Every follower of Haruki Murakami knows that his three great passions are jazz, baseball and jogging. The first, very present in his work, led him to run a club for years near Sendagaya station, in the busy Japanese capital. The other two pushed him in his literary career. And it was precisely at the Meiji Jingu stadium, during a Tokyo Yakult Swallows match, a team he is a fan of, when he decided he would become a writer, as he explained in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (Tusquets).
“Perhaps the word that best defines it is «epiphany». And because of that, my life changed completely. The moment Dave Hilton hit, as leadoff hitter, that beautiful and accurate hit on the Jingû-kyûjô. After the game (I remember that Yakult won) I took the train, went to Shinjuku and bought writing paper and a fountain pen, ”he reveals in his memories. With that pen he would write his first novel over the next six months Listen to the song of the wind.
With this background, many of his readers have seen it as natural for the author of Kafka on the shore to speak out when he sees that both the stadium that inspired him professionally —the second oldest in Japan— and his favorite path for playing sports will end up being eliminated. in the coming years and replaced by more modern facilities.
“I strongly oppose the Jingu Gaien redevelopment plan. Please leave that nice greenery jogging track and lovely Jingu Stadium as it is. Once something is destroyed, it can never be restored, ”the writer lamented on his Sunday radio show. A few words that the author dedicated to the governor of the city, Yuriko Koike, who approved this project that intends to build new buildings in the heart of what is considered a green district in Tokyo over the next thirteen years.
The aforementioned district and its baseball stadium appear in different books, such as the recent Primera persona del singular, making evident the importance they have for the winner of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature.
Together with Murakami, other neighbors and lovers of baseball and rugby, since the plan would also affect the Chichibunomiya stadium where this sport is practiced, they denounce a lack of transparency and environmental evaluation. Hundreds of them staged a protest this weekend in the surroundings to ask for explanations and to stop the project.
