I thought I should let the list know that I've been contacted by several
worried people as a result of my postings to a thread in the
rec.collecting.books newsgroup (http://tinyurl.com/9uef5).
As explained in that thread, I was suspicious of the authenticity of a
signature in an eBay auction (http://tinyurl.com/bexy7) and contacted a
Japanese Murakami specialist (whose website is here:
http://www.geocities.jp/yoshio_osakabe/indexE.html).
His response was, "I am 100% sure the signature is fake". Like me, he does
not believe that any native Japanese speaker (much less Murakami) would have
written this.
So far, the people who have contacted me asking if their signed copies are
also fakes have all shown me scans of what appears to be the same book club
reprint edition of _Norwegian Wood_, all with equally suspicious signatures,
and when I contacted the eBay seller of the above item he said he had got
them from a dealer who "had lots of them". I notice there is also a set
which fits this description currently being offered on ABE.
That raises another point. Murakami rarely does book signings. He does
occasionally, though, and his name does crop up on an assortment of books.
But they tend to be the books one would expect enthusiasts to bring to a
book-signing - that is, mostly first editions. Furthermore, if they are
English-language editions, they are often signed in the Roman alphabet,
rather than in Japanese. Quite apart from the fact that the signatures don't
*look* like his (or even like a native speaker's handwriting) - it is most
unusual that a rash of books all of the same unremarkable reprint edition
should suddenly appear on the market like this. To me, it looks someone
cashing in on the Harvill Press signed limited edition of _Norwegian Wood_,
which Harvill Press put out in 2000, though that was signed on a limitation
card (I forget now whether it was signed in Japanese or in English).
Now, I may be wrong about this. Murakami might be sitting somewhere laughing
up his sleeve about the - dozens? hundreds? - of copies of his work that
he's suddenly decided to sign in a way that would make a Japanese
librarian's cat* laugh - never mind the librarian! But, on the assumption
that that is unlikely, I thought it wise to utter a word of warning.
*Assuming the librarian had saved the cat rather than the incunabulum, that
is. The concept of animal welfare is rather new in Japan, so the chances may
be smaller than in the West.
John R. Yamamoto-Wilson
http://rarebooksinjapan.org