Novelist Haruki Murakami and film director Pierre Foldes shake hands at the end of a talk session following a screening of the animated film ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ based on the Japanese author’s short stories, in Tokyo, June 15, 2024. Photo credit: AP
Renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami expressed his delight at how several of his short stories were adapted into an animated film by American director Pierre Foldes Blind willow, sleeping womanHe said he would like to see future filmmakers interpret his work with their own opinions.
The Japanese-language version of the 2022 film will be first released in Japan on July 26. It is the first animated adaptation of Murakami’s work.
Following a screening of the film at his school, Waseda University in Tokyo, on Saturday, Murakami – joined by Folds in a talk session – admitted that although he is not a fan of animated films, he watched it twice.
The filmmaker was inspired by six of Murakami’s short stories: “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo” and “UFO in Kushiro” – from “After the Quake”, collection, written after the deadly Kobe earthquake of 1995 — and including “Birthday Girl,” “Dabchick,” “The Windup Bird and Tuesday’s Woman.”
Blind willow, sleeping woman Set in Tokyo after the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima disaster of March 2011, the film focuses on three main characters – Katagiri, a hardworking but lonely and lacking self-confidence banker who teams up with a giant talking frog to save Tokyo from another impending earthquake, his indifferent young colleague, and his wife Kyoko, who is depressed and glued to the earthquake news on TV – after she leaves him. Through memories and dreams, the three eventually find peace and the ability to start anew.
Novelist Haruki Murakami and film director Pierre Foldes pose for a photo at the end of a talk session following a screening of the animated film “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” based on the Japanese author’s short stories, in Tokyo on June 15, 2024. | Photo credit: Mari Yamaguchi
Murakami praised the animated version of the wise green frog voiced by Foldes, saying it matched the character he had envisioned.
“I don’t want to just see a film version of what I’ve written, but rather add something to it that becomes something new,” Murakami said during the conversation.
Folds said his approach is to “be faithful to my interpretation of the things that are my inspiration,” which clearly works for Murakami.
The American filmmaker said he had no definite plan when he chose six stories that “I really liked”. But things started to form “like different crops growing together,” he told Murakami. “Slowly all these links appeared and that’s how I put all your stories into one story and included other stories inside it.”
The popular author’s works have previously inspired several award-winning works, including Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 drive my car and South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s 2018 thriller On fire,
Murakami cited both films and Folds’ animation as examples of how he and the directors successfully achieved their goals.
“Making a film based on a short story will require directors to be creative enough to add their own material, which helps produce an interesting product”, he said, adding that adapting a film from a full-length novel may require the opposite in a two-hour production.
Murakami also said that his nonfiction long-form investigative work “Underground,” based on interviews with people affected by the 1995 terrorist poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, would make a compelling film.
Blind willow, sleeping woman Received a nomination for Best Animated Film at the 2024 Lumières Awards.
