Salinger Centennial

In Director Makoto Shinkai's recent hit film "Weathering with You," the protagonist is a 16-year-old boy, the same age as Holden, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye." The setting is that the boy runs away from his island home, and among his few belongings is Haruki Murakami's translation of "The Catcher in the Rye," which he is always reading.

The film doesn't mention the content, but the book is used effectively as a prop in the scenes.

I think the boy catching the heroine as she falls from the sky at the end is likely what the word "Catcher" signifies.

However, if I may say one thing as a Salinger fan, using "The Catcher in the Rye" to hold down the lid of a cup of instant ramen is unthinkable (laughs). For us, "The Catcher in the Rye" is a bible.

Still, the fact that it is used that way even in an anime film popular with young people today makes me feel that it still has an influence.

That's true.

When discussing "The Catcher in the Rye," the starting point is always when and how you first encountered it.

Speaking for myself, I remember it clearly. It was during my first year at Keio, when I was commuting to Hiyoshi. I bought Takashi Nozaki's translation of "The Catcher in the Rye" at a secondhand bookstore in the shopping district behind Hiyoshi.

So it was a different edition from the one out now.

Yes. It was one volume in a series called "Literature of the New World" by Hakusuisha. I was 19 years old, which was over 30 years ago. The first edition of this book was in 1964, and I bought it about 10-plus years later, but even then, it was selling 100,000 copies every year.

That was exactly the era when "New Music" was popular. Rather than people like Hideki Saijo, Hiromi Go, or Momoe Yamaguchi who often appeared on TV music shows, artists like Yumi Matsutoya or Yosui Inoue actually sold more records, and that was considered cool.

"The Catcher in the Rye" is similar to that. Even though ten years had already passed since publication and Hakusuisha wasn't advertising it, it sold 100,000 copies every year. I wondered what it was all about, bought it, read it, and got "hooked."

Mr. Thornton, did you read it in America?

I was born in America and lived in Japan for a while, but I encountered it in America when I was in high school.

Actually, I was in New York until the day before yesterday. I looked through "The Catcher in the Rye" for the first time in a very long while and visited Penn Station, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also passed by the zoo in front of the Metropolitan Museum. It's the zoo that appears in "The Catcher in the Rye."

But when I first read the book, it didn't leave much of an impression. If anything, I was more shocked by William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," which I read around the same time.

I only began to vaguely understand Salinger's world when I entered university and started living in a dormitory. That was when I met many typical East Coast kids who had come up through prep schools.

My roommate was also a typical American athletic type who wore polo shirts and belonged to the lacrosse team. His father worked on Wall Street. That was the first time I felt Salinger's world was close to me. It was the 90s back then, but I felt that some things never change.

In "The Catcher in the Rye," there's a scene where a kid from the next room keeps coming in and out of the shower room. When you're in an Ivy League dorm, you understand that atmosphere very well.

I attended an American-style mission school and read it in my second year of junior high. At the time, it was all Greek to me.

For generations like ours under 30, Salinger is a "fashionable item." I picked up "The Catcher in the Rye" with the feeling of, "I've heard of that, it's stylish." My strong impression was, "This person writes some incredible insults."

Later, around the time I became a university student, I encountered Salinger anew through a writer I respect named Yuya Sato.

Whose translation did you read first?

It was Takashi Nozaki's translation. It was just before Haruki Murakami's translation (2003) came out.

When you read about various people's first experiences with "The Catcher in the Rye," there's a common pattern of being recommended it by a friend of the opposite sex in junior high or high school. At an age when you want to act a bit more grown-up, with a feeling of "This is cool."

That's true. It was like that for me too.

Mr. Thornton mentioned that "The Catcher in the Rye" didn't quite click at first, but generally, people are divided into two types: those who click with "The Catcher in the Rye" and those who don't (laughs).

Even for those who don't click with "The Catcher in the Rye," they might click with "Nine Stories." However, those who get hooked on "The Catcher in the Rye" from the start swear lifelong loyalty to Salinger. He's like a god. But those who enter through "Nine Stories" don't make that vow.

I'm a typical person who was hit hard and hooked by "The Catcher in the Rye." For a while, whether I was eating, commuting, or during lunch breaks, I would read it again even though I'd read it many times. I became a very "dangerous" reader who always had it in my bag whenever I went out.

The most famous person who got "hooked" on "The Catcher in the Rye" is Mark Chapman, who assassinated John Lennon.

There are two other famous assassins. The one who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, and another who, in 1989, shot and killed Rebecca Schaeffer, a very popular idol-like singer in America at the time; he also carried "The Catcher in the Rye" with him.

In the end, people who read "The Catcher in the Rye" and get hooked are fastidious, or rather, they focus only on pure things, and everything around them starts to look extremely evil. Feelings like "the adult world is dirty" become sharpened, and there's an aspect where they feel like they want to take those people down.

I think the magnitude of the influence is due to Salinger's charm, but it also harbors something dangerous. But I think people who don't get hooked on "The Catcher in the Rye" are fine. People like me are the dangerous ones (laughs).

I don't think it's quite the same as being "hooked," but there were a few short passages that never left my head. Sentences like, "If Morrow's sensitive, then a toilet seat's sensitive" (Takashi Nozaki translation). Even though it's a Japanese translation, I felt the skill of the writing was almost hypnotic.

I put sticky notes on the parts with insults I like.

Does that phrasing influence your own work?

It does. The web novels I work on are basically narrated in the first person. A single protagonist becomes an absolute existence in that work's world, and I think the narrative style of "The Catcher in the Rye" matches that perfectly. It's an exceptionally memorable reading experience among "first-person novels."

One of the key points of this novel is that it's a first-person novel.

The opening line says, "If you really want to hear about it." The story begins with the protagonist addressing a "you." Who this "you" actually is is an important point.

Actually, the first person to translate "The Catcher in the Rye" in Japan was not Takashi Nozaki, but Fukuo Hashimoto, who translated it in 1952 and released it under the Japanese title "Kiken na Nenrei" (The Dangerous Age). It was very early, just the year after the original book. So how did Fukuo Hashimoto translate the beginning?

Instead of "If you (singular)," he translated it as "If you (plural)." In other words, he treated "you" as plural rather than singular. He started it like "If all you readers." Hashimoto's translation is very good, but I think that part is wrong. This novel pierces the reader's heart precisely because it is a singular "you."

Haruki Murakami also said he struggled quite a bit with how to translate "you." I never once worried about who this "you" referred to. In other words, I thought it was "me." I thought Holden was talking to me, and only me, in the whole world.

I felt Holden was telling me secrets that couldn't be told to anyone else. In that way, I would enter that world, thinking, "He's talking directly to me, so I'll listen to what he has to say."

That's the charm of this first-person novel, and I think it's a very powerful narrative pattern that Salinger discovered.

I see, so that's how it is.

And next, what I initially thought was Holden talking to me starts to feel like "that's not it" as I read on. What I mean is, I've thought things similar to what Holden felt or saw. What Holden is doing is the same as what I felt. So I start to think, "Maybe I am Holden."

I think the strength of that evocative power is amazing.

There's a sense of him talking to you very naturally and personally. I also think that's where the skill of this work lies.

The narrative of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a white person's way of speaking with a Southern Black accent, but "The Catcher in the Rye" has New York, East Coast, Catholic or Jewish characteristics in its style. Salinger also had Jewish blood, so I felt that sense of rhythm came out well too.

When you experienced a dormitory life similar to Holden's, did you ever feel like you were somehow the same as Holden?

I'm sure that feeling is something many American kids who aren't the athletic type experience. The popular football players are popular with the cheerleaders. The slightly geeky literary boys or movie buffs are always on the sidelines. I think "The Catcher in the Rye" resonates very strongly with those people.

The kids who aren't in the football or basketball clubs think deep down, "Why are those guys the only ones who are popular, cocky, arrogant, and barbaric? It's annoying." I felt that way too when I was in high school.

The protagonist of the film "Finding Forrester" (2000) is exactly the kind of literary boy Mr. Thornton mentioned, and he always has "The Catcher in the Rye" in his hand.

The stars of dorm life are all the strong football players, and as he is being bullied, while reading "The Catcher in the Rye," he also starts to think, just like I did, that Holden is himself. So, the movie is about him going to meet Salinger, wondering "What kind of person is Salinger, who wrote about me?"

There are several other movies with this theme of "wanting to meet Salinger." But, for example, there are no movies about wanting to meet Soseki or wanting to meet Faulkner, are there?

That's true, certainly.

Salinger's uniqueness lies exactly there; because he wrote about you, you feel an obligation to meet the author. Is there any other writer besides Salinger who makes you feel that way?

The fact that he became a recluse and didn't show himself in public probably played a big part. "Field of Dreams" (1989) is also like that.

Is that so?

The setting was changed to a Black writer, but that seems to be because Salinger refused, telling them to stop. In "Finding Forrester" (2000), Sean Connery plays a retired writer, and I think this also reflects the latent desire common among Salinger fans to definitely meet the reclusive Salinger.

Also, Salinger movies have been coming out one after another in recent years, such as "Coming Through the Rye" (2015) and "Rebel in the Rye" (2017).

The period I was crazy about Salinger was about two years. I suddenly "graduated" from it then, but even now, "The Catcher in the Rye" is my story, and so I can't escape the feeling that Salinger knows me well.

Hearing your story, I think Osamu Dazai is the writer in that position for me. Since I encountered "No Longer Human" first, Dazai was probably already sitting in the seat Salinger would have occupied. In the "Waza. Waza." (On purpose. On purpose.) scene in "No Longer Human," I thought, "That's me!"

I see, I can understand Osamu Dazai. You were crazy about Dazai, and then at some point, you suddenly graduated.

I read Dazai in high school and was exactly "hooked," but I graduated for the sake of university entrance exams.

As for my "reunion" with Salinger, a contemporary writer I'm devoted to named Yuya Sato wrote a work called "Nine Stories" (2013). It's "Nine Stories," just like that (laughs). Looking at the table of contents, it starts with "A Perfect Day for Cherryfish," and the last piece is not "Teddy" but "Lady."

I see.

Yuya Sato's debut work is called "Flicker-style: A Perfect Day for Kimihiko Kagami's Murder" (2001), and what follows from there is what's called the "Kagami Family Saga."

Ah, so it becomes the "Glass Saga."

That's right. My "Nine Stories" started from Yuya Sato. Wanting to read the original canon, I arrived at Salinger's "Nine Stories."

By the way, Yuya Sato's latest work is "Reincarnation! Osamu Dazai," where Osamu Dazai fails in his double suicide, reincarnates into modern society, and aims for the Akutagawa Prize together with a high school girl underground idol. The subtitle is "I want the Akutagawa Prize." I thought Dazai also falls into the category of an "author you'd want to meet."

When you think about it, there aren't many books that become a bible representing a certain generation. For me, something similar would be Camus's "The Stranger." That book was also one that French students always had a copy of in their bags at one time.

Does the fact that "The Catcher in the Rye" is read so much in Japan seem strange to you, as someone born in America, Mr. Thornton?

It is surprising how popular he is here in Japan.

Actually, since this year marks the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville's birth, a major article appeared in "The New Yorker" the week before last about how great a novel "MOBY-DICK" is.

However, as far as I have researched, Salinger, who would have been 100 this year, has not been featured prominently in "The New Yorker." Since "The New Yorker" was something Salinger admired in his youth, I imagine he would have been disappointed.

It feels more like Japan is celebrating the 100th anniversary all over the place.

Of course, he is still popular in America as well. When I asked a clerk at Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore in New York, they told me, "It still sells as well as ever."

In Japan, just as Salinger is about to be forgotten, a popular figure of the era starts saying, "This is good." Saori Minami's "Hatachi Banare" (1976) is one such example.

Frogda-san probably doesn't know her, but she was a very popular singer in our generation. When she was selling very well, she wrote in her book "Hatachi Banare" that she was greatly influenced by Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."

Then about 10 years later, in 1987, Kyoko Koizumi talked on a radio program about being moved by Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." That caused it to spread rapidly again.

In that way, trendsetting and influential celebrities periodically pick it up. In a sense, the way it was used in "Weathering with You" might be the same.

I think he is an author who appears very often in subculture. In my generation, the lyrics of a song called "Wakusei Kichi Beowulf" on the album "DOOR" (2005) by the very popular rock band Ging Nang BOYZ mention "Stradlater" (a character from "The Catcher in the Rye").

Is that so?

They were a truly popular band, so for my generation, he might be an author we encountered through something like a subliminal effect.

Even among young people, those with good taste still read it and incorporate it into their own works. Then younger people inherit that. If that's the case, he is a very fortunate author.

In America too, Salinger appears in albums by the punk rock band Green Day, and I think he has an influence on subculture everywhere. There are many works that somehow make you think the creator likes Salinger.

Also, Bill Gates has said he likes him very much. And President Bush (the father) liked him too. This was surprising. Until about 20 years ago, while there were conservative religious groups saying "Salinger is too radical and should be restricted," a conservative Republican politician declared that he loved him.

That is certainly surprising.

They were from the same generation as Salinger, so they might have the shared experience of serving in World War II.

There is a Martin Scorsese film called "Shutter Island" (2010). In this movie, the protagonist played by DiCaprio is traumatized by seeing a Jewish concentration camp, and after returning to America, the story unfolds as he goes to a facility on an island near Massachusetts.

Salinger's unit liberated a Nazi concentration camp for Jews. That overlaps with this movie. There are parts that make me suddenly wonder if Scorsese was conscious of that.

Salinger participated in D-Day (the Normandy landings) and was deeply involved in the war. In the recent movie "Rebel in the Rye," war is treated as a major theme. Although there aren't many works where he writes about the war overtly, the war experience must be a major element within Salinger.

Salinger is an author who feels feminine, but it is also said that he actually experienced the worst of the battlefield.

Salinger is still popular with women today, and I think there are many people who haven't read "MOBY-DICK" but have read "The Catcher in the Rye."

I got so immersed that I felt "Holden is me," so I wondered if it might be harder for women to get into it.

Instead, I think they read it with a feeling like, "Holden is such a helpless boy."

I think he is an author who has stepped away from being "macho," and that aspect is comfortable to read, or perhaps it feels "not stinky" in that sense.

Ultimately, Holden is saved by his little sister, Phoebe. Perhaps that is what makes it comfortable for women to read?

That might be part of it. I didn't think for a second that the "you" at the beginning referred to me. I just thought it was someone in the next room in a psychiatric ward.

In a documentary about 10 years ago, it was said that Salinger had lolicon-like tendencies.

It doesn't come across that way in the novels, but in America now, with things like the "me too" phenomenon, I think there are aspects where a re-evaluation of Salinger's view of women is occurring.

In the biography "Dream Catcher" (2001) written by his daughter Margaret, there is a part where she writes that her father suddenly became cold when she said she was going to get married. In short, becoming an adult woman instead of an innocent girl meant becoming corrupt to Salinger. But even if told that, one cannot remain a girl forever.

His own daughter also views her father, Salinger, with a sense of him being lolicon-like.

Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate Reagan, seemed to have very strong tendencies like that, and he had a huge obsession with Jodie Foster in "Taxi Driver." There are people who end up being influenced in that way.

In many ways, Salinger was probably an unpleasant guy and would have been difficult to get along with as a friend, which I also felt watching the movie "Rebel in the Rye." Nevertheless, fans of "The Catcher in the Rye" like me ultimately forgive him.

I think it's close to Stockholm syndrome; if you have a very intense reading experience at a certain period, even if you find out about Salinger's unpleasant sides later, fans end up in a state beyond good and evil, saying, "I'm sure he was. But I still like him." I think Salinger fans have that kind of quality.

How does Haruki Murakami view Salinger?

The influence is strong. Frogda-san, did you read the Murakami translation?

I read it in the paperback edition.

How was it compared to the Nozaki translation?

To be honest, it was extremely easy to read. It doesn't use words like "yakko-san" like the Nozaki translation. I think the Nozaki translation is, after all, a very old translation.

Since I'm from a different generation, the Nozaki translation is overwhelmingly better for me. I read the Murakami translation too, but it was no good at all.

For example, Americans say "uhm," right? He writes that as "a-mu." Mr. Nozaki doesn't translate onomatopoeic words like that, but Mr. Murakami does. But that feels very unnatural as Japanese.

I think this is more a novel by Mr. Murakami than a book by Salinger. It feels like he's turning it into his own work while translating Salinger, and I don't like it very much. I dislike how he translates things like "cool as a cucumber" literally into Japanese as "kyuri mitai ni cool." Because he's doing that in my most precious book (laughs).

However, the fact that Mr. Murakami is translating "Catcher" as if it were his own novel probably means that Mr. Murakami's sensibility and Salinger's sensibility are very close. That's why I think there are parts that become his own novel while he's translating. I'm not a Murakami fan, so I have a feeling of "don't do unnecessary things."

I have only read the original, so I am very curious about Haruki Murakami's translation. The original prose has a great sense of rhythm, and the East Coast way of speaking in New York comes across very well. I wonder how this is expressed in translation.

The Nozaki translation is very well thought out. Apparently, he researched extensively on how to replace Holden's way of speaking and rhythm with Japanese.

Around the time he was translating this, there was an essayist named Jinichi Uekusa. He wrote colloquial sentences that didn't exist in Japanese until then. Essays like, "It rained yesterday, so I just listened to jazz." That very colloquial style of Jinichi Uekusa became very popular.

There's no evidence, but I think Mr. Nozaki read Jinichi Uekusa's very innovative colloquial style, thought "this is it," and started translating in the tone of a young person. I think this translation by Mr. Nozaki was quite groundbreaking for its time.

That's probably where "yakko-san" came from too. Until then, an expression like "yakko-san" wouldn't appear in translated prose.

What I think is great about Mr. Nozaki is that he released a newly translated version in 1984, more than 10 years after this. This is the version that can still be read today, but the translation is completely different from the old version.

Oh, is that so?

He changed every single word in detail, in thousands of places.

But it's a very rare phenomenon that the Nozaki translation and the new Murakami translation are still sold simultaneously by the same publisher; there's no other novel like that.

The Murakami translation is "Catcher in the Rye" and the Nozaki translation is "Raimugibatake de Tsukamaete," so I read them as separate works, or with that kind of feeling.

But the title "Raimugibatake de Tsukamaete" (Catch Me in the Rye Field) is a bit strange. Since it's "The Catcher in the Rye," it should be "(The person who) catches in the rye field." When you say "Tsukamaete" (Catch me), you read it with the image of "catch me" rather than "I will catch."

However, I think making it that title was a great discovery by Mr. Nozaki. This title is amazing. If it were "Raimugibatake no Hoshu" (The Catcher of the Rye Field), it would never sell. But when it's called "Raimugibatake de Tsukamaete," it creates an image of "I'm no good unless someone catches me, so please catch me." Then, the reader thinks, "Well, I will catch you," and buys it.

In America, it is said that Salinger is at the origin of the Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac who came right after him, James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause," and the "Civil Rights Movement" of the 60s.

Was the reason Salinger has been supported by so many readers in Japan also due to a background of things like the student movement, a rebellion against the dirty, compromising world of adults and politicians?

I think that was the case. Around the time of the generation of people a decade older than me, like Haruki Murakami, student movements were active in Japan, so "The Catcher in the Rye" spoke for their own purity and their accusation against the evil of society.

The ethos that appears in "The Catcher in the Rye," the feeling of rebelling against adult society, seems to be inherited today by companies like Apple in Silicon Valley.

I feel like the business world took the idea of "don't do the same as everyone else," for which Salinger is in a sense the root, and adopted it as "that's cool," and it has become mainstream culture.

That might be so. Conversely, I'm interested in what young people in the future will think when they read "The Catcher in the Rye." Will it continue to be read from now on?

I myself didn't read it because someone from an older generation told me "this is interesting," so I have no intention of recommending it to the younger generation. If told by an older generation, "this is perfect for your feelings," I think they would conversely not read it.

That might be true.

When I was young, I also thought the charm of "The Catcher in the Rye" lay in its purity and innocence, and that Holden was speaking for me, who was on the side of innocence against an evil world. But recently, my way of reading it has changed a bit.

At the beginning, there is an inter-school football game. It's the most popular event, so all the students are there. However, Holden alone is away, on "Oka no Ue" where he can see the athletic field. And he is being expelled from high school. Watching the game from afar, he thinks about how he is in a different place from these friends, and he says goodbye in his own way.

I strongly feel Holden's sense of loneliness, that there is no place for him here, and wondering where on earth he belongs. I think that lonely feeling of having no place is felt intensely, especially when young, around middle or high school age. I've come to think this book is writing about that feeling of "where is my place?"

So if young people today read this for some reason, they will probably feel that the same loneliness they have is here, so I believe there is a possibility this novel will continue to be read in the future.

I think Salinger's literature might be "literature of the difficulty of living." I serialize novels on a website called "Shosetsuka ni Naro," and there, novels about dying by being hit by a truck and reincarnating into the world of Dragon Quest or fantasy were very popular. The real world is hard to live in. So, they want to jump out of that reality.

We write as entertainment, but even if the approach is completely different, I feel a lot of the same themes in Salinger's literature. I think it will continue to be read as "literature of the difficulty of living" in that way.

Also, earlier Mr. Ozaki was indignant about the use of "The Catcher in the Rye" as a lid for cup ramen in "Weathering with You."

Yes, that's right.

It might be a generational thing, but I understand that feeling well (laughs). The feeling of wanting to keep "The Catcher in the Rye," which is a stylish item, together with daily life as a lid for cup ramen. That really struck a chord with me.

I see, that's one way to feel about it (laughs).

Exactly. It was like, "Makoto Shinkai gets it; that's exactly the feeling."

I see, so the perception is completely different depending on the generation. But by inheriting that, you can now express things like the difficulty of living through first-person novels. In that sense, one could say that is the influence of Salinger.

It might be a stretch, but he's an author who feels like a mentor to a lover. So, I also have this sense of being like a "grandchild of Salinger." Maybe he's a grandfather figure (laughs).

Since you share Salinger's bloodline, so to speak, I have high expectations.