Haruki Murakami's account of Japan

Just to cite a couple of Haruki Murakami's accounts of Japan in his interview that appeared in FT Magazine on 1/2 July 2006 (subscription required). (I found that the whole of this article can be read for free here.)

"I wasn't interested in working for a big company like Toyota or Sony. I just wanted to be independent. But that's not easy. In this country, if you don't belong to any group, you're almost nothing."

"You know the myth of Orpheus. He goes to the underworld to look for his deceased wife, but it's far away and he has to undergo many trials to get there. There's a big river and a wasteland. My characters go to the other world, the other side. In the Western world, there is a big wall you have to climb up. In this country, once you want to go there, it's easy. It's just beneath your feet."

(Thanks goes to Ameet, who brought this interview into my attention.)