Fans Line Up for Latest Volume of Murakami Novel 1Q84

Eager fans waited in drizzling rain Friday to buy the third volume of Haruki Murakami’s best-selling, multi-part novel “1Q84” and learn if its main characters — long-ago schoolmates now searching for each other — would be reunited.

Publisher Shinchosha said 500,000 copies would hit bookstores on the first day of sales in Japan and 200,000 more copies would be printed this month. Television images showed 30 people in line outside one Tokyo bookstore.

“I’ve been waiting for today. I am dying to know whether the two characters will finally stay together,” said Kayoko Takeuchi, a 35-year-old office worker, at Tokyo’s Yaesu book center in a business district. She stopped by the bookstore during her lunch break.

A Shinchosha spokesman said demand for the book was amazing. “We heard that one bookstore sold 100 copies in just one hour,” Takashi Machii said.

Like many of Murakami’s previous best-sellers, “1Q84” is a complex and surreal narrative. The story shifts between two characters, a young Japanese man and woman who knew each other as schoolmates but parted. He, an aspiring novelist, and she, a sports instructor and an assassin, are now searching for each other.

The second volume of “1Q84” — which can be read as the year “1984” in Japanese — ended with the man and woman finally close to seeing each other. The novel explores social and emotional issues such as cult religion, violence, family ties and love.

Kanji Otsuka, a 51-year-old businessman at a pharmaceutical company, said he has read almost all of Murakami’s works, and “1Q84” is among his favorites.

“His books are easy to read, but touch on serious issues in our lives. His books also spark imagination,” a smiling Otsuka said as he held the sequence of “1Q84” at the Yaesu bookstore.

Shinchosha declined to say if the third volume would be the end of the “1Q84” story, saying Murakami would decide when the tale was finished.

The first and second volumes of “1Q84” ranked as Japan’s top-selling book in 2009, according to publishing distributor Tohan Co. Ltd.

Shinchosha said it has printed a combined 2.44 million copies of the two volumes “1Q84” since their release in Japan last May. The two earlier volumes total 1,000 pages, with the third volume at around 600 pages.

Murakami’s past works include global best-sellers “Norwegian Wood,” ‘‘Kafka on the Shore” and “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.”

More than 10 million copies of “Norwegian Wood” have been sold in Japan alone since its release in 1987, according to the book’s publisher, Kodansha Ltd.

He is considered a top Japanese candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature.

Toshiaki Uchida, an assistant manager at the Yaesu store, said Murakami is a special author.

“Unlike other authors, the number of Murakami’s fans keeps snowballing. I cannot think of any writer who commands such popularity,” Uchida said as he restocked more copies of “1Q84” on a table at the store entrance.

The first and second volumes of “1Q84” are available in South Korea and Taiwan. The publisher said it didn’t know when English versions would be available.

Murakami, who has lived in the U.S., including stints at Princeton and Harvard, is fiercely private. He was not immediately available for comment Friday.

Murakami has also written works of nonfiction, including a book based on interviews of victims of the 1995 deadly nerve gas attack in Tokyo, and has translated works by Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving and J.D. Salinger.

SHINO YUASA, Associated Press Writer TOKYO