I kid, slightly: most of Murakami T is a series of essays that Haruki Murakami wrote for the Japanese magazine Popeye between 2018 and 2020, so it is actually work he did. But the impetus for the project was "Hey, you have a lot of T-shirts. Want to write a short essay about a group of them each month?"
Murakami provides an introduction, to explain the whole odd project - apparently his record collection is even more impressive and famous, so he was first interviewed about that for the magazine BRUTUS, and happened to mention there that he'd also accumulated a lot of shirts, so some editor took his shot and got a series of new Murakami work for his magazine. (Shine on, random editor from the company that owns Popeye and BRUTUS; that was a great idea and I hope it got you at least some in-office egoboo.)
The bulk of the book is the eighteen essays from Popeye, presented here in what I think is their original order, along with photographs of the relevant shirts by Yasumoto Ebisu. Last is a pair of interviews, from the beginning and end of the project, conducted by Kunichi Nomura, whom I assume was associated with Popeye in some capacity.
This is light Murkami, but it's still Murakami - along the lines of his introductions and other occasional nonfiction - so the prose has his characteristic tone and concerns and manner, sliding from one idea to something unrelated and keeping that direct, conversational tone. It is obviously a minor, vanity project, but still of interest to Murakami fans, and, maybe, others.
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