Haruki Murakami has warned that “no matter how high a wall we build to keep intruders out, no matter how strictly we exclude outsiders, no matter how much we rewrite history to suit us, we just end up damaging and hurting ourselves”.  Speaking as he received the Hans Christian Andersen literature award, the Japanese novelist said that “just as all people have shadows, every society and nation, too, has shadows”, and “if there are bright, shining aspects, there will definitely be a counterbalancing dark side. If there’s a positive, there will surely be a negative on the reverse side.”  “At times we tend to avert our eyes from the shadow, those negative parts. Or else try to forcibly eliminate those aspects. Because people want to avoid, as much as possible, looking at their own dark sides, their negative qualities. But in order for a statue to appear solid and three-dimensional, you need to have shadows. Do away with shadows and all you end up with is a flat illusion. Light that doesn’t generate shadows is not true light,” said the novelist.  He continued: “You have to patiently learn to live together with your shadow. And carefully observe the darkness that resides within you. Sometimes in a dark tunnel you have to confront your own dark side.”  Murakami was announced as winner of the Hans Christian Andersen prize a year ago, but received the prize this weekend. The 500,000DKK award, for writing which “can be linked to Andersen’s name and authorship through genre similarities or storyteller-artistic qualities” has previously been won by authors including JK Rowling and Salman Rushdie. Murakami was cited for his “ capacity to boldly mix classic narrative art, pop culture, Japanese tradition, dreamlike realism and philosophical discussion”, which judges said “makes him a fitting heir to the Andersen legacy”.  ”Murakami’s ability to combine the everyday and reality with magic and fairytale derives from a linguistic mastery that once again makes one think of Hans Christian Andersen. There are images and descriptions of natural scenery, cityscapes and landscapes in Murakami that possess a distinctive poetry,” said committee member and professor Anne-Marie Mai from the University of Southern Denmark in a speech at the ceremony.  The novelist, author of books including Norwegian Wood and Kafka on the Shore, called his speech in Denmark The Meaning of Shadows, in honour of Andersen’s story The Shadow. Andersen’s tale sees a learned man send his shadow away, only for the shadow to gradually take on human form and have his old master killed. Murakami called it a “dark and hopeless story”, according to Japan Today, telling his audience that “sometimes in a deep place you have to confront your own dark side”.  “If you don’t, before long your shadow will grow ever stronger and will return, some night, to knock at the door of your house. ‘I’m back,’ it’ll whisper to you,” said the novelist.  Murakami also used his speech to elaborate on his own writing process, telling his audience that he doesn’t plan out a plot, instead beginning with a single scene or idea. “As I write, I let that scene or idea move forward of its own accord. Instead of using my head, in other words, it’s through moving my hand in the process of writing that I think. In those times I value what’s in my unconscious above what’s in my conscious mind,” he said.  Critics today, as well as many readers, “tend to read stories in an analytical way,” he said. “They are trained in schools, or by society, that that’s the correct reading methodology. People analyse, and critique, texts, from an academic perspective, a sociological perspective, or a psychoanalytic perspective.”  But “if a novelist tries to construct a story analytically, the story’s inherent vitality will be lost”, because “empathy between writer and readers won’t arise”.  “Often we see that the novels that critics rave about are ones readers don’t particularly like, but in many cases it’s because works that critics see as analytically excellent fail to win the natural empathy of readers,” said the author.  Murakami did not elaborate on his warning about walls and outsiders, but Japanese press speculated that he was “referring to the increasingly mounting anti-refugee and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe and elsewhere”. In 2009, when he was awarded the Jerusalem prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society in the face of opposition from pro-Palestinian groups, he said that “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 have no hope against the wall: it’s too high, too dark, too cold,” he said in Jerusalem. “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.”
Celebrated novelist’s acceptance of the Hans Christian Andersen literary award led to a speech on confronting the inner darkness of people, society and nations