Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love

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Originally run in Popeye Magazine, the articles have been collected and printed in book format with two additional follow-up interviews at the end. The t-shirts in the book all have a story behind them, whether they are gems found in bookshops, charity shops, record shops or collected at marathons and at concerts. Some feature whisky, animals, cards and superheroes and look out for bands from Springsteen to The Beach Boys to R.E.M. Between photographs and essays, Murakami’s multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona shines through, a true master of stories, and the ‘world’s most popular cult novelist’ ( Guardian) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle's T-shirt that he gets from a reader who was inspired to create it after reading the novel If you’re looking for the perfect gift for Murakami fans this Christmas, then look no further. Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love is a gorgeous, small-format, full-colour, photographic gift book, revealing Haruki Murakami’s favourite t-shirts collected on his international travels and giving fascinating autobiographical insight into the internationally acclaimed writer, through his accompanying essays. Many of Haruki Murakami’s fans know about his massive vinyl record collection (10,000 albums!) and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate passion: his T-shirt collecting.

I began by pretending this was a short novel about a t-shirt and vinyl-record-obsessed old guy, who happened to also be an obscenely successful novelist and it worked for the most part in the sense that I enjoyed reading these table scraps of autobiographical reminiscences from the most influential Japanese author ever.

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In Murakami T, the famously reclusive novelist shows us his T-shirts–including gems from the Springsteen on Broadway show in NYC, to the Beach Boys concert in Honolulu, to the shirt that inspired the beloved short story “Tony Takitani.” Accompanied by short, frank essays that have been translated into English for the first time, these photographs reveal much about Murakami’s multifaceted and wonderfully eccentric persona. The tactics he employs as a novelist have been discussed to death, but the agony uncle side of him, the uncaring, sloppy, endearing, and well-intentioned side of him, remains absurdly interesting out of all proportion to what he is writing about, which has long since ceased to matter, since all we want is more Murakami, more Murakami, more Murakami. The international literary icon opens his eclectic closet: Here are photographs of Murakami’s extensive and personal T-shirt collection, accompanied by essays that reveal a side of the writer rarely seen by the public.

Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife.The essays and photos in Murakami T stem from Haruki Murakami’s collaboration with Japanese magazine, Popeye, and are translated into English for the first time here.

Murakami T: The T-shirts I Love, is part ode, part exhibit that reads with restrained affection for his accidental accumulations…The diaristic entries have the simplicity of a show-and-tell, with Murakami’s spare prose offering a material history of his closet…Haruki Murakami’s understated love letters to his T-shirts convey how we give life to our things and vice versa.”–Charlene K. Lau, The Atlantic Considered “the world’s most popular cult novelist” ( The Guardian), Haruki Murakami has written books that have galvanized millions around the world. Many of his fans know about his 10,000-vinyl-record collection, and his obsession with running, but few have heard about a more intimate, and perhaps more unique, passion: his T-shirt-collecting habit. As always, it's Murakami's mixture of casual friendliness paired with a kind of sagely wisdom that charms in the extreme. His eye for the bizarre, or just downright random. Did you know, for example, that 'If you wear a T-shirt with an animal design, the chances are very good that a girl or woman will tell you, "Whoa - that's so cute!"' - In Murakami's novels, chance encounters and happenstance like this are the stuff that a whole novel's worth of action springs forth from, but even here, these bitesize essays give off the buzz of the everyday banal turned life-affirming wonder. Philip Gabriel - serving on translation duties here hot on the heels of his work on Murakami's recent short stories collection First Person Singular as well as a number of earlier works - does sound business again in capturing this easy breeziness in all its glory.I love how REFRESHING this collection of essays are, and fact is, Murakami is just a funny uncle who likes to collect t-shirts and records as a hobby, whilst going for a beer in a jazz bar. Review of the Knopf hardcover (November 2021) translated by Philip Gabriel from the Japanese language original 村上T 僕の愛したTシャツたち (June 2020) Murakami’s books have galvanised millions around the world and there is indeed a t-shirt he treasures the most, the one that inspired his beloved short-story ‘Tony Takitani’. He writes about how he encountered the t-shirt in ‘a thrift story in Maui’ and bought it ‘for about a dollar’. It turned out to be one of his best investments, as he asked himself ‘what kind of person could Tony Takitani be?’, let his imagination run wild and ended up writing a ‘short story with him as the protagonist, which was later made into a film’. From why he always wore ties when living in Italy (“you would get these dirty looks if you weren’t”) to what makes a person stylish (“I think it’s great when somebody can make everyday clothes look comfortable”), it turns out Murakami has more to say about fashion than you might imagine. Perhaps the most intriguing revelation is his habit of carrying around a spare pair of trousers, getting the idea from the novelist Komimasa Tanaka, who shared his love of shorts. The t-shirts are grouped thematically so there’s a bunch on food, booze, cars, books, superheroes, animals, and marathons he’s competed in (see his other non-fiction book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, for more information on that hobby).