Novelist Haruki Murakami and film director Pierre Foldes shake hands at the end of a talk session after a screening of “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” an animated film adapted from the Japanese author’s short stories, in Tokyo, June 15, 2024. Novelist Haruki Murakami and film director Pierre Foldes pose for a photo at the end of a talk session after a screening of “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,” an animated film adapted from the Japanese author’s short stories, in Tokyo, June 15, 2024.
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” is set in Tokyo in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and the Fukushima meltdowns. It focuses on three main characters — Katagiri, a diligent but lonely and confidence-lacking banker who teams up with a giant talking frog to save Tokyo from an imminent second quake, his unenthusiastic younger colleague and his wife Kyoko, who — depressed and glued to earthquake news on TV — leaves him.
The American filmmaker said he didn’t have a definitive plan when he picked six stories that “I just love.” But things started to build “like different crops growing together,” he told Murakami. “Little by little all these links appeared and this is how I combined all your stories into one story with other stories inside.”