From Firefly To Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami’s novel writing career started in 1979. In the same year, he won the New Group Portrait Prize for Literature by virtue of Hear the Wind Sing and established his status in the literary arena. Since then, Murakami has been active in writing. He created lots of famous literature works, such as A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood and 1Q84 in his more than 30 years’ writing course. His artistic achievements even surpassed Kenzaburo Oe and Yukio Mishima who have won the Nobel Prize for Literature. As a representative writer of Japan, Murakami has put Japan on the stage of the world. He has won the Franz Kafka Prize, the Jerusalem Prize and many other world-famous literature prizes. And he even has been at the door of the Noble Prize for Literature for several times. His novels have been translated into more than 40 kinds of languages and spread all over the world. Haruki Murakami’s novels have drawn attention not only in Japan but also in the world.The short story Firefly was included in the collection of short stories Firefly, Barn Burning and others which was anthologized and published by SHINCHOSHA Press in July, 1984. This piece of work is a short story of realistic style. The short story Firefly contains simple plots and characters, but it has left two precious things for art, one is a sad but beautiful love story and the other is the flickering tiny light spot of the firefly. And these two things become the source of artistic power of Norwegian Wood. Between the firefly and the love tragedy of Naoko and “I”, Murakami found the artistic space and the vast world so that he couldn’t stop wandering in such an artistic world. Haruki Murakami has shown extraordinary artistic brilliance and excellent novel control ability in writing method, the gist of works, characters, language style, artistic means and many other aspects of Norwegian Wood. Therefore, Norwegian Wood became Murakami’s representative work and the literature classics of the contemporary world.This paper discusses and analyzes the features and correlation of these two pieces of works from five aspects including writing method, from Firefly to Norwegian Wood, foothold of times for love theme, relationship of characters in works and cultural medium of works. With background of the times of the 1960 s and the1970 s in Japan and the writer’s creation course, this paper aims at exploring the artistry of Haruki Murakami’s novels and revealing the specific presentations of artistic style in his works in different periods and the depiction of social circumstance and background through his literary and artistic method.