"Murakami placed his Olivetti typewriter on the table and began to write again, this time in English.

The resulting English prose was, unsurprisingly, simple and unadorned. However, as he wrote, Murakami felt a distinctive rhythm begin to take shape:

Since I was born and raised in Japan, the vocabulary and patterns of the Japanese language had filled the system that was me to bursting, like a barn crammed with livestock. When I sought to put my thoughts and feelings into words, those animals began to mill about, and the system crashed. Writing in a foreign language, with all the limitations that entailed, removed this obstacle."

Kaut kā tā arī varētu būt, ne? Ka tulkošana atjaunina valodu, kuru citādi rakstniekam diktē literārās nevis runātās, "dzīvās" valodas tradīcija. Jei bogu kāds atkal sāks sūdzēties par svešzemju ietekmēm latviešu literatūrā, "latviešu valoda ir zemnieku valoda, bet es jau sen neganu cūkas", ne? Un tad vēl ir Kuprišs, kura grāmata, gribas teikt, ir viens no 21.gs. notikumiem LV literatūrā, un, cik saprotu, tad arī viņa Berlīne uz latviešu valodu ir tulkota.

"I feel now that without this effect of distance—geographical distance from my hometown and linguistic distance made possible by it, as well as the in-between space opened up by the act of translation—I couldn’t have written my novel. This distance made it possible for me to see the place and people of my native land in such a vivid way that wouldn’t have been possible if I had been in Tokyo. I am convinced that, like in Murakami and Oe’s work, the in-between space of translation and complete detachment from Japanese helped me to be more sensitive to the language than when I was surrounded by it—or perhaps it allowed me to find my own kind of foreign language."

Un tad vēl ir laika radītais attālums -- daži cilvēki, kurus sen nepazīstu, atmiņas darbinātajā iztēlē mēdz iznirt dzīvāki par dažu labu, ko satieku ikdienā.