---
canonical_url: "https://japoneson.com/en/murakami/jte/"
title: "Japanese Traditional Events (JTE) — Ryu Murakami | Japonéson"
description: "Ryu Murakami's bilingual book Japanese Traditional Events, eight years in the making, with a CD of Japanese songs supervised by his close friend Ryuichi Sakamoto."
lang: "en"
---

![The framed garden of Hōsen-in, a temple in Ohara, Kyoto — a bamboo grove and young maples seen across a red felt mat from the empty tatami room. Photographed by Shoko Shiraishi, April 2022.](https://japoneson.com/images/murakami/jte_hero.jpg)

RYU MURAKAMI · 2016

# Japanese Traditional Events

Respect & Love — eight years in the making.

This book came into my hands in January 2024.

It was published on 4 July 2016, but it says inside that it took about eight years to finish.

Ryu Murakami, it seems, began it after seeing a film about the Japanese American internment camps of the Second World War, and the book is written in both Japanese and English.

It comes with a CD of Japanese nursery songs and _shōka_ (school songs), supervised by Ryuichi Sakamoto. The two were close friends — Murakami often wrote in his essays that he would meet Sakamoto in New York and then travel on to Cuba by way of Cancún. It seems he consulted him about Cuban music as well.

Knowing that this CD came after Murakami's stories of America and Cuba, and that Sakamoto fell ill with cancer while the book was still being made, moved me deeply. The music is quiet, warm and beautiful. You can hear Sakamoto's feeling for a dear "friend" turned into sound.

The book is out of print now, but the special site tells you why it was made and lets you listen to the music. Do pay it a visit.

* * *

> There was a moment during the making of JTE when it dawned on me, with all the clarity of a fine sunrise, that my attitude toward Japanese traditional events was basically one of **“respect and love.”** Normally I might feel a bit self-conscious about using such words, but in this case they felt so natural and right that I found myself embracing them as our subtitle.

![A copy of Japanese Traditional Events (JTE) standing on a wooden stand at Shoko Shiraishi's home, with plum branches arranged in a Hagi-ware vase above it. Photographed January 2024.](https://japoneson.com/images/murakami/jte_book.jpg)

Photographed by Shoko Shiraishi, January 2024.

Title

日本の伝統行事 — _Japanese Traditional Events_ (JTE)

Subtitle

大切に思うこと、愛すること — _Respect & Love_

Text

Ryu Murakami

Illustrations

Yuka Hamano

English translation

Ralph McCarthy

Music

_Japanese Children’s Songs and Shōka_, supervised by Ryuichi Sakamoto — three CDs (Japanese, English, and karaoke)

Cover

Haruka Ayase (nail art: Haruna Takahashi)

Publisher

Kodansha, 4 July 2016 · ISBN 978-4-06-219960-5

[→ The official site for _Japanese Traditional Events_](http://jte.ryumurakami.com/)

Jii - oldman