our own.

The panel that chose Murakami as its winner made its decision quickly and unanimously, citing Murakami's themes of universal humanism, love for humanity, and battles with existential questions that have no easy answers. But while the award panel debated little about who should receive this year's award, Murakami himself was torn about accepting it.

"When I was asked to accept this award," he said, "I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?

"I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing.

"So here is what I have come to say."

And here Murakami left behind the persona of his main characters and took on the role of a marginal one (the lucid wisdoms in his novels tend to come from acquaintances of the protagonist), making a clear statement that left no room for reinterpretation. No time for ambiguity, this.

"If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg.

"Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system" which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals.

"I have only one purpose in writing novels," he continued, his voice as unobtrusive and penetrating as a conscience. "That is to draw out the unique divinity of the individual. To gratify uniqueness. To keep the system from tangling us. So - I write stories of life, love. Make people laugh and cry.

"We are all human beings, individuals, fragile eggs," he urged. "We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold. To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us - create who we are. It is we who created the system."

Murakami, his message delivered, closed by thanking his readership - a special thing indeed from a man who does not make a habit of accepting awards in person.

"I am grateful to you, Israelis, for reading my books. I hope we are sharing something meaningful. You are the biggest reason why I am here."
tp://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304788868&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Murakami defies protests to accept Jerusalem prize
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami last night accepted Israel's prestigious literary award, the Jerusalem prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society, despite opposition from pro-Palestinian groups.

Murakami was presented with the $10,000 (£70,000) prize, given to the author whose work "best expresses and promotes the idea of the 'freedom of the individual in society'", on Sunday evening at the opening of the 24th Jerusalem international book fair, for a body of work including Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which all reached Israel's bestseller lists.

Previously, an open letter from a pro-Palestinian group had asked him to reconsider accepting the prize and participating in the book fair. "Please turn your attention to the Palestinians, who are being denied their freedom and dignity as human beings," the letter from the Palestine Forum Japan said. "We would humbly ask you to consider the effects your receipt of the Jerusalem prize would have, what sort of message the world would receive in this Middle East situation, what kind of propaganda value it could have to Israel and the possibility of aggravating the critical situation Palestinians are facing." The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel also appealed to Murakami not to accept the prize.

Standing on the stage flanked by Israeli president Shimon Peres and Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, Murakami said he had given "some thought" to attending, and that his biggest reason for coming was to thank his Israeli fans for reading his books.

"When I was asked to accept this award I was warned from coming here because of the fighting in Gaza. I asked myself: Is visiting Israel the proper thing to do? Will I be supporting one side?" the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying. "I gave it some thought. And I decided to come. Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. So I chose to see. I chose to speak here rather than say nothing."

Murakami went on to compare humans to eggs. "If there is a hard, high wall and an egg that breaks against it, no matter how right the wall or how wrong the egg, I will stand on the side of the egg. Why? Because each of us is an egg, a unique soul enclosed in a fragile egg. Each of us is confronting a high wall. The high wall is the system which forces us to do the things we would not ordinarily see fit to do as individuals."

We are all "human beings, individuals, fragile eggs", according to the author. "We have no hope against the wall: it's too high, too dark, too cold," he said. "To fight the wall, we must join our souls together for warmth, strength. We must not let the system control us – create who we are. It is we who created the system."

Previous winners of the Jerusalem prize include Nobel laureates JM Coetzee and VS Naipaul, as well as Arthur Miller, Mario Vargas Llosa and Milan Kundera. The award's organisers said they selected Murakami, whom they described as "easy to read, but not easy to understand", "out of profound esteem for his artistic achievements and love of people. His humanism is clearly reflected in his writings," they said.
tp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/16/haruki-murakami-jerusalem-prize

Always on the side of the egg
By Haruki Murakami
Tags: Israel News, Haruki Murakami

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
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Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.

So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.

The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.

Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.

Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.

This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.

It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.

Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.

This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.

My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.

He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.

My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.

I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.

Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.

That is all I have to say to you.

I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
tp://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064909.html