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The fiction of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is a deliberate imitation of the hardboiled detective style (Fisher 159) however, instead of investigating a crime his
protagonists investigate themselves. They are solipsists who must pull apart emotions
to determine their source and meaning always without the guarantee of resolution.
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missing in their lives. Some are shallow with little interior life; others
have a deep need for meaning and self-fulfillment. Mostly they are
simply bewildered by their sense of disconnection and loss.
(Loughman 88)
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In Nausea, Antoine walks through the city along beaches and boulevards studying
people of the upper class in his native France like an anthropologist in his own land.
In Lost in Space, Barr suggests that Murakami is a science fiction writer the genre
usually used to explore the notion of the alien (Barr 172). In Underground, Murakami
confesses to approaching his exploration of the Japanese psyche in order to
understand it after his seven-year self-imposed exile (Underground 204-5). It would
appear a prerequisite for the existential figure that they estrange themselves from their
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universe. Murakami and his protagonists conduct a similar exploration, yet rather than
attempting estrangement and distancing, they use the tool of empathy, participation,
and connection. Murakami explains:
To me, a story means to put your feet in someone elses shoes. There
are so many kinds of shoes, and when you put your feet in them you
look at the world through other peoples eyes. You learn something
about the world through good stories, serious stories. (Miller)
Murakamis non-fiction work on the Tokyo subway gas attack of 1995 provides
valuable insight to the Japanese and to Murakamis psyche. It reveals the similarities
between the author and his protagonists similarities that Murakami himself observes:
The testimonies that make up Underground are divided into the commuters
survivors of the Tokyo Gas Attack (us) and members of Aum, the perpetrators
(them). Murakami approaches both groups with a typical novelists empathy, yet it
is clear that though he situates himself, by definition, within the us he can very
much relate to the cult members Talking to them so intimately made me realize
how their religious quests and the process of novel writing, though not identical, are
similar (Underground 215). As one of Murakamis translators notes:
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The Aum members fascinate him because they have tried to do what
his characters usually give up any hope of doing Unlike the more
passive victims of the attack, the cult members have dared to probe
into the black box at the core of themselves. (Rubin 243)
Murakami walks in the space between both camps, leveling criticism at both, while
we the reader find that the line dividing us and them in extremely confrontational
situations begins to disappear, and we are left facing our own inner darkness
(Matsuoka 305). Rubin further notes that:
Just as the Japanese were aghast at the cult members surrendering of their
individuality, the majority of Japanese possess a similar group mindedness in their
dedication to their families, their employers, and to the status quo. As Murakami
states, Japanese white-collar workers or salary men are used to it.
They have been doing that life for many years. They dont have any
alternative. Theres a similarity between the cult people and ordinary
people. When I studied those interviews, the similarity was in my mind.
(Miller)
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Thats how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different
ways to die. But in the end that doesnt make a bit of difference. All
that remains is a desert. (South of the Border 81; emphasis in original)
You need to lighten up and learn to enjoy life a little more. I mean,
think about it: tomorrow there could be an earthquake, you could be
kidnapped by aliens, you could be eaten by a bear. Nobody knows
whats going to happen (17).
Miller notes, the heroes in Haruki Murakamis dazzling, addictive and rather strange
novels dont fit the stereotype of conformist, work-obsessed Japanese men at all.
A motif of Murakamis fiction is the realization of the protagonists that their lives will
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never reach the heights for which they had hoped, yet when compared to other
characters, such an acceptance of ones limitations is a survival trait, for ambition can
all too easily becoming an all-consuming white whale. Several of Murakamis texts
feature protagonists that pursue a Kurtz-like figure a brilliant character that travels
into the wilderness and ultimately into their own destruction. In Wild Sheep Chase,
for instance the protagonist pursues his old friend Rat up a long alpine road and into a
mountain hideaway much like Marlow in Conrads Heart of Darkness. In Wind-up
Bird Chronicles, the protagonists wife goes to jail for murder, or attempted murder.
In Norwegian Wood, the protagonists girlfriend signs herself into a mental asylum
and eventually commits suicide; in Sputnik Sweetheart, the protagonists love interest
disappears, possibly to a parallel universe; and in Underground Murakami illustrates
that those who were central to the planning and execution of the gas attack were part
of the Japanese elite (Underground 57). The protagonists enjoyment of the simpler
pleasures on the other hand of cooking food, sitting and watching crowds walk past,
of savoring cocktails, of going out for nights of pleasure suggests a Taoist mood of
intense indifference; neither happy nor sad, replete nor empty, lonely nor loved,
[Murakamis protagonists] simply exists (Tamotsu 271). Throughout east Asia,
Murakamis cool, detached, often comical narrator seems to offer an alternative to
life lived in the grim Confucian envelope of State and Family (Rubin 5). Murakamis
protagonists accept the ordinary, and this enables them to be highly adaptable and
receptive to the extraordinary, keep(ing) in tune with the unpredictable, shifting
music of life (Rubin 3):
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We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and
stationary. We even talk about people being down to earth or having
their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we see
that it isnt true. The earth, the boulders that are supposed to be solid,
all of a sudden turn as mushy as liquid (after the quake 68).
Murakami may have a specific interest in advocating the existentialist disregard for
ambition considering the Japanese preoccupation with success, the dangers of which
are highlighted in Underground where both those unaffected by the sarine and those
who had themselves been gassed remained more concerned with their professional
obligations. A victim recounts, Hey, whats going on here? I thought (while
suffering the effects of sarine poisoning), but I had to get to work. I had a whole list of
things to do. (Underground 49) Murakamis fictitious protagonists, on the other hand,
are apathetic to their context within society. In South of the Border, West of the Sun
for instance, Hajime like Antoine and Meursault is willing to risk his whole,
carefully constructed life in order to avoid being guilty of bad faith.
One of the devices Antoine and Murakamis protagonists use to step outside of the
court of their peers is semiotic manipulation, for while reality may be socially
constructed, language maintains it socially. For instance Antoine, globetrotter turned
hermit, is detached from the naming conventions presented to him by his peers he
is no longer able to fix, to stabilize, existence by naming things (Spanos 50).
Antoine realizes that a society that understands the essence of a thing by its utility will
understand an individuals worth and identity in terms of the social role that they
fulfill. Antoine is rescued from having to apply this epistemological process to
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himself when he comes to understand that contrary to what he has been socialized to
believe in, existence precedes essence, and that that essence is arbitrary (Sartre 182-9).
In understanding that he exists in his own right separate from our social function
Antoine frees himself from the obligation to justify his existence through work.
Murakami also appears to argue that people are not what they do by using adjectives
how they appear rather than verbs what they do. The protagonists and characters
acquire nicknames from their peers such as Mr. Wind-up Bird, The Rat, The
Sheep Man, and The Boss. This emphasizes that Murakamis protagonists are in a
constant state of flux their identity is ethereal, and the identity that their parents
gave them at their birth is irrelevant to the period in their lives that we get to observe
them.
Finally, the sense of cultural alienation that Murakamis protagonists appear to suffer
from may not be so much that they belong to no culture, but that they belong like
Murakami himself to too many cultures. Murakami is parodying [Western] stylistic
conventions, using an American tough-guy style to recount the misadventures of his
bookish, melancholy Japanese protagonists (Fisher 159). Tamotsu describes him
essentially as a cultural pirate in his style and content (Tamotsu 256), and as Fisher
observes it is necessary to consider Murakami a writer of the postmodern world, of a
world in which the West and Japan are problematic entities. Murakamis work is
an intermediary between the western modernist tradition and Japanese literature.
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As with Sartres Antoine isolation from Anny, Murakamis protagonists are isolated
geographically from their loved ones, their pets, and their best friends. It is the
individuals relationship with time, however, that is more significant a concern of the
protagonists of Nausea and Murakamis fiction. Antoine, for instance, attempts to
bridge the gap between himself and the long-deceased Marquis de Rollebon, while
Murakamis protagonists lose their loved ones to death and to the transformative
potential of time. As Hajime observes, Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some
things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all
that remains is a desert (South of the Border 81; emphasis in original). Antoine is
flexible in the face of time, acknowledging the mortality of his individual passion and
even his capacity for passion. He proceeds to say to the wall of portraits of great
figures Farewell, you beautiful lilies, elegant in your little painted Sanctuaries,
farewell, you beautiful lilies, our pride and raison dtre, farewell, you Bastards.
(Sartre 138) Antoine recognizes that life is most rewarding when immersed in, when
we reflect only sporadically on our location in time, and when we avoid at all costs
reflecting on our lives and converting experiences into an adventure. Murakamis
protagonists also aspire to attain this degree of sublimity: the mundane events of their
lives drinking beer, cooking, sampling cocktails, walking through Tokyo gain as
much attention as the magical such as hiking through sewers while being hunted by
subterranean mutants. Murakami does not go into great sensual depth with these
routine experiences, nor does he de-familiarize them like Sartre in Nausea, yet simply
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presents them. Murakamis protagonists recognize, and value, the passing of every
moment as being of equal importance. As Hajime states, I dont consider it my job to
investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is correct and what
isnt (17). When Antoine laments, How on earth can I, who havent had the
strength to retain my own past, hope to save the past of somebody else? (Sartre 139),
he seems to be asking whether we can live our lives as more than a succession of
dreams. Murakamis protagonists appear to present a case for the affirmative. This is
because they realize that their failure to rescue history is not due to a failure of
strength on their part, but because such an endeavor is impossible. As the ending of
The Second Bakery Attack where the protagonist, symbolically has retrieved
his past, changed it, and made possible a different future (Loughman 87) the past
can never be resurrected but can only be salvaged and used as inspiration for the
future.
This, however, does not mean that Murakamis protagonists are not constantly
struggling to reconcile themselves to the fragility of memories. They frequently mark
the passage of time by the music of time yet such musical references act only as token
nostalgic triggers. In making such musical references, Murakami appears to question
the adequacy of music to encapsulate the spirit of the times.
Norwegian Wood begins with the Beatles song of the same title:
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While reading the novel makes it clear why the song triggers the protagonists
memory of his unrequited romance with Naoko twenty years earlier, it also becomes
clear that the two narratives the public song and the personal event are heavily
contrasted in their moods. The song is upbeat and positive. Norwegian Wood is a
melancholic tale of loss. As well as highlighting the discrepancy between the public
and personal experiences, this juxtaposition also demonstrates the fatuousness of popculture in its attempt to act as a form of collective memory. Murakamis work are a
critique of kitsch one of the central factors of modern civilized life, the kind of art
that normally and inescapably surrounds us the triumph of the principle of
immediacy (Calinescu 8; emphasis in original). Kitsch is designed to both save
time its enjoyment is effortless and instantaneous and to kill time like a drug, it
frees man temporarily from his disturbed time consciousness (Calinescu 8-9).
Murakami negotiates this paradox by observing the capacity of pop-music to both
reaffirm the present, and to haunt the future.
Just as the protagonist are capable of navigating through culture using techniques
usually associated with the postmodern, so too are they able to negotiate through time,
through their non-judgmental receptiveness and empathy with other peoples stories.
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In Underground, Murakami bears witness to the suffering of the victims of the gas
attack even though he was out of Tokyo at the time of the attack. Though Murakami
notes that the gas attack was not a topic you merely toyed with, he also
acknowledges that he was a spider sucking up this mass of words, only to later break
them down inside me and spin them out into another narrative (Underground 205).
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Conclusion
Murakamis novels participate in the same discourse as Sartre, Camus and Kafka.
While his relationship with this tradition can be explained as a postmodern
appropriation and repackaging of Western literature, his playful use of cultural
references with sixties music and various literary genres should not blind readers to
his earnest exploration of existence. As well as being modern, by virtue of his
protagonists tendency to step outside of the social machinery, his works explore and
contribute to central themes of the existential condition in the secular age being in
culture, and being in time. Murakamis protagonists actively negotiate their
relationship with society living as sovereign individuals yet engaging with their
fellow human beings when they wish. In a move that I believe extends Murakamis
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While the protagonists of Murakamis work are conscious that the hands of a clock
run in only one direction, (South of the Border 52) they manage to push their
temporal as well as cultural limits. They find themselves confident in the present, the
past and alternative realities. They resign themselves to the impermanence of material
objects and memories and instead of seeking security in cultural memory either in
the form of popular culture or historical documents they find solace in their own and
other peoples stories.
Murakamis Taoist texts are valuable artifacts in a Confucian culture. His work may
prove highly valuable in a modernist and progressive nation in countering the
reactionary forces of nationalism and theology that threaten to revise Japan past, or
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With seamless references to Japanese society and geography, and cultural hybridism,
Murakamis texts are accessible to a non-Japanese audience. His work is
straightforward, seemingly effortless, and the protagonists voices are consistent
resulting in a strong sense of honesty that encourages a sense of intimacy with
Murakami himself. Murakamis iconic, run-of-the-mill protagonists all of whom
remain existentially natural and authentic despite the supernatural situations that they
find themselves in suck in his readers, be they from Japan or the West.
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Barr, Marleen S. Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond.
Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, c1993
Beatles, Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). Rubber Soul. Capitol
Records, 1965
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Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. London: Everymans
Library, 1992
Salon,
16
December,
1997.
URL:
http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html
Murakami, Haruki. after the quake. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Random House,
2003
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_________. Hear the Wind Sing. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. Tokyo: Kodansha,
1987
_________. South of the Border, West of the Sun. Trans. Philip Gabriel. New
York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1999
_________. The Sputnik Sweetheart. Trans. Philip Gabriel. New York: Alfred
A Knopf, 2001
_________. Underground: the Tokyo gas attack and the Japanese psyche.
Trans. Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. London: Harvill, 2000
_________. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: a Novel. Trans. Jay Rubin New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
Patil, Anita HM shares his thoughts with students October 22, 1998.
Observer
Editorial
Board.
URL:
http://www.murakami.ch/rd/books_about_hm/main.html
Rubin, Jay. Haruki Murakami and the World of Music. London: Harvill Press,
2002
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Tamotsu, Aoki. Murakami Haruki and Japan Today in Treat, John Whittier
(Ed). Contemporary Japan and popular culture. Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1996Taylor, Charles. Sources of the self: the making of the
modern identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989
Wood, James. Human, All Too Inhuman, The New Republic, July 24, 2000
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