The Mood of Vegetables, the Kiss of a Seal: Haruki Murakami’s Essays

Haruki Murakami and Ryū Murakami are both familiar names in contemporary Japanese literature. Haruki is known as a novelist, essayist and translator. He has an international readership, and in Korea he is among the most recognizable Japanese writers of recent decades.

He made his debut in 1979 with Hear the Wind Sing, which won the Gunzō Prize for New Writers. Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, became a bestseller and brought him to a much larger Korean readership. Later, 1Q84 found a new audience.

Haruki Murakami’s The Mood of Vegetables, the Kiss of a Seal

The odd title belongs to a collection of short essays. The book itself is slim, and a reader can finish one piece in a few spare minutes.

It gathers a year of Murakami Radio, a column he wrote for the magazine anan, and follows the original order. Two of the pieces account for the title: one on the mood of vegetables, the other on the kiss of a seal.

The Mood of Vegetables

In one essay, Murakami recalls The World’s Fastest Indian. Anthony Hopkins plays an older man who tells a boy that a life without a dream is a bit like being a vegetable. It sounds like a thought worth nodding along to.

In another film, that would be where the scene ended. But the boy has a question.

• “What sort of vegetable?”
• The older man is caught off guard. He thinks for a moment and settles on a cabbage.

And that is about as far as the conversation goes. Murakami tells it as a joke that runs out of road at exactly the moment you expect it to become profound.

Why Write?

Toward the end of these short pieces, Murakami offers a thought about why he writes.

Music, he suggests, can carry some of the grief and pain people live with, giving it somewhere to go and helping a person hold together. He writes fiction because it can do something similar.

Anyone can put their words out into the world now. Writing that really reaches another person is still rare. That makes its power easier to notice when you come across it.

The means of writing and publishing keep changing. I suspect the books that move people will keep finding readers, much as the classics have.

Short Essays and Playful Illustrations

Some pieces made me smile and others made me stop for a moment. Ayumi Ohashi’s small illustrations offer their own pleasure between the pages.

The unusual title got my attention. The brief, observant pieces gave me a reason to keep coming back.

Book Information

The Mood of Vegetables, the Kiss of a Seal

Author

Haruki Murakami, illustrated by Ayumi Ohashi

Publication date

June 25, 2012 (Korean edition)

ISBN-13

9788994343648

View on YES24

This article contains an affiliate link. We may earn a commission if you make a purchase through it.

Japanese title and Korean edition details · KAIST Library