The 100th Anniversary of Salinger's Birth

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." He runs away from his island home, and among his few belongings is Haruki Murakami's translation, "Kyacchā in za Rai," 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 believe the scene at the end where the boy catches the heroine as she falls from the sky is meant to signify the meaning of "Catcher."

But as a Salinger fan, I have to say one thing: 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.

However, the fact that it's used this way in an animated film popular with young people today makes me feel that it still has an influence.

I agree.

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

I remember it clearly. It was during my first year at Keio University, commuting to the Hiyoshi campus. I bought Takashi Nozaki's translation, "Raimugi-batake de Tsukamaete," at a used bookstore in the shopping district behind Hiyoshi.

So it's a different edition from the one available now.

That's right. It was one of the books in Hakusuisha's "Literature of the New World" series. I was 19, so it was over 30 years ago. The first edition of this book was from 1964, and I bought it about a decade later, but even then it was still selling 100,000 copies a year.

Around that time, "New Music" was popular. Artists like Yumi Matsutoya and Yosui Inoue were actually selling more records than people like Hideki Saijo, Hiromi Go, and Momoe Yamaguchi, who were often on TV music shows, and that was considered cool.

"The Catcher in the Rye" was similar. It had been ten years since its publication, and Hakusuisha wasn't promoting it, yet it sold 100,000 copies every year. I wondered what it was all about, so I 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 first encountered it in high school in the US.

Actually, I was in New York until the day before yesterday. I reread "The Catcher in the Rye" for the first time in a long while and visited Penn Station, Central Park, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also passed by the zoo in front of the Met. 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 on me. I was more shocked by William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," which I read around the same time.

The first time I sort of understood Salinger's world was when I started living in a dorm in college. That's when I met a lot of kids who were typical East Coast prep school graduates.

My roommate was a typical American jock who wore polo shirts and was on the lacrosse team. His father worked on Wall Street. That's when I first felt Salinger's world up close. It was the 90s, but I realized some things don't change.

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

I went to 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 my generation, those 30 and under, Salinger is a "fashionable item." I picked up "The Catcher in the Rye" with the feeling of "I've heard of it, it's cool." The impression that stuck with me was, "This guy complains a lot."

Later, when I was in college, I had a new encounter with Salinger through an author I respect, Yuya Sato.

Whose translation did you read first?

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

When you read about people's first experiences with "The Catcher in the Rye," a common pattern is being recommended it by a friend of the opposite sex in junior high or high school. It's that time when you want to act a bit more grown-up, and they say, "This is cool."

That's right. It was like that for me, too.

Mr. Thornton, you said that "The Catcher in the Rye" didn't really click with you at first. Generally, people are divided into two groups: those who get "The Catcher in the Rye" and those who don't (laughs).

Even if someone doesn't get "The Catcher in the Rye," they might get "Nine Stories." But those who are hooked by "The Catcher in the Rye" from the start pledge lifelong allegiance to Salinger. He's like a god to them. But people who start with "Nine Stories" don't make that pledge.

I'm a classic example of someone who was completely struck by "The Catcher in the Rye." For a while, I'd read it over and over, even though I'd read it many times before—while eating, on my way to school, during my lunch break. I always had it in my bag when I went out. I became a very "obsessive" reader.

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

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

In the end, people who read and get hooked on "The Catcher in the Rye" are purists, in a way. They focus only on what is pure, and everything around them seems incredibly phony. The feeling that the adult world is corrupt becomes radicalized, and I suppose there's an aspect that makes them want to take down those kinds of people.

I think the magnitude of its influence is due to Salinger's appeal, but it also harbors something dangerous. But I think people who aren't hooked by "The Catcher in the Rye" are fine. It's people like me who are dangerous (laughs).

I don't think I was "hooked" in that sense, but there were a few passages that I couldn't get out of my head. Lines like, "If old Morrow was sensitive, then I'm a goddam toilet seat" (from the Nozaki translation). Even though it's a Japanese translation, I really felt the skillfulness of the writing was hypnotic.

I put sticky notes on my favorite insults.

Does that phrasing influence your own work?

It does. The web novels I write are fundamentally told in the first person. A single protagonist becomes the absolute presence in that fictional world, and I think the narrative of "The Catcher in the Rye" is a perfect match for that. It's the most memorable reading experience I've had among "first-person novels."

One of the key points of this novel is that it's a first-person novel, isn't it?

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

Actually, the first person to translate "The Catcher in the Rye" into Japanese was not Takashi Nozaki, but Fukuo Hashimoto in 1952, under the Japanese title "Kiken na Nenrei" (The Dangerous Age). It was the year after the original was published, so it was very fast. So how did Fukuo Hashimoto translate the opening?

Instead of "if you (singular)," he translated it as "if you (plural)." In other words, he treated "you" as plural, not singular. He started with "If all you readers..." Fukuo Hashimoto's translation is very good, but I think he got that part wrong. This novel pierces the reader's heart precisely because it's addressed to a singular "you."

Haruki Murakami also said he struggled quite a bit with how to translate "you." I never once wondered who this "you" referred to. I thought it was "me." I thought that Holden was talking to me, and only me, in the entire world.

Holden is telling me a secret that he can't tell anyone else. In that way, you think, "He's talking directly to me, so I'll listen to his story," and you get drawn into that world.

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

I see, so that's what it is.

And then, what you initially thought was Holden talking to you gradually starts to feel like "that's not it." What I mean is, you realize you've thought things similar to what Holden feels and sees. What Holden is doing is the same as what I've felt. So you start to think, "Maybe I am Holden."

I think the power of that evocation is incredible.

There's a sense that he's speaking to you in a very natural, personal way. I agree that's where the brilliance of this work lies.

The narration in Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is the speech of a white person with a Southern black accent, but "The Catcher in the Rye" has the characteristics of New York, East Coast, Catholic or Jewish speech in its style. Since Salinger had Jewish heritage, I felt that he captured that rhythm well.

When you experienced a similar dorm life to Holden's, did you not feel that you were the same as Holden?

I think that's a feeling many non-jock kids in America experience. The popular football players are popular with the cheerleaders. The slightly nerdy literary boys and movie lovers are always on the sidelines. For those people, I think "The Catcher in the Rye" has a very strong resonance.

Kids who aren't on the football or basketball teams think, deep down, "Why are they the only ones who are popular, arrogant, have a bad attitude, and are barbaric and annoying?" I was like that in high school, too.

The protagonist of the movie "Chasing Holden" (2001) is exactly the kind of literary boy you described, always with a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye" in his hand.

The stars of dorm life are all the tough football players, and he, a bullied kid, reads "The Catcher in the Rye" and, just like me, starts to think that this Holden is him. So he thinks, "What kind of person is Salinger, who wrote about me?" and goes to meet Salinger. That's the movie.

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

True, that's right.

Salinger's uniqueness lies precisely there: he makes you feel that since he wrote about you, you have an obligation to meet the author. Is there any other author like Salinger?

The fact that he became a recluse and never appeared in public was probably a big factor. "Field of Dreams" (1989) is another example.

Really?

The setting was changed to a black author, apparently because Salinger refused to allow it. "Finding Forrester" (2000), where Sean Connery plays a retired author, also seems to be an expression of the latent hope common among Salinger fans to meet the reclusive writer.

And recently, there has been a string of Salinger movies, like "Coming Through the Rye" (2015) and "Rebel in the Rye" (2017).

My obsession with Salinger lasted for about two years. Then I suddenly "graduated," but I still can't escape the feeling that "The Catcher in the Rye" is my story, and therefore Salinger knows me well.

Listening to you, I think that for me, Osamu Dazai is the author who holds that position. I encountered "No Longer Human" first, so Dazai probably took the seat that Salinger might have. I remember thinking, "That's me!" during the "Waza. Waza" (It's a trick. A trick.) scene in "No Longer Human."

I see, I can understand Osamu Dazai. You were obsessed with Dazai, and then one day, you suddenly graduated.

I read Dazai in high school and was truly "hooked," but I had to graduate from him for my university entrance exams.

As for my "reunion" with Salinger, a contemporary author I admire, Yuya Sato, wrote a work called "Nine Stories" (2013). It's exactly what it sounds like (laughs). If you look at the table of contents, it starts with "A Perfect Day for Cherryfish," and the last story is not "Teddy" but "Lady."

I see.

Yuya Sato's debut work is called "Flicker-Style: A Perfect Murder for Kagamiko" (2001), and this is the beginning of what is known as the "Kagami Family Saga."

Ah, so it becomes the "Glass Saga."

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

Incidentally, Yuya Sato's latest work is "Reincarnated! Osamu Dazai," in which Osamu Dazai fails at a double suicide, is reincarnated in modern society, and aims for the Akutagawa Prize with a high school girl underground idol. The subtitle is "I want the Akutagawa Prize." It made me think that Dazai also falls into the category of "an author you want to meet."

When you think about it, there aren't many books that become a bible for a generation. For me, a similar one might be Camus's "The Stranger." That book was also, for a time, a book that every student in France had a copy of in their bag.

As someone born in America, Mr. Thornton, do you find it strange that "The Catcher in the Rye" is so widely read in Japan?

I'm surprised at how popular it is in Japan.

Actually, this year is the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville's birth, and "The New Yorker" ran a big article on him two weeks ago about how great a novel "Moby-Dick" is.

However, as far as I've checked, Salinger, on his 100th anniversary, has not been featured prominently in "The New Yorker" this year. "The New Yorker" was Salinger's aspiration when he was young, so he would have been disappointed.

Perhaps it feels more like Japan is celebrating the 100th anniversary in various places?

Of course, it's still popular in America. I asked a clerk at Barnes & Noble, the biggest bookstore in New York, and they said, "It still sells as well as ever."

In Japan, just when Salinger seems about to be forgotten, a popular figure of the era says, "This is good." Saori Minami's "Hatachi-banare" (1976) is one example.

Ms. Kaeruda, you probably don't know her, but for our generation, she was a very popular singer. When she was at the height of her fame, 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 show about how moved she was by Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye." And then it spread like wildfire again.

In this way, influential celebrities who are trendsetters periodically pick it up. In a way, its use in "Weathering with You" might be another example.

I think he's an author who appears very often in subculture. For my generation, the lyrics of the song "Wakusei Kichi Beowulf" from the very popular rock band GING NANG BOYZ's album "DOOR" (2005) mention "Stradlater" (a character from "The Catcher in the Rye").

Is that so?

They were a really popular band, so for my generation, he might be an author we encountered through a kind of subliminal effect.

So even young people with good taste still read it and incorporate it into their own work. And then younger people inherit that. If so, he's a very fortunate author.

In America, too, Salinger appears in the albums of punk rock bands like Green Day, and I think his influence on subculture is everywhere. There are many works that make you think the creator might be a Salinger fan.

Also, Bill Gates has said he's a big fan. And President Bush (the father) was also a fan. That was surprising. About 20 years ago, while there were conservative religious groups saying "Salinger is too radical and should be regulated," a conservative Republican politician declared his love for it.

That is indeed surprising.

Generationally, they weren't that far apart from Salinger, so perhaps they had the shared experience of serving in World War II.

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

Salinger's unit liberated a Nazi Jewish concentration camp. That overlaps with this film. It makes you wonder if Scorsese was conscious of it.

Salinger participated in D-Day (the Normandy landings) and was deeply involved in the war. The recent movie "Rebel in the Rye" also treats the war as a major theme. Although there are no works that overtly write about the war, his war experience was likely a major element for Salinger.

Salinger has a feminine feel as a writer, but it's also said that he experienced the most brutal of situations.

Salinger is still popular with women today, and I think there are many who have read "The Catcher in the Rye" but not "Moby-Dick."

Since I got so into it by thinking "I am Holden," I thought it might be harder for women to get into.

I don't think so. I think they read it with a feeling of "Holden, you helpless boy."

I think he's an author who has stepped down from being "macho," and that aspect is comfortable to read, or perhaps it's not "stuffy."

Ultimately, Holden is saved by his little sister, Phoebe. Perhaps that's what women find comfortable when reading it.

That might be part of it. I never for a moment thought that the "you" at the beginning was me. I just thought it was the person next door in the mental hospital.

A documentary from about ten years ago suggested that Salinger had tendencies akin to a "Lolita complex."

It doesn't come across that way in the novels, but in America now, with things like the "Me Too" movement, I think there might be a re-evaluation of Salinger's views on women.

In the biography written by his daughter, Margaret, "Dream Catcher: A Memoir" (2001), there's a passage where she writes that her father suddenly became cold when she said she was getting married. In short, for Salinger, when an innocent girl becomes an adult woman, she becomes fallen. But even if he says that, a girl can't stay a girl forever.

His own daughter also sees her father, Salinger, as having a "Lolita complex" tendency.

Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate Reagan, apparently had a strong tendency in that direction; he had a great obsession with Jodie Foster in "Taxi Driver." Some people are influenced in that way.

In many ways, Salinger was probably an unpleasant guy, and even watching the movie "Rebel in the Rye," I think he would have been difficult to be friends with. Nevertheless, "Catcher in the Rye" fans like me end up forgiving him.

I think it's close to Stockholm syndrome. Once you have a very intense reading experience at a certain time, even if you later learn about Salinger's unpleasant side, fans go beyond good and evil, thinking, "That's probably true. But I still like him." I think there's something of that in Salinger fans.

How does Haruki Murakami view Salinger?

The influence is strong, isn't it? Ms. Kaeruda, have you read Murakami's translation?

I read the paperback edition.

How was it compared to Nozaki's translation?

Honestly, it was much easier to read. It doesn't use words like "yakko-san" (that fellow). I think Nozaki's translation is indeed very old.

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

For example, Americans say "uhm," right? He writes that as "āmu." Nozaki doesn't translate such onomatopoeic words, but Murakami does. And it feels very unnatural in Japanese.

I think this is more Murakami's novel than Salinger's book. It feels like he's translating Salinger while turning it into his own work, so I don't really like it. The part I dislike is where he translates things like "cool as a cucumber" literally as "kyūri mitai ni kūru" (cool like a cucumber). And he does it in this book that is most precious to me (laughs).

But the fact that Murakami translates "Catcher" as if it were his own novel probably means that Murakami's sensibility and Salinger's sensibility are very close. That's probably why it becomes his own novel in the process of translation. Since I'm not a Murakami fan, there's a part of me that thinks, "Don't do unnecessary things."

I've only read the original, so I'm very curious about Haruki Murakami's translation. The original text has a great rhythm, and the New York, East Coast way of speaking comes through very strongly. I wonder how this is expressed in translation.

Nozaki's translation is very well thought out. As you said, he apparently did a lot of research 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 in a colloquial style that was new to Japanese at the time. Essays like, "It rained yesterday, so I just listened to jazz all day." That very colloquial style of Jinichi Uekusa became very popular.

I have no proof, but I suspect that Nozaki read Jinichi Uekusa's very innovative colloquial style, thought, "This is it," and started translating in a young person's tone. I think Nozaki's translation was quite revolutionary for its time.

That's probably where "yakko-san" came from. Before that, you wouldn't find a phrase like "yakko-san" in translated texts.

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

Oh, really?

He made thousands of detailed changes, word by word.

But the fact that Nozaki's translation and the new Murakami translation are still sold simultaneously by the same publisher is a very rare phenomenon. You don't see that with any other novel, do you?

Murakami's translation is titled "Kyacchā in za Rai," and Nozaki's is "Raimugi-batake de Tsukamaete," so I also read them with the feeling that they were separate works.

But the title "Raimugi-batake de Tsukamaete" is a bit strange, isn't it? It's "The Catcher in the Rye," so it should be "the person who catches in the rye field." But when you say "tsukamaete" (catch me), you read it with the image of "catch me," not "I will catch."

But I think Nozaki's decision to use that title was a great discovery. This title is amazing. If it were "Raimugi-batake no Hoshu" (The Catcher of the Rye Field), it would never have sold. But when it's called "Raimugi-batake de Tsukamaete," it creates the image of "I need someone to catch me, so please catch me." And so, the reader buys it, thinking, "Then I will be the one to catch you."

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

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

I think that was a factor. In the generation just above me, like Haruki Murakami's, student movements were active in Japan, so "The Catcher in the Rye" spoke for their purity and their indictment of society's phoniness.

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

I feel that the business world has taken the idea of "don't do what everyone else is doing," which in a sense has its roots in Salinger, embraced it as "cool," and it has become part of mainstream culture.

That may be true. Conversely, I'm curious about what young people today will think when they read "The Catcher in the Rye." Will it continue to be read in the future?

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. I think if someone from an older generation told them, "This will perfectly match your feelings," they would probably not read it.

That might be true.

When I was young, I thought the appeal of "The Catcher in the Rye" was its purity, its innocence, and that Holden was speaking for me, who was on the side of innocence against a phony world. But recently, my reading of it has changed a little.

At the beginning, there's a big football game against a rival school. It's the most popular event, so all the students are there. But Holden alone is separated, on a hill overlooking the field. And he's being kicked out of high school. Watching the game from a distance, he thinks that he's in a different place from his friends, and in his own way, he says goodbye.

I now feel strongly in Holden the loneliness of not having a place where he belongs, the feeling of "where is my place in the world?" I think this feeling of loneliness and not having a place is especially intense when you're young, around junior high or high school. I've come to think that this book is about that feeling of "where do I belong?"

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 this novel still has the potential to be read for a long time to come.

I think Salinger's literature is "literature of the difficulty of living." I serialize novels on a website called "Shōsetsuka ni Narō" (Let's Become a Novelist), and there, novels where the protagonist gets hit by a truck, dies, and is reincarnated into a world like Dragon Quest or a fantasy world were very popular. The real world is hard to live in. So, they want to escape from that reality.

We write it as entertainment, but even though the approach is completely different, I feel a very similar theme in Salinger's literature. I think it will continue to be read in that way, as "literature of hardship."

Also, at the beginning, Mr. Ozaki was indignant about the use of "Kyacchā in za Rai" as a lid for instant 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 fashionable item "Kyacchā in za Rai" alongside everyday life as a lid for instant ramen. That really struck a chord with me.

I see, so there's that way of feeling, too (laughs).

Yes. I had a feeling like, "Makoto Shinkai gets it, that's the feeling."

I see, so the way you feel about it is completely different depending on the generation. But by inheriting that, Ms. Kaeruda, you can now express things like the difficulty of living in your first-person novels, and that could be said to be Salinger's influence, couldn't it?

It might be a distant connection, but he's an author who holds a position like a lover and a teacher. And so, I also have a feeling of being "Salinger's grandchild." Or maybe grandfather? (laughs).

As someone who shares Salinger's bloodline, I have high hopes.