New Haruki Murakami story published in English

LONDON — Haruki Murakami returns to the Beatles once more in a new short story which opens with a Japanese translation of the song Yesterday.

Published in the latest issue of the New Yorker, the story, also called Yesterday, sees the Japanese author writing about two friends who met working at a coffee shop; the narrator, Tanimura, is studying literature at university, while his friend, Kitaru, is supposedly studying to retake his failed entrance exam.

Kitaru, says Murakami’s narrator, is, “as far as I know, the only person ever to put Japanese lyrics to the Beatles song Yesterday (and to do so in the distinctive Kansai dialect, no less) ... He used to belt out his own version when he was taking a bath. ‘Yesterday / Is two days before tomorrow, / The day after two days ago’.”

The story goes on to explore why Kitaru might be withdrawing from the life which he sees planned out for him — “we have the typical two kids, put ‘em in the good old Denenchofu elementary school, go out to the Tama River banks on Sundays, Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” — as he encourages Tanimura to date the girlfriend he can’t feel attracted to.

“When I was twenty or so, I tried several times to keep a diary, but I just couldn’t do it. So many things were happening around me back then that I could barely keep up with them, let alone stand still and write them all down in a notebook. And most of these things weren’t the kind that made me think, Oh, I’ve got to write this down. It was all I could do to open my eyes in the strong headwind, catch my breath, and forge ahead,” reminisces Tanimura, at a later date. “But, oddly enough, I remember Kitaru so well. We were friends for just a few months, yet every time I hear Yesterday scenes and conversations with him well up in my mind.”

Murakami, who will launch the English translation of his latest novel, Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer, also turned to the Beatles for the soundtrack to one of his best known titles, Norwegian Wood, and for the title to last year’s short story Drive My Car, named for the first track on the 1965 Rubber Soul album.

Yesterday is translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel. THE GUARDIAN