Last month, the Japanese author Haruki Murakami accepted the Jerusalem Prize as part of the Jerusalem International Book Fair. Murakami was widely criticized for attending and rejecting calls to boycott the event. At the award ceremony Murakami addressed the controversy in his acceptance speech:

I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for

myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to

say nothing.

Please do allow me to deliver one very personal

message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing

fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper

and paste it to the wall: rather, it is carved into the wall of my

mind, and it goes something like this:

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."

Yes,

no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand

with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what

is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist

who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what

value would such works be?

What is the meaning of this metaphor?

In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and

rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs

are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them.

This

is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way.

Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique,

irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and

it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser

degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: it is

"the System." The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it

takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us

to kill others — coldly, efficiently, systematically.