The City and its Uncertain Walls, Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, features two concurrent plot lines, focusing on a 17-year-old boy and a 45-year-old man. While readers of the English version must slowly become aware of these separate realities as each narrator sets the scene, the parallel is immediately evident for readers of the Japanese original, starting in the fifth chapter.
In the Japanese text of The City and its Uncertain Walls, the switch in the first-person pronoun from boku to watashi marks a clear transition, denoting the change from the boy’s narrative voice to the man’s. Since this shift involves both a visual and audial difference, it offers readers an easy point of recognition for each of the novel’s two worlds. A comparable distinction is lost in the English translation, where both pronouns must simply be rendered as “I” due to the limitations of the language.
Japanese, unlike many other tongues, offers a variety of ways to say the first-person pronoun “I.” Besides boku and watashi, which are employed by the younger and older narrators in the novel, alternatives include watakushi, ore, atashi, uchi, or washi. Consequently, Japanese writers and speakers have a broad selection when referring to themselves.
Crucially, every Japanese pronoun is fraught with significance, hinting at factors like age, gender, social rank, or interpersonal relationships. Therefore, as seen in Murakami’s work, the ability to utilize varied pronouns for self-reference can serve as a potent tool for creative expression.
To showcase this, the boy’s narrator begins chapter two by saying: “You and boku [I] lived not so far from each other.” Meanwhile, the man’s narrator declares in chapter ten: “Watashi [I] was provided with a small home in the area called the Officials District.” The exact nuance between watashi and boku is partly open to reader interpretation, but it is undeniable that they carry distinct meanings.
In literary analysis, the selection of the first-person pronoun “I” provides a rich opportunity for interpretation, enabling readers to decipher the evolving identities and subjectivities of the characters. However, this kind of coded depth is challenging to communicate when translating Japanese texts into languages like English, which offer only a single way to express “I.”
Murakami’s “I”s
Within Murakami’s literary universe, male characters primarily use the masculine pronoun boku, occasionally employing the more gender-neutral and polite watashi, or the rougher male term ore. In contrast, female characters almost universally use watashi.
Earlier works by Murakami often demonstrate a keen awareness concerning the choice of first-person pronouns, particularly when the text incorporates multiple narrative layers. For instance, in his 1979 debut novel, Hear the Wind Sing, the main narrator uses boku, but when relaying a story created by his friend, the Rat, the narrator of that embedded story refers to himself as ore.
As is the case in The City and its Uncertain Walls, the distinct terms for “I” within a Murakami text can also serve to signal parallel, split, or dual personalities. This particular function of “I” presents one of the most significant challenges for translators.
This issue first emerged in Murakami’s 1985 novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which also presents two parallel narratives in alternating chapters. The first story is told by a narrator using watashi, and the next by one using boku. These two “I”s have frequently been interpreted as representing two sides of the same male protagonist—his outer world (watashi) and his inner world (boku)—and their relationship as that of alter egos.
Haruki Murakami’s book Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Penguin
Murakami himself acknowledged in the afterword to The City and its Uncertain Walls that his new novel is connected to Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. For instance, the setting and core concept of the town encircled by a high wall—a central feature in both books—is essentially the same: the protagonist must become separated from his shadow to gain entry.
The link between the two novels is also significant in the context of the first-person pronoun “I.” Both books feature two parallel worlds narrated by voices using watashi and boku, respectively. Furthermore, in both novels, the shadow of the narrator who enters the town evolves into a distinct character with its own voice and identity. This distinction is made clear because the shadow uses ore to refer to himself, avoiding both watashi and boku.
Thanks to the wide array of personal pronouns available in Japanese, the protagonist in both novels is subjected to a double narration but actually possesses not just two, but three distinct selves—watashi, boku, and ore—each carrying a clear potential for interpretation.
Translating “I”
Lacking alternative options for “I,” translators from Japanese into English have been forced to devise clever ways to re-create the distinctiveness of the first-person voices and their separate worlds.
In Alfred Birnbaum’s translation of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a solution was implemented: the watashi sections are written in the past tense, while the boku sections are in the present tense. This use of temporal difference, though controversial, successfully allows English readers to sense a distinction between the two narrators and their worlds, even if the difference between boku, watashi, and ore itself is lost.
By contrast, Philip Gabriel’s recent translation of The City and its Uncertain Walls offers English readers no immediate visual or audial aid to distinguish between the man’s and the boy’s parts. While readers will eventually grasp the theme of parallel worlds linked by a time-split protagonist, the experience is noticeably different because “I” has only one look, sound and meaning. In the Japanese original, watashi and boku are different, and yet the same.
Murakami’s work is now available in over 50 languages, leading some to regard him as a truly global writer. However, translation fundamentally involves turning one story into something new. The various words for “I” in Japanese present one issue that compels us to acknowledge the specific Japanese context of Murakami’s works—even as they increasingly become part of global culture.
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