Haruki Murakami Wrote About His Father’s War and It Took Him 30 Years to Start

When Haruki Murakami was in primary school, his father told him a story. It was about the execution of a Chinese prisoner of war by Japanese soldiers with a military sword. The father spoke about it matter-of-factly, almost casually. The son never forgot it. Decades later, Murakami would write that the image of that beheading was “deeply etched into my young mind” and that he felt he had “partially inherited the experience.” It was the only time his father ever spoke about the war. It was enough to alter the course of both their lives. Chiaki Murakami was born in…