Haruki Murakami QUIZ

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1.  Before turning to writing full-time, Murakami ran a jazz club called . . .
a. Tokyo Blues
b. Cat Blue
c. Peter Cat
d. Cat Raymond

2. Murakami says the instant he knew he was going to write a novel was while watching . . .
a. a baseball game
b. an unknown American blues singer
c. the Tokyo marathon
d. a cat fight

3.  The author’s first critical success, A Wild Sheep Chase, follows the apathetic protagonist on a hunt for a sheep, and while on this adventure he meets a woman with magically seductive . . .
a. ears
b. toes
c. fingers

4.In Norwegian Wood, protagonist Toru Watanabe reminiscences about two very different women in his young life.  The one who will take her own life is . . .
a. Momoko
b. Naoko
c. Rinko
d. Midori

5.Which of these books is NOT mentioned in Norwegian Wood . . .
a. Beneath the Wheel
b. The Magic Mountain
c. The Centaur
d. Steppenwolf
e. The Great Gatsby

6.  In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Toru Okada lowers himself to the bottom of a neighbor’s well when . . .
a. his cat disappears
b. his wife leaves him
c. he loses his job

7. The person who calls Toru “Mr. Wind-Up Bird” and who will take the ladder from the well, leaving him stranded for three days, is . . .
a. May Kasahara
b. Creta Kano
c. Malta Kano
d. Kumiko


8. One of the themes Murakami addresses in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is . . .
a. the incarceration of Japanese POWs
b. the internment of Japanese Americans
c. Japanese war crimes in occupied Manchuria

9. In Kafka on the Shore young Kafka runs away from home and ends up in a private library where he spends his days reading the collected works of Natsume Sōseki and . . . 
a.  The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
b. The Arabian Nights
c. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

10. The cat-killer in Kafka is . . .
a. Colonel Sanders
b. Ronald McDonald
c. Johnnie Walker

11.  . . . and his reason for killing the cats is to . . .
a. transport them to an alternate reality
b. save their souls
c. appease a higher order
d. feed his Pit Bull


12.  Kafka’s Walkman does NOT contain . . .
a. Prince
b. Radiohead
c. Cream
d. Duke Ellington
e. Red Hot Chili Peppers

13. Murakami’s lesbian novel would be . . .

14. And in this novel Sumire, a reader of scientific novels, decides her lesbianism must be linked to . . .
a. elongated thigh bones
b. a small bone in her ear
c. flat feet
d. an oversized left kneecap

15.  In Underground, Murakami’s non-fiction work in which he interviews victims of the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, one thing learned was that almost half of the female interviewees mentioned being regular victims on the subway of chikan (of which none ever attempted to report to authorities), which is  . . .
a. groping of women by male commuters
b. verbal abuse of women by male commuters
c. purse snatching by teen gangs
d. obscene gestures by young men 

16. In the short story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo”  a man-size, upright frog mysteriously appears in a man’s apartment one evening and says together they must fight ________________who lives in the earth below Tokyo.
a. Fish
b. Snake
c. Mole
d. Worm

17. From the short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman there is a female character who was robbed by a monkey. The monkey stole her . . .
a. caller ID number
b. nametag
c. pager
d. birth certificate

18. In What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Murakami mentions two albums he likes to run to. They include The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet, and . . .
a. The Chemical Brothers’ Surrender
b. The Clash’s London Calling
c.  Eric Clapton’s Reptile

19.  In which one of the following cities has Murakami NOT run a marathon?
a. Barcelona
b. Boston
c. New York
d. Athens

20.  Murakami’s writing inspired the making of which film?
a. Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog
b. Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation
c. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel


21.  Which band claims its music is inspired by Murakami?
a. Flaming Lips
b. Radiohead
c. Portishead
d. Juliette Lewis and The Licks


22.  Which of the following authors has Murakami NOT translated into Japanese  . . .
a. Raymond Chandler
b. Raymond Carver
c. Philip K. Dick
d. F. Scott Fitzgerald
e. John Irving
f. Truman Capote
g. Ursula K. Le Guin

23. In Murakami’s most recent novel to be translated into English, After Dark, taking place in the course of a dark night in Tokyo, a deep feeling of unease involving technology permeates the novel and is expressed at one point by a . . .
a.computer that types its own text
b. telephone that picks up sinister conversations from unknown persons
c. TV that locates the viewer in the set
d. discarded mobile delivering threats to passers-by

24. Which of Murakami’s novels is due for film release in 2010?

25. In recent interviews Murakami has said his newest book, 1Q84, selling up a storm in Japan, and due out in English translation in 2011, was inspired by George Orwell and . . .
a. Manga characters
b. the Aum Shinrikyo cult of the sarin gas attacks
c. the phenomena of school killings in the U.S.
d. the new wave of Islamic fundamentalists