Alone on a midsummer night, Cat wakes to find a stranger dressed in yellow 'rat-a-tap, tapping' his feet. Captivated by the music of Kutze's steps, Cat resolves to tread wheat like the stranger when he grows up: in the big city where he studies music or, eventually, further afield, across the sea.

How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? A rare look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry"-and a thought-provoking exploration of the role of translators and editors in the creation of global literary culture. Thirty years ago, when Haruki Murakami's works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-size English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books can be read in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive? This book tells one key part of the story. Its cast includes an expat trained in art history who never intended to become a translator; a Chinese American ex-academic who never planned to work as an editor; and other publishing professionals in New York, London, and Tokyo who together introduced a pop-inflected, unexpected Japanese voice to the wider literary world. David Karashima synthesizes research, correspondence, and interviews with dozens of individuals-including Murakami himself-to examine how countless behind-the-scenes choices over the course of many years worked to build an internationally celebrated author's persona and oeuvre. His careful look inside the making of the "Murakami Industry" uncovers larger questions: What role do translators and editors play in framing their writers' texts? What does it mean to translate and edit "for a market"? How does Japanese culture get packaged and exported for the West?

In time for the one year anniversary of the 2011 earthquake in Japan, a collection of essays and stories by Japanese writers on the devastating disaster, its aftermath, and the resolve of a people to rebuild.
On March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake occurred off the northeastern coast of Japan, triggering a 50-foot tsunami that crushed everything in its path--highways, airports, villages, trains, and buses--leaving death and destruction behind, and causing a major radiation leak from five nuclear plants. Here eighteen writers give us their trenchant observations and emotional responses to such a tragedy, in what is a fascinating, enigmatic and poignant collection.