I don’t nod.
“No?” he asks.
“Where you going?”
“What, this freighter?”
“Yeah.”
“To China,” he says.
I inform the sailor of my desire to board.
“OK, one ticket. To China.”
LINER NOTES
WRITING ABOUT WHAT I’M WRITING ABOUT
This book demands explanation. You open it up to find the title on the title page. Fair enough. But then there’s a subtitle under it. A strange subtitle—right? You keep going, but the Contents page is no less strange. Some readers might wonder: “Where have I seen these words before? They look kind of familiar.”
These chapter titles are borrowed. Phrases lifted from the work of another writer.
I’ve sampled them.
Maybe that sounds a little too musical. But I’ve never been the sort of writer who lives in an entirely literary world. Pop culture is the air I breathe. I know how it feels to put a record on a turntable, to flip it over and play the other side. And I know how it feels to grip a gamepad or dip my hand into a bag of chips while watching a movie. But music has probably given me the most, and it just keeps giving me more.
Maybe the best gift of all: music has shown me how to survive.
Music comes in many forms. Radio, tape, CD. But the song has a way of moving on its own—from generation to generation. Take the cover song. Singing the hits of the past today. With nothing but the deepest respect for those who came before.
Like with the early Beatles or the Stones. The way they did it.
Now.
There’s no reason you can’t do the same thing with stories. To take your love for the original and situate it in the present. Back to this book. To the subtitle: A Slow Boat to China RMX. A nod to Haruki Murakami’s unforgettable short story—“A Slow Boat to China”. The story where my story begins.
For me, Murakami is at the centre of it all—the roots of my soul.
RMX stands for “remix”. Remixes, covers… It’s easy to get them mixed up. But “misreading” is a big part of what this book is about, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Whenever I think about remixing, I think about this one story I know. It has to do with a well-known remixer, whose name I forget. When an artist comes to him for a track, he doesn’t run to the studio. He puts the song on repeat and goes to bed. He lets it play all night. Then, when he wakes up in the morning, he knows exactly what to do.
That’s what I’m talking about when I talk about remixing.
Unconsciousness. Dreams. And love that has no value other than purity.
This book is dedicated to Tokyo, 2002—and all the years that went into making it.
And to the roots of my soul. Hope he doesn’t mind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HIDEO FURUKAWA, born in 1966, is an acclaimed and prize-winning writer, hailed by many in Japan’s literary world as a prodigy worthy of inheriting the mantle of Haruki Murakami. He was awarded the Mishima Prize in 2006 for Love. His best-known novel is the 2008 Holy Family, an epic work of alternate history set in north-eastern Japan, where he was born.
DAVID BOYD has translated stories by Toh EnJoe, Genichiro Takahashi and Hiroko Oyamada, among others. He holds a Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and is currently a PhD candidate at Princeton University. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
PUSHKIN PRESS
Pushkin Press was founded in 1997, and publishes novels, essays, memoirs, children’s books—everything from timeless classics to the urgent and contemporary.
Our books represent exciting, high-quality writing from around the world: we publish some of the twentieth century’s most widely acclaimed, brilliant authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Teffi, Antal Szerb, Gaito Gazdanov and Yasushi Inoue, as well as compelling and award-winning contemporary writers, including Andrés Neuman, Edith Pearlman, Eka Kurniawan and Ayelet Gundar-Goshen.
Pushkin Press publishes the world’s best stories, to be read and read again. Here are just some of the titles from our long and varied list. To discover more, visit www.pushkinpress.com.
THE SPECTRE OF ALEXANDER WOLF
GAITO GAZDANOV
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SUMMER BEFORE THE DARK
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MESSAGES FROM A LOST WORLD
STEFAN ZWEIG
‘At a time of monetary crisis and political disorder… Zweig’s celebration of the brotherhood of peoples reminds us that there is another way’ The Nation
BINOCULAR VISION
EDITH PEARLMAN
‘A genius of the short story’ Mark Lawson, Guardian
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE SEA
TOMÁS GONZÁLEZ
‘Smoothly intriguing narrative, with its touches of sinister, Patricia Highsmith-like menace’ Irish Times
BEWARE OF PITY
STEFAN ZWEIG
‘Zweig’s fictional masterpiece’ Guardian
THE ENCOUNTER
PETRU POPESCU
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WAKE UP, SIR!
JONATHAN AMES
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THE WORLD OF YESTERDAY
STEFAN ZWEIG
‘The World of Yesterday is one of the greatest memoirs of the twentieth century, as perfect in its evocation of the world Zweig loved, as it is in its portrayal of how that world was destroyed’ David Hare
WAKING LIONS
AYELET GUNDAR - GOSHEN
‘A literary thriller that is used as a vehicle to explore big moral issues. I loved everything about it’ Daily Mail
BONITA AVENUE
PETER BUWALDA
‘One wild ride: a swirling helix of a family saga… a new writer as toe-curling as early Roth, as roomy as Franzen and as caustic as Houellebecq’ Sunday Telegraph
JOURNEY BY MOONLIGHT
ANTAL SZERB
‘Just divine… makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul’ Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
BEFORE THE FEAST
SAŠA STANIŠIĆ
‘Exceptional… cleverly done, and so mesmerising from the off… thought-provoking and energetic’ Big Issue
ASIMPLE STORY
LEILA GUERRIERO
‘An epic of noble proportions… [Guerriero] is a mistress of the telling phrase or the revealing detail’ Spectator
FORTUNES OF FRANCE
ROBERT MERLE
1 The Brethren
2 City of Wisdom and Blood
3 Heretic Dawn
‘Swashbuckling historical fiction’ Guardian
TRAVELLER OF THE CENTURY
ANDRÉS NEUMAN
‘A beautiful, accomplished novel: as ambitious as it is generous, as moving as it is smart’ Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Guardian
ONE NIGHT, MARKOVITCH
AYELET GUNDAR - GOSHEN
‘Wry, ironically tinged and poignant… this is a fable for the twenty-first century’ Sunday Telegraph
KARATE CHOP & MINNA NEEDS REHEARSAL SPACE
DORTHE NORS
‘Unique in form and effect… Nors has found a novel way of getting into the human heart’ Guardian
RED LOVE: THE STORY OF AN EAST GERMAN FAMILY
MAXIM LEO
‘Beautiful and supremely touching… an unbearably poignant description of a world that no longer exists’ Sunday Telegraph
SONG FOR AN APPROACHING STORM
PETER FRÖBERG IDLING
‘Beautifully evocative… a must-read novel’ Daily Mail
THE RABBIT BACK LITERATURE SOCIETY
PASI ILMARI JÄÄSKELÄINEN
‘Wonderfully knotty… a very
grown-up fantasy masquerading as quirky fable. Unexpected, thrilling and absurd’ Sunday Telegraph
STAMMERED SONGBOOK: A MOTHER’S BOOK OF HOURS
ERWIN MORTIER
‘Mortier has a poet’s eye for vibrant detail and prose to match… If this is a book of fragmentation, it is also a son’s moving tribute’ Observer
BARCELONA SHADOWS
MARC PASTOR
‘As gruesome as it is gripping… the writing is extraordinarily vivid… Highly recommended’ Independent
THE LIBRARIAN
MIKHAIL ELIZAROV
‘A romping good tale… Pretty sensational’ Big Issue
WHILE THE GODS WERE SLEEPING
ERWIN MORTIER
‘A monumental, phenomenal book’ De Morgen
BUTTERFLIES IN NOVEMBER
AUÐUR AVA ÓLAFSDÓTTIR
‘A funny, moving and occasionally bizarre exploration of life’s upheavals and reversals’ Financial Times
BY BLOOD
ELLEN ULLMAN
‘Delicious and intriguing’ Daily Telegraph
THE LAST DAYS
LAURENT SEKSIK
‘Mesmerising… Seksik’s portrait of Zweig’s final months is dignified and tender’ Financial Times
TALKING TO OURSELVES
ANDRÉS NEUMAN
‘This is writing of a quality rarely encountered… when you read Neuman’s beautiful novel, you realise a very high bar has been set’ Guardian
COPYRIGHT
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London, WC2H 9JQ
2002-nen no surō bōto by FURUKAWA Hideo
Copyright © 2006 by FURUKAWA Hideo
Chugoku-yuki no surō bōto RMX by FURUKAWA Hideo
Copyright © 2003 by FURUKAWA Hideo
English Translation copyright © 2017 by David Boyd
English translation rights arranged with FURUKAWA Hideo through Japan UNI Agency, Inc. Tokyo
First published by Pushkin Press in 2017
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Centre for Literary Translation and the Nippon Foundation
ISBN 978 1 782273 29 5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
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