Dear Log,
«[Interviewer:] In "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," Toru's brother-in-law, Noboru, is a very interesting character, like a media pundit who goes on TV to talk about politics and economics, but he doesn't believe in anything. He just says whatever is strategic. What inspired him?
[Murakami:] TV [laughs]. I don't watch it generally, but if you watch it from morning to night, just for one day, you could make up that kind of person. He can talk, but he's very shallow. He has nothing inside him. There are so many of that kind of person in Japan, and many in the States. So many nationalists in Japan are that kind of shallow person. I feel there's some kind of danger in the presence of those people. We can laugh at them, but it's dangerous at the same time.Are you afraid of fascism or something like that?
[Murakami:]Fascism is not the right word -- nationalism and revisionism. They're saying there was no Nanking Massacre and no trouble with comfort women [Chinese and Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Army]. They're remaking history. That's very dangerous. I went to Manchuria a couple of years ago and visited some villages. The villagers told me, "Japanese soldiers massacred four or five dozen people here." They showed me the mass grave -- it's still there. It's shocking and nobody can deny the fact, but they are doing it. We can go forward, but we have to remember the past. We don't have to be tied by the past, but we have to remember it -- that's different.»--"The Outsider: the Salon interview with Haruki Murakami"
