(Tokyo) Famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami, generally reluctant to make public appearances, said Tuesday that he was not a model student when he was awarded an honorary degree by his former university in Tokyo.
Published at 7:00 a.m.
“It’s a bit strange to receive this award, considering that I was a very bad student,” Mr. Murakami said to laughter from the audience at the prestigious Waseda University.
“I would skip classes and forget to study. I was just doing what I liked and caused tons of trouble at the university,” said the 75-year-old bestselling author.
This diploma is therefore a “quite generous gesture on the part of Waseda”, he said, dressed in academic attire, in front of an enthusiastic audience made up of hundreds of admiring fans and Waseda students.
In awarding this diploma, Waseda University praised the “cosmopolitan atmosphere” in his novels and the novelist’s ability to “freewheel zigzag between the real and the surreal”.
The author of The ballad of the impossible and of Kafka on the shore is famous for his tales depicting absurdity and loneliness in the modern world. It has been translated into nearly 50 languages.
His readers discover in “Murakami’s world” giant toads challenging office workers and where mackerel rain from the sky.
The City of Uncertain Wallshis latest work, has been on Japanese shelves since last year. It was published in its English version in November.
Regularly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Mr. Murakami is a reclusive person who shows little interest in the media.
“If I hadn’t gotten into Waseda, I probably wouldn’t have had a career as a writer,” he said. “I want to continue writing good novels.”
