Haruki Murakami tells disappointed Hong Kong youth: Occupy protests were ‘not in vain’
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami says he regrets that Hong Kong’s democracy protests did not bring the changes demanded by demonstrators, but their actions were not in vain.
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami says he regrets that Hong Kong’s democracy protests did not bring the changes demanded by demonstrators, but their actions were not in vain.
“I regret that a lot of things did not go as hoped,” said Murakami, 65, one of Japan’s best known writers who has repeatedly been tipped as a future Nobel laureate.
“But I think what you did for democratisation will never be in vain. It remains a fact, and no one can ignore that fact. Please keep trying to change the world, even just a little. I give my support,” he wrote.
“We can see [a world without walls] with our own eyes – we can even touch it with our own hands if we try hard," Murakami said at the time. “I’d like to send this message to the young people in Hong Kong who are struggling against their wall right now at this moment.”
WATCH: Scenes from the Occupy Central protests
The protests, which began in September last year and lasted for nearly three months, began after Beijing said that candidates for the 2017 vote for Hong Kong’s next leader would be vetted by a loyalist committee.
Campaigners described the decision as a “fake democracy”, but leaders in Hong Kong and mainland China made no concessions despite the 79-day protests.
When Murakami received the 2009 Jerusalem Prize, Israel’s highest litreary honour for foreign writers, he obliquely criticised authoritarian systems in the Middle East for claiming the lives of innocent civilians.
In a recent interview, he also chided his own country for shirking responsibility over its second world war aggression and the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Murakami, 65, began writing while running a bar in Tokyo after finishing university. His 1987 romantic novel Norwegian Wood was his first best-seller, establishing him as a young literary star. Recent best-sellers include 1Q8" and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.
With additional reporting from Associated Press and Kyodo