Note: Sendagaya is the home of the former National Olympic Stadium, and currently a new stadium is being built at the same spot. “I’d go to the barber, get a shave, stroll over to Gaien Park, lie down and gaze up at the blue.” Nearby you can also find a large fountain and a grassy area where you can lie down and wait for the end of the world. Getting to Peter CatĪnother popular Sendagaya destination is Gaien Park, where one can visit the Meiji Picture Gallery dedicated to the life of Emperor Meiji. Around the corner, a local bookstore even has some of the old lanterns from the bar on display in the back. The former spot of the bar today is nothing more than a generic restaurant, but it still remains somewhat of a pilgrimage spot for Murakami fans to this day. While Peter Cat is not mentioned in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, it happens to be very close to all the other Sendagaya locations. While running his jazz bar Peter Cat, Murakami wrote his first two novels before closing the bar to focus on writing full-time. As he writes about in his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, it was while witnessing a home run at the stadium that he first decided he could write a novel. This is the neighborhood where the author himself lived when starting his career as a writer.Ī number of places mentioned in the novel, such as Jingu Baseball Stadium, are also of special importance to the author. This section of The Murakami Pilgrimage features a day tour itinerary for Sendagaya which will take you on a walking tour throughout the neighborhood. Even though most of the Sendagaya locations mentioned in the book are not even visited by the characters over the course of the story, this neighborhood should be of special interest to Haruki Murakami fans.
Much of the action happens in between Sendagaya and Aoyama-Itchome stations. Many of the notable scenes of the novel take place deep underground beneath Tokyo, but we’re at least given descriptions of under which landmarks the characters are traversing.
SENDAGAYA WALKING TOUR Aoyama Itchome Station Furthermore, grotesque creatures known as the INKlings have an underground base beneath important Tokyo government buildings, and it’s suspected that they may be in cahoots with the Semiotics. In Tokyo, a secret information war between the Calcutecs (of which the protagonist is a member) and the Semiotics is taking place, as an old scientist with an underground lab is behind a lot more than he first lets on. It’s perhaps the only one that could be categorized as true ‘science fiction.’ Only half of the book takes place in the ‘real’ world, with each alternating chapter taking us to the walled town located deep within the protagonist’s subconscious. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World is one of Murakami’s most surrealistic and experimental novels.
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