Haruki Murakami is a big Raymond Carver fan. He translated Carver’s works into Japanese with great enthusiasm during the early 1980s, and in 1984 Murakami and his wife Yoko made the journey to meet Carver at his house on the Strait Juan de Fuca, just round the coast from Seattle. Though this West Coast rendezvous was their only meeting, Carver has influenced Murakami’s career on multiple occasions. When the time came to find an American agent, Murakami was drawn to Carver’s former rep, Binky Urban, precisely due to her connection with the American novelist.