The Album Murakami Cannot Recall: The Liszt Record in South of the Border, West of the Sun

Every Murakami reader has a favourite record from his books, but one of the most haunting is an album that nobody, not even the narrator, can name. In South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992), a boy listens to a Liszt piano concerto record at the home of a girl called Shimamoto, and decades later he admits he has forgotten who played it. We have been wondering about that record ever since, so today we go looking for clues.

The Liszt record in South of the Border, West of the Sun

The scene is a small, quiet one. Hajime, the narrator, spends afternoons at Shimamoto's house, where her father's record collection waits. Of all those records, he loves one best: a recording of the Liszt piano concertos, one concerto on each side. He gives two reasons. The jacket is beautiful, and nobody else around him listens to Liszt, which makes the music feel like a secret garden that only he (and Shimamoto) can enter.

The music itself does not win him over right away. At first it strikes him as exaggerated and artificial, even incomprehensible. With repeated listening, though, an image forms. When he closes his eyes, the music arrives as a series of whirlpools, one opening out of another and connecting to a third. He wants to describe this to Shimamoto but cannot find the words, and he is not sure the feeling is even worth putting into words.

Then comes the line that gives this post its title. The narrator no longer remembers the pianist's name. All he keeps is the vivid, colourful jacket and the strange weight of the record, which felt hefty and thick in a way he could not explain.

Why a forgotten album matters

We love this passage because it is so true to how music lives in memory. We rarely remember the catalogue number or the label. We remember how an object felt in our hands, how a room smelled, and who was sitting beside us. Murakami gives his narrator exactly those details, and leaves the one hard fact blank.

It also says something about Murakami's relationship with records in general. Music is never just background in his fiction. It is a doorway to a private world, and often a way for two lonely people to recognize each other. Here the Liszt concertos are the first thing that Hajime and Shimamoto truly share.

Can we identify the record? Clues for fellow Harukists

When we first wrote about this, our curiosity got the better of us, and we put together a small detective list. We would love your help, Harukists, especially if you know classical record collecting.

• Clue 1: It is a vinyl recording of Liszt's piano concertos, with one concerto on each side (so, presumably, the first and second).
• Clue 2: The jacket was beautiful and brightly coloured.
• Clue 3: The timing. Hajime is born in 1951 in the novel and meets Shimamoto as a schoolchild, so the record was most likely pressed in the 1950s or early 1960s.
• Clue 4: It felt unusually heavy and thick, which could point to a heavier pressing or a boxed or deluxe edition.

We have no confirmed answer, and we do not want to pretend otherwise. Murakami has never, to our knowledge, named a specific pressing, and part of the charm may be that he never will.

Listen for yourself

Put on any good recording of the Liszt piano concertos, close your eyes, and see if the whirlpools appear for you too. If you have a theory about the mystery record, or a favourite Liszt recording of your own, tell us in the comments. For more of the music that runs through his books, browse our Music Room posts.