Notes on The Other World

 One consistent element in Murakami’s works of magical realism is the “other world.” Norwegian Wood, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and A Wild Sheep Chase all have this element. In these, the protagonist travels, usually to a physically faraway place, and ends up in a world similar to but subtly unlike the original world. In A Wild Sheep Chase, the physical location of the other world is Sapporo. After landing and catching a movie, Boku and his girlfriend are strolling on the street when they first notice that something is off. His girlfriend asks, “Are we really in the right city” noticing there’s “something out of place” (Murakami 191). Boku silently agrees, noticing “[the polestar] looked like a fake polestar” (191). Here, the characters chalk it up to being in a new city. An experienced reader of Murakami, however, will be able to notice it is from this point forward that the descriptions of people, the laws of nature, and any sense of normalcy are all distorted. 

Immediately, Boku’s girlfriend has intrinsic and accurate knowledge of which hotel to pick. This choice leads to the sheep with the star marking and Boku’s success. In the original world, this would at least be questioned and likely have been inaccurate. Yet because this takes place in the other world, this is normal. Boku remarks that despite being called the Dolphin Hotel, there was “not even a picture of a dolphin” (192), another logical inconsistency allowed in the other world. Yet, it is not questioned. Despite noticing all of these inconsistencies, Boku and his girlfriend do not protest them. They welcome them. The inconsistencies are generally convenient for both of them (up until her disappearance). Here, the other world is accepted.

In contrast to this acceptance of the other world, is the narrator in Sputnik Sweetheart who posed the question: how do I know if I am in the other world? After her experience on the Ferris wheel, Miu is questioning if she is her original self or if the Miu she saw in her apartment is the real her. 

Here, the other world does exist, but it poses two questions: Would you be able to notice you were in the other world if you didn’t see a physical split where apparently you exist in both worlds at once? and if you don’t notice a split, like Boku, but you only interact with one, have you split and just not noticed? These characters are deciding what grounds they should base their reality on: their individual experiences, those around them, or their past. Each of these has different consequences and existential questions related to them. Succinctly, the narrator is basing his identity based on those around him, if Miu is split and not the original Miu, he now feels that he must not be the original him. Miu is unable to decide whether to base her identity on the life that she remembers living, confirming that she is the real Miu, or on what she saw happen in her apartment with her split, which she has no set ideas on. In both scenarios, she is unable to fully account for the other Miu, so I, personally, believe the Miu interacting with the narrator is in the other world, and likely so is everyone else. This other world distorts the idea of identity and personhood. 

In the “End of the World” the world where the novel its name from, the distortion of the other world ripples through the world. Slowly but surely making everything seem slightly off. As time goes on, the world becomes more and more bizarre. In all three of these stories, the effects of the other world compound over time and either become more noticeable or impact more people.

These conceptions of the other world provide understandings of the ways Murakami’s magical realism bends the laws of nature, identity, and time. A consistent element in all worlds is that a very specific process had to be taken to enter the other world or be made aware of it, flying to Sapporo/riding the Ferris wheel, climbing down a well, or traveling down a long singular hallway.

Timothy Obiso

The Beauty of the Mundane

Across the entirety of Murakami's literary work, many common aspects seem to reappear on a regular basis. From the cat crossing the street to a sudden miscommunication between friends, the union of such parts later composes the puzzle that is known as daily life. Certainly, the Japanese Author is neither the first nor last writer that will set his narration and characters in the real world. Murakami's experience as a translator also highlights said aspect, as the inspiration drawn from his translations evidently bleeds through his works. Still, every puzzle piece within Murakami's novels is highlighted by the absence of its surroundings. In other words, Murakami makes sure to insist on the beauty and importance of every single aspect of everyday life.

The concept of mundanity has been present in Murakami's writing ever since the author's first novels. For instance, A Wild Sheep Chase both majorly contributes and gives voice to Murakami's overall stance on life. While the deeper meaning of the novel has never been clear and is still open for interpretation nearly forty years later, a strong aspect of the book is the comparison between men and sheep. Both creatures live their daily lives undisturbed, naturally moving from one task to the next without questioning the deeper meaning of their actions. Not even human's ability to think critically separates them from their wooly specimen. When the girlfriend and the caretaker entertain a conversation about what sheep do over the winter, the caretaker is very clear in stating the similarities between the two species. For example, answering the girlfriend's question of whether sheep get bored or not, the caretaker replies "Do you get bored with your own life? (...) Well, Same with the sheep, they don't think about stuff like that, and it wouldn't do them any good if they did."

Nevertheless, confirming that the mundane is present everywhere does not imply that life and the aspects which compose it are mundane as well. For Murakami, life is more of a space in which any emotion can be experienced at any level. Similar to Kierkegaard's concept of the swinging pendulum, the mundane is simply the pause between one sentiment and the next. Within the story of Tony Takitani, the mundane could simply be interpreted as the protagonist's apathy towards the rest of the world, towards the missing attachment to his distant father, and towards his childhood lack of interest in anything that does not involve drawing. Tony Takitani lives so submerged in his own lack of interest in the world that he removes himself from the chance to feel anything at all. Yet, moments like seeing his future wife in a dress for the first time or the death of his father only become more intense because of Tony's previous perspective on life. 

Tony Takitani only gives voice to one aspect of reality: life cannot be entirely white or black but is instead composed of different shades. A Perfect Days for Kangaroos, on the other hand, focuses on the importance of seizing fleeting moments that could be gone within the following day. In the story, the message is expressed by the couple's sense of urgency to see the baby kangaroo before it grows up, dies, or has any other inconvenient event happen to it. The fleeting nature of the kangaroo is highlighted by its juxtaposition to the reoccurring beer that the protagonists routinely grab together. Regardless of the novel, a proper analysis of the work at hand will always reveal a new element to Murakami's view of the mundane. 

Daniele

Female Characters in Murakami's Work

From the girlfriend with a ravishing ear to Miu's self-splitting to the death of the female protagonist of Drive My Car, it is clear that females in Murakami's works share similar characteristics. To start, perhaps the most revealing about Murakami's own views about female characters is revealed in an interview he had conducted by Mieko Kawakami, a female novelist who Murakami admires and has written about her influence on his novels. Mieko tells Haruki, "it’s common for my female friends to say to me, 'If you love Haruki Murakami’s work so much, how do you justify his portrayal of women?' The notion being that there’s something disconcerting about the depiction of women in your stories. It irks some people, men and women alike. A common reading is that your male characters are fighting their battles unconsciously, on the inside, leaving the women to do the fighting in the real world." To this question, Murakami asks many follow-up questions, particularly the ones which denote that his writing have reduced females to sexual partners and agents of fate. 

Murakami responds that in many cases, his female characters are gateways or opportunities for transformation. In my opinion, Murakami provides a subpar answer in not directly responding to the element of misogyny. He states that "I don't think any of my characters are that complex. The focus is on the interface, or how these people, both men and women, engage with the world they're living in. If anything, I take great care not to dwell too much on the meaning of existence, its importance or its implications... I'm not interested in individualistic characters." Mieko pressed on with the common interpretation that the blood of the female is shed for the sake of self-realization of the male protagonist. Granted the pattern does not appear in every single work written by Murakami but this is apparent in many. For instance, the loss of the girlfriend from the mountain in A Wild Sheep Chase, the death of Oto in Drive My Car, Kumiko killing Noboru and pays the final price in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and the death of the wife in Tony Takitani. A common feminist reading suggests that it is exhausting to see the repetitive pattern of how women are sacrificed for the sake of men's self-realization or sexual desire. Haruki denies using females as novelist instruments and states that "to be honest, I don't understand this idea about there being any kind of pattern. We can talk about the women in my novels as a group, but to me, they’re unique individuals, and on a fundamental level, before I see them as a man or woman, I see them as a human being." 

Based on this interview, Murakami clarifies that if this interpretation of a pattern of females exist in his stories, he never intended it. He also claims, on the basis of his intention of constructing unique individualists, that female characters as a group cannot be interpreted. Despite his clarifications, I believe that a pattern is apparent of female characters being connected to specific or general sexual desires (girlfriend's ear) and represented as agents of fate. They are more likely than male protagonists to die/disappear in Murakami's storyline which ultimately leads to some type of impact on the male characters. Whether or not intentionality was behind the pattern, we cannot dismiss the contemporary feminist reading of Murakami's female characters. 

Source: https://lithub.com/a-feminist-critique-of-murakami-novels-with-murakami-himself/

Yiqin Zhang

Double Consciousness in Sputnik Sweetheart

“I was split in two forever” (157).

As I read our assigned excerpt from Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, I could help but notice the articulation of Miu’s “double consciousness.” Termed by W.E.B. DeBois in The Souls of Black Folk, a double consciousness is a source of inward “twoness;” it is the internal conflict experienced by subordinated groups in an oppressive society, where an individual struggles between an authentic self, and a self that has been constructed in response to oppressive narratives regarding their social class. The tale of Miu’s Marie Antoinette syndrome seems to emulate a double consciousness in class and sexuality. 

In terms of class, the interruption of Miu’s cyclic routine in Switzerland seems to comment on the nature of capitalism, and reminds me a lot of Marx’s Theory of Alienation. For a short time, she appears to enjoy her routine; she goes to work, and she goes to music festivals. However, the “ominous shadow” that begins to spread over her life signifies a growing discontent with her routine (146). She breaks from her routine when she decides to stop at the carnival, noting that “she’d be taking a nice hot bath right now, snuggling into bed with a good book. As she always did,” but is trapped in the circular motion of the ferris wheel, where she is forced to be a voyeur of her own life (152).

To me, this signifies the cyclic and meaningless nature of life that capitalism produces. When she begins to grow tired of her routine, she attempts to deviate. However, she is still forced to experience a cyclic motion, and is forced to be voyeur of her life. She notes that “it gave her a guilty feeling to look at her own room from so far away through the binoculars, as if she were peeking in on herself” (150). In her split self, she is able to recognize the lack of humanity that capitalism produces by recognizing individuals as machinery. In Marx’s Theory of Alienation, he notes that, under capitalism, individuals are estranged from aspects of their human nature. Miu notes that growing up, whenever she “saw a person in trouble, somebody paralyzed by events, [she] decided it was entirely his fault–he just wasn’t trying hard enough. People who complained were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakable, and practical, but lacked any human warmth. And not a single person around me pointed this out.” (159) This was because all she could think about was “becoming a world-class pianist,” and “deviating from that path was not an option. Something was missing in [her], but by the time [she] noticed the gap, it was too late” (159). 

Further, upon further reading, I learned that there are homosexual themes between Miu and another character. This makes it seem, to me, that the scene she watches from the ferris wheel displays a double consciousness in sexuality. The self having sexual relations with Fernando appears to display the oppressive facet of her double consciousness, the one that has been constructed under and oppressive society. She notes that “it was all meaningless and obscene,” and that she “didn’t mind one-night stands,” but “never did [she] once truly love someone” (156, 159). It seems as though the split of the self and her comments on the matter are meant to signify a compulsory heterosexuality of sorts. 

In all, Miu’s experience seems to emulate W.E.B. DeBois’s ideas of the double consciousness. Murakami specifies that when he writes, “my parents weren’t the type to be strict about things, but that’s one thing they drummed into my head since I can remember. You are a foreigner here. I decided that in order to survive, I needed to make myself stronger” (159). Though there are surely other interpretations, the “twoness” outlined by Miu outline a common reaction to oppression.

 

Lexi 

 

Murakami and Loss

    In Tony Takitani, Tony lives the whole beginning of his life without any sense of loneliness. “He found it natural to be by himself. It was a kind of premise for living,” (179) writes Murakami. He describes Tony as a person who is comfortable in solitude and, in fact, prefers it. It is not until Takitani meets the “quiet girl who wore a gentle smile” (181) that he suddenly senses an emptiness in his own life. “They never seemed to tire of talking to each other, as if they were filling up each other’s emptiness” and with her arrival in his life, “his solitude became a crushing weight” (182). 

A common theme in Murakami’s writing is perceived loss of something that is not essential in the individual’s life until they realize it’s possible to have it. In Drive My Car, Kafuku notes that his relationship with his wife was “most compatible” (17). However, he feels a profound sense of loss because of the side of her he was never able to know. Kafuku, knowing his wife was having affairs prior to her death, describes the slow loss he felt due to the stress her secrets put on their relationship, saying “In the end, though, I lost her. Gradually, in the beginning, then completely” (32). Had Kafuku not known his wife was having an affair, he wouldn’t have struggled with the initial feelings of loss. However, because he knew something was going on, he felt her slipping away from him. He even says that the loss of his wife must have been easier for him than for his wife’s lover because he was able to see the whole process of her death. However, the secrets that remained unresolved between him and his wife remain with him much longer than any other aspect of the loss. 

Another example from Drive My Car was the loss of their newborn child. The newborn child is another example of loss of something someone didn’t have before which they didn’t realize was essential in their life until they recognize its absence. The baby lived “only three days” (18), before it died, leaving Kafuku and his wife in a “dark, heavy void” (19) as they dealt with the loss. 

Through these facets, Murakami explores how we process loss and what ephemeral/intangible aspects of our lives can have profound effects on us. Often, the things we lose are things we never knew we had to worry about losing. Before Tony met his wife, he didn’t know he could feel so much pain due to the absence of companionship. In fact, he didn’t even need it until he found her. Before Kafuku and his wife had the opportunity to have a child, they didn’t realize how much it would hurt them not to have it. Before Kafuku realized there were parts of his wife he would never know, he didn’t know how hard it would be to release those parts of her after she died. 

Natalia Kelley

Locations in Murakami Stories

    When reading “Abandoning a Cat,” the locations that Murakami mentions living in as a child stood out to me. This is mostly due to my personal connections to Hyogo Prefecture, as Shukugawa, where Murakami grew up, is where my mom grew up as well and where my aunt and uncle currently live. Learning this, I went back to A Wild Sheep Chase and several of the short stories we read in class to examine references to locations to see to what extent they mirrored Murakami’s life. Though Murakami asserts that he does not want readers to read too far into the similarities between him and Boku, the references in location do seem to be inspired from his own life. 

    In A Wild Sheep Chase, for example, the novel describes Boku’s journey to the funeral with, “the day off the funeral, I took a streetcar from Waseda” (4). Waseda University is where Murakami attended, with this mention of Waseda seeming to be a direct reference to, even though Boku attends ICU, which is in Mitaka, Tokyo. Later when he’s describing himself to his new girlfriend, he says, “I grew up in an ordinary little town, went to an ordinary school… When I was eighteen, I came to Tokyo to go to college” (41). Though it’s not mentioned exactly where Boku’s hometown is and he went to ICU instead of Waseda, this description follows Murakami’s life fairly closely, with him growing up in Kobe until he left for Tokyo when he turned eighteen to go to college at Waseda. 

    In terms of references to Kobe in particular, though Murakami does not reference any locations by name in any of the stories we read, there were a few location descriptions that reminded me of places I have visited when in Japan visiting my extended family. For example, in “A Perfect Day for Kangaroos,” it is set at the local zoo. Though it technically could be any zoo, not even specific to Japan, it instantly reminded me of Oji Koen, which is the local zoo in Kobe where I often visited as a child. There is a kangaroo enclosure in Oji Koen, as well as many food stands scattered throughout the park, many selling Western foods such as hot dogs and sodas. 

    In A Wild Sheep Chase, Boku mentions that he often went to an aquarium close by to where he lived. Though there is a formal museum now in Suma, this seems farther than a 30-minute bike ride from Shukugawa. Similarly, there seems to be a relatively new aquarium in the harbor as well as the Kobe Maritime Museum, there doesn’t seem to be an aquarium in Kobe currently that matches this description, though it is certainly likely that there was one at the time of Murakami’s childhood. 

    Lastly, though this connection is less about location, I also noticed the connection in “Where I’m Likely to Find It” and Murakami’s real life. In “Where I’m Likely to Find It,” the woman’s father-in-law, a Buddhist priest, is killed when he gets drunk and falls asleep on a rainy night on the streetcar tracks. This mirrors closely to how Murakami describes his paternal grandfather’s death in “Abandoning a Cat,” which is also by a train while crossing the tracks of the Keishin Line, which connects Kyoto (Misasagi) and Otsu. 

Sarah 

Being "in transit" in Drive My Car

 Since reading “Drive My Car,” I’ve been thinking about how the story mostly takes place in a car. This is somewhat expected/obvious because of the title but I think it is important to think about why Murakami chose this as a setting. I think that the characters physically being in transit allows Murakami to explore ideas of transience in regards to identity and relationships. In a way, the continued movement of the car allows for Murakami to show movement and change in the two main characters, Kafuku and Misaki. When Oba tells Kafuku about his new driver he says that Misaki is “brusque” and “shoots from the hip when she talks, which isn’t often” (Murakami 5). This assessment of her personality holds up in the first interaction between the two characters. Misaki is defiant and short with Kafuku. Yet once the two characters are in the car and driving, Kafuku asks Misaki a series of questions and she opens up slightly. The car, though moving, becomes the stable foundation of their relationship. In positioning both characters in the car, Murakami seems to be saying that both characters are on a similar journey, both literally and metaphorically. As Misaki shuttles Kafuku to and from the theater the two begin to understand each other more and more and Kafuku opens up about his wife and his friendship with his wife’s old lover. Change in their relationship is evident when Misaki makes Kafuku laugh, after which she says “that’s the first time I’ve seen you laugh” (Murakami 36). Misaki is no longer the defiant and untrusting person she was at the beginning of the text and Kafuku is less somber and brooding. Murakami doesn’t let the reader forget that the two characters are in the car because of his frequent descriptions of Misaki’s driving, the traffic, and the location of the car. This insistence seems to point to how important the aspect of driving, and of movement, is to the themes and meaning of the story. One can also see a sense of transience or instability to Kafuku’s personal identity, especially in regard to his affiliation with Uncle Vanya, the role he is playing during the story. Misaki drives him to the theater, where he is Uncle Vanya, and to his house, where he is presumably himself. Yet in the car he is both of these people. He practices his lines and assumes the character from the play but also is very much himself, as he tells Misaki intimate details about his life. This seems to be another way that the car becomes a space of transience or mobility within the text.

Maggie 

Parallel between Chekhov and Murakami

By Angelina Not (Lina)

After our presentation on Anton Chekhov, I felt compelled to analyze more about how he may have influenced Murakami’s writing further than just mentions of Uncle Vanya. I think more than anything these two authors had one big thing in common, analyzing the changes of modernization their countries have undergone in respective ways. In the case of Chekov, despite being known mostly for his fiction, one of his most famous works is one that was published as a non-fiction and non-literature -- Sakhalin Island. Specifically in his work, Chekov wanted to journalize his almost half a year long endeavors to publicize the living conditions of the Russian penal colony on the island. In the work he mentioned that the island was almost like “hell” on earth and noted many instances of torture and forced prostitution. His travels made him angry and he pushed that the Russian government had to install more humane treatment of the people. The critique was stemming from an even larger critique of the exile system that formed due to the successful bureaucratic reform of the Russian Empire at the time. 

In my mind, the specific work aligned greatly with how Murakami spoke of the dark side of colonization/modernization in the Wild Sheep Chase -- framing the sheep as almost the symbol of that colonization. The part that I think drew a parallel to Chekov the most was in Murakami’s discussion of the Ainu people as the Sakhalin island that is in fact sandwiched between Russia and Japan, and is the home to indigenous people including the Ainu. In the passage I noticed that the Ainu youth was given a name, although it was only translated from the Ainu to Japanese, he was one of the few characters that was given a name besides Kipper. However, upon assimilating into the Japanese culture Murakami explains how the Ainu youth loses his name, almost as if drawing a  connection to how colonization strips individuals of their identity. 

Whether it be escape from Russia’s bureaucratic modernization in the 19th century or the escape from the colonization and highly collectivist aspect of Japan, these two authors in their own ways comment on the impossible escape from these changes in their countries at the time.

          

Surrealism as an Escape

     When comparing a Wild Sheep Chase to the Long Goodbye,  one of their biggest differences is Murakami's surrealism and use of magical realism. While the Long Goodbye is rooted entirely in the realm of conventional reality, Murakami chooses to make his own realm, different from conventional reality. This has become a defining characteristic of Murakami's style, and one of many reasons why he is so beloved. To many, reading is a way of escaping reality, transporting oneself away from the real world. What makes Murakami especially appealing is that his work is still tethered to the real world. It has one foot in the real world, and one in the other world, and in some stories, such as Sputnik Sweetheart, it is that binary. 

    In an interview with the Guardian, Murakami elaborates on this, expanding it to his global popularity: “I was so popular in the 1990s in Russia, at the time they were changing from the Soviet Union – there was big confusion, and people in confusion like my books...In Germany, when the Berlin Wall fell down, there was confusion – and people liked my books.” In times of distress, people gravitate away from the harshness and difficulty of reality by escaping to a new, fictional world. Murakami's worlds are not too far; they're far enough to serve as an escape, but not as far as to feel lost.

    I was thinking about how I got into Murakami myself. Like most teenagers, I went through a phase where I didn't read much for pleasure. I always said that assigned readings in high school had killed my once fervent love for reading. In college, I committed myself to reading again. I was discovering more and more who I really was, and wanted to return to my past hobbies while still looking ahead. When I started reading again, I gravitated towards more realistic books, as I felt that fantasy had no application in my life. However, through Milan Kundera, I discovered what I'd now (maybe?) call postmoderism, and through some internet list, I found Murakami. His books appealed to me as I navigated the inherently confusing and stressful world of being a teenager. When I introduced Murakami to my friends or discovered friends who also knew him, we all bonded over how his works were so relatable, so good at displaying the truths of real life while suspending real life at the same time.

    In that same interview, Murakami says that "the reader and I have a secret meeting place underground, a secret place in the subconscious," and I think that describes it best. His appeal, both universally and personally, is understood as a mysterious sense of reality. In times of confusion, people gravitate towards Murakami's more polished and friendly confusion. He connects us to the parts of us that we cannot see nor understand. 

 

John

Murakami's 5 Favorite Books

     While we have been reading several of Murakami's works along with other works that he was inspired by, I have always wondered how he would rank his favorites books. After all, he is a total avid reader. While I was doing research for my presentation on Murakami recently, I was looking up recent news about Murakami and found several articles talking about Murakami's five favorite books. Some of them don't surprise me, but some of them I have never heard before.

    Without any surprise, one of his favorite books is The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. After reading both The Long Goodbye and A Wild Sheep Chase, the influence from Chandler is undeniable. Murakami says that Philip Marlow is a fantasy in the eyes of Chandler, but he is real in the eyes of Murakami. He said himself that he has read The Long Goodbye five or six times because he like's Chandler's writing style so much. It was an amazing experience for me to read both Chandler and Murakami's books at the same time and be able to see the similarities and difference between two great novelists.

    Another one of Murakami's favorite books is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like many, many other people, this is also one of my favorite books. Murakami thinks that he wouldn't be writing that kind of literature he is today if it wasn't for Fitzgerald's novel. He would choose The Great Gatsby as the book that means the most to him. From our discussion in class on Friday, we read Drive My Car and talked about the influence and similarities with The Great Gatsby. For example, both works feature a yellow car. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby drives flashy yellow Rolls-Royce to show off his wealth and catch the attention of Daisy. But in Drive My Car, Kafuku drives and rides a Saab 900 Convertible which is not as nice as a Rolls-Royce. We only know that Gatsby drives a yellow Rolls-Royce, but Murakami always supplies manufacturing details of his characters' cars which is an important detail I didn't know till recently. The attention to detail here is fascinating. I believe this has something to do with the Japanese culture as well because Japanese society cares about details. When talking about certain people on the news, the ages of those people will always be revealed. In the US, that is not common at all.

    Moving on, Murakami also names The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger as one of his favorite books. Murakami explains how when he was young, he enjoyed dark and disturbing stories, so it was the perfect book for him when he was seventeen. He remember it as being funny, but it was dark and strong. In this class, we read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger. In my opinion, I thought this short story was incredibly disturbing with the pedophilia I was getting from the story. I don't think this is my type of genre, but I can see how Murakami was influenced by Salinger. In the excerpts I read of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, The Zoo Attack and Sputnik Sweetheart, I felt strong themes of darkness in the stories that disturbed me quite a bit. It is interesting to read different Murakami stories as the themes can change so much.

    The last two of his favorite books are The Castle by Franz Kafka and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Murakami read The Castle when he was 15 and remembered it being an incredible book that gave him tremendous shock. The book felt so real and unreal to him that his heart felt like it was torn into two. It is said that Murakami's The End of the World narrative has much in common with The Castle. I look forward to reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in the upcoming week. Next, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of the great novels Murakami read and he believes that Dostoevsky kept getting bigger and greater with his writing as he wrote The Brothers Karamazov in his late fifties. Many readers have said that 1Q84 is Murakami's version of The Brothers Karamazov as it is a book filled with anger and violence. I have yet to read 1Q84, but it is on my reading wishlist.

    It is amazing to see how influenced Murakami can get from his favorite authors and books. It is easy to spot similarities in the writings, yet Murakami still has his own flare in his writing. I definitely think I will be reading more of Murakami's writings outside of this class and hopefully all his favorite books too.

Links: https://lithub.com/here-are-haruki-murakamis-five-favorite-books/

Sonia

Possible Inspiration: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    by Nobel

    Near the end of his non-fiction essay "Abandoning a Cat," Haruki Murakami writes that each raindrop has "its own emotions, its own history, its own duty to carry that history," likening the raindrop's duty to his own responsibility of telling his father's (and his nation's) history (11). The phrase "carry that history" paired with the wartime context suggests a link between Murakami's essay and Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried, a seminal work chronicling O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam War. Straddling the line between autobiography and fiction, The Things They Carried questions the boundary between truth and lie, exploring themes such as American colonialism, masculinity, memory, trauma, and storytelling. These themes crop up repeatedly in Murakami's works as well, albeit through a Japanese rather than American lens. Murakami actually translated The Things They Carried into Japanese, confirming that he knows the work and probably takes inspiration from how O'Brien tackles these issues. "Abandoning a Cat" seems particularly rife with comparisons to O'Brien's novel, particularly in the emphasis on storytelling, history, and war, but Murakami's other works also echo with O'Brien's influence.

    "Abandoning a Cat" centers around Murakami's memories of his father, with memory playing an important role throughout the essay. "Of course I have a lot of memories of my father," the essay begins, and Murakami clarifies that "the memories that remain most vividly in my mind[...] involve more ordinary events" (1). Murakami's memories of his father are mostly mundane, but it is their mundanity that gives them sincerity and importance. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien places similar emphasis on mundane memories, writing that the "war wasn't all terror and violence[...] I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark" (20). Both texts value these seemingly insignificant remembrances, with Murakami describing the incident with the cat in much more detail than his reunion on his father's deathbed, which a traditional autobiographical work would deem 'more important'. O'Brien explains that "I write about these [memories], and remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening" (21). Perhaps this quote sheds more light on "Abandoning a Cat," with Murakami writing about his father to re-experience him, to let him live on in the work. "The thing about remembering is that you don't forget," O'Brien writes; Murakami agrees, the cat's return symbolizing the inability to abandon the past, with Murakami's father unable to abandon his wartime trauma and Murakami unable to abandon his father (22). 

    Both works also mediate on storytelling and truth. Murakami wonders why his father, usually reticent about the war, tells Murakami about a Chinese soldier's beheading, contemplating that "he must have felt a compelling need to relate the story to his son[...] even if this meant it would remain an open wound" (6). Storytelling becomes a need for Murakami's father (and possibly Murakami himself) even when the stories hurt, and his haikus show that this need for artistic creation never abates. O'Brien dives deeper into what stories can do: "a story[...] make[s] the dead talk" (149). O'Brien uses stories to resurrect the dead, even when they never really existed; nothing in The Things They Carried actually happened, and yet sometimes "story-truth is truer[...] than happening-truth" (115). Murakami's father's story about the Chinese soldier may be his way to 'make the dead talk', giving the Chinese soldier "respect" (6). In the same vein, "Abandoning a Cat" may be Murakami's way to make his father talk, to understand him in a way he never did alive. O'Brien's quote may also give insight into A Wild Sheep Chase, where the dead literally come back to life, and the truth and fiction get blurred in the other world. Sometimes the story truth is truer than the truth, and Murakami implies that whether or not the supernatural events in A Wild Sheep Chase actually happened, the effect on Boku is still real, still true. 

    "I'm skimming across the surface of my own history," O'Brien writes, "and when I[...] come down[...] I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life through a story" (158). "Com[ing] down" harkens to the last line in "Abandoning a Cat," where Murakami thinks about "how very difficult it is to climb straight down to the ground" (11). To 'come down' might represent going back to reality, getting your feet back on the ground. For O'Brien, though, coming back to reality does not stop storytelling; instead, he shows how reality is constructed through story, and how story, and history, can save lives. Reading Murakami's essay through this lens, "Abandoning a Cat" may represent an attempt to revive his father's and nation's history, to resurrect dead parents, kittens, soldiers, and memories. 

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried: https://lessonbank.kyae.ky.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TTTC_Full_Text.pdf

The Unreality of Murakami’s Characters

In the short stories I kept reading, I found a lot of Murakami’s characters with "unreality". To be precise, these characters all have a more common feature, that is, they are disconnected from some parts of reality. In Driving My Car, the character Kafuku is similar to most of Murakami's characters or protagonists. His wife died and she slept with other men before she died. In Dance Dance Dance, the protagonist and his wife are divorced. In Killing Commendatore, the protagonist and his wife are also divorced. The wives of these men all said similar things to them. “Let's not go on living any longer." Whether their wives died or left, they all quietly withdrew from the lives of these men at a certain point in time. From this perspective, I think is a theme that Murakami wants people to think about, "unreality and life". The wife left these characters, divorced or died, and then went to find a lover, all these things made these characters disconnected from reality. This unsatisfactory nature of life allows the Murakami to embody their unreality to the fullest. Kafuku reminds me of Murakami's Gotanda in Dance Dance Dance, they are both actors, they are all disconnected from the real world. To a certain extent, his wife's death leaves Kafuku disconnected with the reality, while Gotanda completely lost contact with the world in the form of suicide. Interestingly, Gotanda's method of suicide was to drive a car into the sea, and Kafuku happened to be sitting in the car. It's just that he had his driver's license revoked for a drinking crash and was sitting in Misaki's car. Was it somehow Misaki pulling him back to reality? While unlike other protagonists who want to return to reality by having sex with different girls, Misaki, being the same “unreality” girl, pulls him back into the real world while resonating with Kafuku. Like Kafuku's conversation with Misaki. ““You loved being someone other than yourself?” “Yes, as long as I knew I could go back.” “Did you ever not want to go back?” “There's no other place to go back to, is there?” ” (Murakami, 20). From these conversations, Kafuku's suicidal precursors can be felt, and he wants to cut himself off from the world. In the end of the story, Misaki pulled Kafuku back. ““To me, It's a kind of sickness. Thinking about it doesn't do much good. The way my father walked out on my mother and me, my mother's constant abuse — I blame the sickness for those things. There's no logic involved . All I can do is accept what they did and try to get on with my life.” “So then we're all actors.” “Yes, I think that's true. To a point, anyway.” ”(Murakami, 40 ). In a sense, I think what Murakami is alluding to is depressed people, and they need to accpet what happened and accept themselves. Then they need to try to keep going with life. I think that's the “unreality” that Murakami wants us to think about in terms of his characters.

Junze Shan (Andrew)

Murakami's Feline Fascination

 https://www.thegreatcat.org/cats-20th-century-cats-literature-haruki-murakami/

This article, written by LA Vocelle, does a really nice job collating a number of references to cats in Murakami's writings, as well as how cats have influenced him in his life. I'd highly suggest reading the whole thing, but I'll talk about a couple parts I found particularly interesting here.

This first bit is quick, but I think it's a fun little piece of real-life experience that inspired a bit in A Wild Sheep Chase. The article mentions an essay called "Choju Neko no Himistsu" which Murakami wrote about going on a trip. Before going, he asked a high ranking official at a publishing company to take care of his cat while he was gone. In exchange, he said he'd write a great novel for the company (which turned out to be Norwegian Wood). I see this little interaction as being a possible inspiration for the part in A Wild Sheep Chase when he asks the secretary to look after Kipper while he searches for the sheep. The idea of asking a very powerful person to perform a rather mundane task while embarking on a quest that could result in a great deal of success for said powerful person seems like a nice template which Murakami lifted from his own life.

When Murakami lost his cat, Kirin, he viewed it as losing an integral part of his family: "After Kirin was carried off...my house quickly started to feel empty, and neither me, nor my wife, nor Muse [another of Murakami's cats] could settle down. Family...is a livng thing that has a certain balance, and when one corner of it falls apart, it doesn't take long before everything subtly breaks down". I feel that this information helps to illuminate "Abandoning a Cat" to an extent. I see the two cats as familial parallels between Murakami's father and himself. The old cat, abandoned at the beach, was set to face a great deal of danger, yet miraculously made it back home to live out its days in domesticity. In a similar fashion, Murakami's father was drafted into the army, risking death by going to war, yet he somehow made it home and lived out his days until disease took him. Murakami himself likely parallels the younger cat; I see Murakami writing this as someone who still sees himself as young and unsure of the future. This cat's fate is unknown. Whether it lived, died, wandered off, had a new life with another family, or became a stray is uncertain. Murakami may see his whole life ahead of him and fears he may not get as lucky as that old cat that made its way home despite the odds. This ambiguity might leave him afraid; I think he writes about the cat's disappearance as a way to symbolically represent his fears and anxieties for the future.

Bruce

Traveling in Murakami's The Wild Sheep Chase

The act of traveling seems to hold significance for Murakami, and he has also published many self-reflective accounts of his travels. I found it interesting that since Murakami himself finds traveling to be a transformative experience, he puts his protagonist into similar scenarios, and is inspired to include the names, landscapes, and atmospheres he uncovered on his trips in his novels.  In The Wild Sheep Chase, the protagonist has to travel from Tokyo to rural Hokkaido, and the process of putting himself in an unfamiliar environment allows him to delve deeper into his consciousness.

For example, when boku is traveling back to his hometown at the beginning, he says, “Boarding a long-distance train without any luggage gave me a feeling of exhilaration. It was as if while out taking a leisurely stroll, I was suddenly like a dive-bomber caught in a space-time warp. In which there is nothing: no dentist’s appointments, no pending issues in desk drawers, no inextricably complicated human involvements, no favors demanded. I’d left that behind, temporarily. All I had with me were my tennis shoes with their misshapen rubber soles. They held fast to my feet like vague memories of another space-time.” He would also have a recurring dream of catching a train at night. 

He later says,  “I don’t know how to put it, but I just can’t get it through my head that here and now is really here and now. Or that I am really me. It doesn’t quite hit home. It’s always been this way. Only much later on does it ever come together. For the last ten years, it’s been like this” (Chapter 22).  

It seems like boku is so emotionally disconnected from his life, that he has lost that grounded sense of reality of time and space, and in actuality craves to cut off any of his loose ties to the world and exist simply in a void. It could be said that he mentally is always on a train to somewhere else when he is at home.

Once they get to Hokkaido, his girlfriend says, “I feel like something’s out of place”, and he replies, “That’s what it’s like, coming to a new city. Your body can’t quite get used to it.’”(Chapter 25). 

From my interpretation, it seems that in urban Tokyo the protagonist had entered into a state of complacency and disconnect, and only by traveling to a new, unfamiliar place, where he becomes an attentive observer of the life around him, is he able to break free and have a transformation in his consciousness. For example, near the end of the novel he displays an unprecedented episode of rage by breaking the Rat’s guitar, and in the epilogue he says, “I sat down on the last fifty yards of beach, and I cried. I never cried so much in my life.”  He goes from having a colorless existence, to seeing everything in vivid detail, as can be seen with his descriptions throughout the novel. He transfers the emotional displacement he feels within himself to be reflected in his physical displacement, and through that he is able to finally feel present.

Alessandra Leone

Murakami's Parody and the Breaking of Walls of Cross-Cultural Understanding

Upon reading more of Murakami's works, I believe in my own opinion that he does a wonderful job providing a parody to other works he may have seen in films or other literary works at some point in his life. When we mention parody in class, I don't see it as something negative or as making a mockery of the work he has been exposed to, but more so as a tribute to it. He has a skill in picking apart other people's works and creatively composing something in his own manner that is completely unique to who he is as a writer. He creates a parody of his own writing in some of his works as well. For example, we see a Sheep Man and a Sheep Professor appear in both "Sydney Green Street" and "A Wild Sheep Chase". Both of the protagonists are also on a quest to find something, Boku and his girlfriend go on a search for the Rat in "A Wild Sheep Chase", while Boku and "Charlie" go on a search for the Sheep Man's missing ear in "Sydney Green Street". 

Something that interests me about this parody is whether they are relative to one another as being within a same universal setting or if it is simply just parody of his work combined with bits and pieces from other works. Such as the article we looked at about the detective fiction genre being a junkyard and authors salvaging pieces from this junkyard to create unique innovations from their own creativity. On a side note from that same article, I agree on the fact that the authors do take bits and pieces and create a parody of them in their work, but I disagree with the fact that it can never be improved upon. A writer's writing can always be improved upon, and much like what we have heard from being in class Murakami has stated, he always sets a benchmark for himself to do something different and/or better in each of his works. Following this evidence and the argument I am attempting to make, I feel that the detective fiction genre can be improved upon and it is not just simply the same elements over and over in every work of writing such that it cannot be improved upon.

Coming back to the topic of parody, I believe we do see some elements of other writers such as Raymond Chandler, Edgar Allen Poe, and more in Murakami's works. We see the elements of detail, mystery, and anxiety reflected from "William Wilson" in "The Mirror", in which Murakami capitalizes on Edgar Allen Poe's attention to detail and ability to create an overall uncomfortable and anxiety-filling environment whilst giving it his own twist with a sense of Japanese culture. We see elements from "The Long Goodbye" in "A Wild Sheep Chase" in which he parodies Marlowe with Boku, and various other details, such as counting, alcoholism, smoking, description of people and the environment surrounding the protagonist. All of these parodies are tributes to the works he has been exposed to while maintaining his uniqueness as a writer. Even when his style of writing may parody other people's style of writing, he always manages to put a twist on it that definitively marks it as his own, such as the inclusion of Japanese culture. 

"Yes, that's quite true. And in that sense there probably is a non-nationality about it, but it's not as though I am after a sense of non-nationality. If that were really what I was after, I think maybe I would have set my novels in America. It would be easy if I were really to have them take place in New York or San Francisco. But, you see, what I wanted was first to depict Japanese society through that aspect of it that could just as well take place in New York or San Francisco. You might call it the Japanese nature that remains only after you have thrown out, one after another, all those parts that are altogether too "Japanese." That is what I really want to express.

I think my novels will tend more and more in that direction from now on. In that sense, but in a very different sense from Mishima, I am after something Japanese. Why? Because, after all, I am a Japanese author writing fiction in Japanese. Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don't think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside. I think that is what will increasingly define my identity as a writer. By the way, do you know there is no equivalent in Japanese for the English word "identity"? That's why when we want to talk about identity we have to use the English word." (Murakami, Roll Over Basho)

This sets his identity as a writer and I believe that this is greatly important to the cultural exposure for those that read works by Murakami. For a person who has never been exposed to Japanese culture, this is a great way to learn and become aware of Japanese customs and society that is exhibited in this cross-cultural exposition of writing that Murakami presents. He can create this view of Japanese culture from the outside, which gives an outsider better understanding and improves their awareness on the culture of Japan. Perhaps, the same can be said for those inside of Japan as well. His work generalizes and parodies western works as well, which may give those inside of Japan a window to his ideas about the culture in Western civilization. This in totality, I believe, establishes a breaking of walls and pushes forth a cross-cultural understanding and awareness for both people outside towards the Japanese culture and inside of Japan towards the Western culture.

~ Jonathon Little

Western Elements in Haruki Murakami's Novels

Whether it's in Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase or one of his other novels. I have found that Murakami uses a lot of elements of Western culture. This has a lot to do with Murakami reading a lot of Western literature in high school. I think the more interesting point is that Murakami often describes some car culture. This kind of car culture I think is most affected by The Long Goodbye from Chandler. At the beginning of The Long Goodbye, Chandler describes a scene of Rolls Royce Silver Wraith. Towards the end of the first chapter, he also writes "By the time he brought my Olds over I felt as if I was holding up a sack of lead" (Chandler, 12). Olds (Oldsmobile) is also a model of a famous American manufacturer of automobiles. Chapter 3 also describes "He drove me in a rust-colored Jupiter-Jowett with a flimsy canvas rain top under which there was only just room for the two of us" (Chandler, 39). Depicted here is Jowett Cars, a car brand owned by a British car manufacturing company, although the company closed in 1954. "There was a big Packard parked next to me" is also described in Chapter 5 (Chandler, 76). The Packard was a popular luxury car in the mid-20th century in the United States. 

Murakami also introduced car culture into his novels. For example, in Chapter 9 of A Wild Sheep Chase, he mentions his friend’s 1950 model Volkswagen as the driver picks him up. In the first chapter of the novel Killing Commendatore, he mentions the Toyota Corolla, followed by Peugeot and Menshiki's Jaguar. The car is integrated into the life of Murakami's characters, and many scenes of the protagonist looking at the scenery and thinking are also depicted through the car. These have become Murakami's unique style of writing. On the other hand, automobiles also imply social development, and Murakami also secretly depicts the background of Japanese society and Japanese economic scene from this aspect. 

On the other hand, Murakami also wrote a lot of coffee-related scenes in A Wild Sheep Chase. In the first chapter, he describes the cafe that the protagonist frequented in the autumn of 1970. He drank diluted coffee in the afternoon. In the second chapter, he described the scene of entering the kitchen in the morning to grind coffee beans and make coffee. Such coffee-related scenarios are also abundant in Norwegian Wood and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Especially the scenes when characters go to a cafe for coffee in the afternoon and grind coffee beans at home to make coffee in the morning. In Murakami's characters, coffee has become an integral part of their lives. For example, drinking coffee every morning, drinking coffee in a cafe in the afternoon, and using coffee instead of meals, etc. Coffee is an important element in Western culture, and Murakami's coffee shop and bar since 1974 reflects his integration into Western culture. The experience of working in a coffee shop is also imprinted in his novels, becoming every character in his writings.

Junze Shan (Andrew)

"She": Did we Forget or Were We Supposed To?

One of the most interesting selective usages of names in A Wild Sheep Chase was the way the narrator and other characters would refer to or regard Boku's girlfriend. After arriving in the "other world", Sapporo, the world of Boku begins to significantly change. Besides larger, more obvious changes such as the Sheep Man/Professor, this "other world" takes Boku's knowledge, experience, and relationships that he came into this new world with and distorts them. This effect is achieved through textual reference to Boku's girlfriend leading up to her disappearance.

One of Murakami's writing techniques that contribute to this effect is underspecifying dialogue, used extensively in the final part of the book. Although it is usually clear whose lines are whose, it can get confusing to sort through in longer exchanges. This is another way in which Murakami is able to pose a series of questions about names, personhood, and uniqueness, at the centerfold of which is: what is the purpose of a name?

From this passage, it seems that Murakami's answer is that names are simply used to keep track of the different people in your life. They have a purpose but it is not as sentimental or emotional as one might expect. The subtle logical explanation of names, supported by the actions of the driver, in the scene up the mountain is juxtaposed on the world where logic seems to not matter, or there seems to be a new set of rules. 

In the "other world", when she is mentioned, Boku's girlfriend is almost exclusively referred to as "she." While reading this last part of the book, even though there is only one female character in these scenes, I had to keep remembering who this "she" was. Even though it is a human pronoun, continually referring to her as "she" contributed to her dehumanization by removing her name.

When "she" is finally referred to as "my girlfriend" when she questions the caretaker, "What do sheep do over the winter?" (Murakami 168), the caretaker "turned around and gazed at her, practically drinking in her face, as if he hadn't noticed her before" (168). It is easy to write off Murakami's scenes as bizarre or reality-bending and leave it at that. The scene confirmed my suspicions that something was going on with the way these characters were interacting with the girlfriend. The caretaker and Boku are given normal dialogue (relative to the other world) and only the girlfriend is relegated to this "other" status. The driver's reaction corroborated my reaction that until she speaks, Boku's girlfriend is being dehumanized through the removal of her name and that all the uses of empty dialogue or "she" contribute to this effect, which is not complete until she disappears.

It's also worth noting that "my girlfriend" isn't much of a name, either, but it seems to satisfy the purpose of uniquely referring to her enough that it does not cause her to decay until it is taken one step further and she is totally denied individual personhood. Here, Murakami is implying that being a person is being treated like a person. This logical progression could also be used to substantiate the claim that the Sheep Man is a man and a sheep simply because that is what he is called, so it must be; the same goes for the Sheep Professor

Understanding the effect of names and pronouns in this passage builds up to the denouement of the book in which her depersonalization is complete and she disappears in central to understanding the commentary Murakami is building in this book. 

Timothy Obiso

Post #1

Before this class I never read any Murakami books, I had only started reading Kafka on the Shore. I was only like 90 pages in though so I felt like I couldn’t really get a sense of his writing yet. However, I became a little knowledgeable about Murakami because my roommate would always tell me about the Murakami books he’d read and what he thought. After reading a Wild Sheep Chase and other short stories, I realize he was right in that Murakami uses suicide a lot. The character who commits the suicide, is usually important to the main character. Another thing I noticed was that the main characters seem to go in and out of reality and into a parallel world. In a Wild Sheep chase, the character seemed to leave reality and go into some sort of parallel reality with the sheep man. In the short story The Mirror the guard found no trace of the mirror the next morning, only his cigarette bud, maybe he was in a parallel reality when the mirror appeared. Back to a Wild Sheep Chase, we later realized that the Rat was dead from a suicide, I was shocked none the less but I also saw it coming. I kept Murakami’s constant use of suicide in the back of my mind so I kind of guessed that the Rat was already dead when Bako looked through the Rat’s things and realized he had been gone for about a week. I also realized the Rat was the Sheep as soon as Baku said the sheep had similar hand gestures to the Rat. I instantly thought Oh no he definitely is dead and he’s the sheep.  Mirrors also seem to be a big thing, Bako spent a considerable time cleaning the mirror and in the other short story we read about the night guard also had an interesting interaction with a mirror. I thought the usage of mirrors was interesting because of what they represent. For one, many have superstitions when it comes to mirrors, some believe they are portals to different realms. I noticed The Sheep Man appeared for the first time the day after Baku spent energy cleaning the mirror. Perhaps that’s why Baku didn’t see the Sheep’s (Rat’s) reflection when he was on the couch because he could only see the Sheep Man whenever he moved to this parallel reality. Another reason I thought It was interesting because mirrors represent inner reflection. I noticed the main characters are usually struggling with some sort of personal issues or dilemmas. The main characters are usually ‘Mr. Struggles’ in that they are kind of just moving through life, they’re not happy or sad they are just existing. In a job they don’t really care about, in relationships they seem emotionally unavailable for etc. In my opinion, generally people who would benefit from inner reflection.

Christy 

Sheep and Japanese Imperialism

 As we have discussed, there are many references to Japanese Imperialism within A Wild Sheep’s Chase. The two characters who can be identified as antagonists of the story, the magic sheep and the boss, are both closely related to Japanese Imperialism. The boss’s connection to imperialism is more obvious, he was a war criminal and became possessed by the sheep in Manchuria, during Japan’s colonial expansion. Sheep however have a much more covert connection to Japanese Imperialism, but looking deeper into the relationship between sheep, nature, and other characters in the novel, the magic sheep can be seen as a metaphor for Japanese Imperialism.

Throughout the novel we can see many characters whose lives are ruined due to their proximity to sheep. Firstly we see our narrator, who’s whole life is turned upside down by a photograph of a sheep. Due to this mysterious sheep boss Boku has to give up his job and advertising company, and his quest ultimately removes his girlfriend and her magical ears from his life.

Later in the novel we meet the sheep professor, whose work with developing sheep to assist in a Japanese war effort in Russia, causes a total dissolution of his career. After he is possessed by the sheep in Manchuria his entire reputable career is ruined. Later we also see the sheep professor develop a sheep farm in Hokkaido only for his sheep to be repurposed to again assist Japan’s imperial conquests. The professor now lives an almost half life, locked away in a hotel room, still obsessed with sheep.

Later we also hear the story of the Ainu man that helped the Japanese settlers establish the town of Junitaki. As his story progresses we see him abandon his traditional Ainu life, take a Japanese name and wife, and start a family. As his story continues we find that his son must leave to fight in the Russo-Japanese war where he is killed, and the Ainu man withers away and dies with his sheep.

Lastly we have the example of The Rat/The Sheep Man. The sheep man explicitly states in the novel that he has come all the way out to Hokkaido to avoid fighting in war. The Rat also describes how he killed himself to prevent himself from being overtaken by the sheep’s will. This is the most explicit connection that can be interpreted that the magic sheep represents war and Japanese Imperialism. 

This degradation of people’s lives after being associated with sheep and Japanese Imperialism strikes me as a metaphor for the effect of Japanese colonialism on Japan and Japanese society. It then can be interpreted that the magic sheep is a representation of these ideals and how they can corrupt people and ruin their lives. I think sheep are also a bigger metaphor for Japanese people in general. Japan is known to be a more homogenous society. Their fervent wartime militarism, where Japanese soldiers put the goals of Japanese imperialism and war above even their own lives, is explored in many Murakami novels. Therefore I think the sheep are a metaphor for Japanese society as a whole, and their sheep-like following of the Japanese government and their imperialist ideals.

Ken Rudolph

Murakami and the Economics of Reading

In Suter’s discussion of Murakami, he highlights something I find very fascinating: Murakami’s existence as both a writer and a businessperson. Murakami has referenced and drawn upon the Ellery Queeny novels, where the protagonists urge the readers to figure out the answers to the mysteries before the book is over. Apparently, this is the type of book Murakami would ultimately like to write, but with a particular twist – something that challenges the reader to figure out the mystery, but never fully reveals it, leaving the reader to determine whether or not they were really correct. This type of book, Murakami postulates, would be a living book, which would contain all the tension of a mystery with none of the condescension of being handed an answer. But, claims Murakami, such a book would not sell. Readers, he says, expect certain things out of novels, and one of those things is an ending.

Reading this got me thinking about the nature of business and its relation to art. As a writer, Murakami seems to want to do challenging, interesting things. He clearly sees himself as someone with great power and influence over his readers, and I’m sure creating such a living story, something that can breathe on its own outside of the influence of authorial intent, is an attractive prospect. But publishing is a business, and sometimes I think readers do not want to be challenged. And if readers do not want to be challenged, then interesting, challenging books will not be as frequently published. I can’t help but worry about that.

Murakami novels already do break some of the molds of how stories are traditionally told. The surrealist and supernatural elements of his novels, the steadfast eschewal of proper nouns, the meandering plotlines that start and stop at their own leisure; these things are all loving rejections of the literary tropes found in the traditional heroic quests and detective journeys Murakami so often references. And in Murakami’s case, these departures are allowed by readers due in part to their trust in Murakami’s talents as a writer. But even Murakami himself frequently muses on what his books can and cannot do, what kind of ending would or would not be read, because there is a line past which consumers will not go. And if even Murakami cannot guide them there, who can?

I like to think that one piece of Murakami’s legacy will be moving readers one step closer to a place where the so-called living novel could be a commercial success. I hope his works can transition us away from the sort of greedy reading experience that comes with demanding the same easily digestible, familiar narratives we’ve always had. Maybe that’s too much responsibility for one man, I can’t say. But hey – if anyone’s up for it, don’t you think it would be him?

-Amanda

Wild Sheep Chase

 After finishing "The Long Goodbye" and "The Wild Sheep Chase" in full I have been thinking about the similarities between the two and a lot about "Heart of Darkness".  I think that while Murakami used a lot of literary techniques that Chandler used, the overarching journey is much more similar to Conrad's book. Murakami definitely references both of these two authors I think as a way of crediting them for the inspiration behind his writings. 

Like Chandler, Murakami pieces together his own short stories to make the longer novel as we discussed in class. He also uses a similar style of character description. There is a lot of focus on physical details such as facial features, bodies, clothes, jewelry, and more. They both use these descriptions to show an image that can be immediately conjured based on their physical appearance. This stood out to me as it is quite an almost outdated technique based on stereotypes that Chandler often employs. Murakami seems like he is using a more modern version of this technique however I think this can be due to the homogeneity of all of the characters being Japanese. Hints of the stereotypes can still be seen in the way Murakami describes women and the Ainu guide. This is in particular strong for Boku's girlfriend who is often reduced to nothing but her ears as a synecdoche. The other thing that Murakami employs that I felt was strongly reminiscent of Chandler is the narrative voice of Marlowe and Boku. However, I do not see these characters themselves as similar, just the way that they narrate. Marlowe is a very physical character who engages in fights in a typical hard-boiled detective fashion while Boku does not. In this way, Boku is almost more similar to the classic detectives from the golden age such as Holmes or Poirot. Their narrations are similar in that the interlacing of stream of consciousness, descriptions, and dialogue follow very similar patterns. I feel that if you were to put Marlowe into a Wild Sheep Chase, he would engage in similar conversations with the characters he interacts with, think of similar logical next steps, and draw similar conclusions. Overall, they are both very obviously from a male point of view and made for the male audience. 

There are so many similarities between the journey in "Heart of Darkness" and "The Wild Sheep Chase". (I wasn't in class so I'm not sure if this was already discussed). It felt almost like Murakami took a few of the concepts in stories he already had and looked for a template to put it in and landed on "Heart of Darkness". This is especially prominent in the foreign land with hints of enigmatic forces that bend the rules of time and space, and the metamorphosis of the lost friend. 

Celine Yuan

Murakami vs. his influences

 While it's very clear that Murakami takes inspiration from a number of different authors and novels (most of which being Western), there's an element to his works that seem to stand out to the works he's been influenced by. Lots of similarities can be seen between Murakami's Boku and Chandler's Marlowe, varying from their internal monologues are written to aspects of their personalities: they both linger on meditative, repetitive activities that most authors choose to leave out of their descriptions in action novels; they are both driven by their own unique moral code that clearly contrasts with the characters around them; they both seek answers and justice for the sake of doing the right thing; etc. Murakami himself has specifically stated that he read and was influenced by Raymond Chandler. Murakami's work is unapologetically influenced by Chandler.

There is a certain aspect of Murakami's works and his writing style that differentiates his works from Chandler's, and other influences. His works have their own unique voice, and are cohesive throughout his portfolio. In a word, I would sum up Murakami's writing as dreamlike, whether he delves into absurdity (severed whale penises, sheep-people, magically seductive ears, raining fish, talking cats) or dissociative states that bend time, space, and reality (stair landings, elevators, mirrors, the spirit world, abandoned pits in abandoned temples, living in a tv screen). Murakami is not afraid to take his readers into another world, a vague world that he doesn't always explain to us, where Chandler keeps his readers grounded in reality. Something in Murakami's prose uses descriptions and absurd dialogues to pull the reader away from grounded thought, and this something is almost exclusive to his works.

Hayao Miyazaki, another Japanese artist, is known to bring this dreamlike quality to his works. When asked why he devotes so much time and care into showing his characters in their mundane lives doing routine, mundane things, he says recognizes this particular aspect of his works.

I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.

"We have a word for that in Japanese," he said. "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."

Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry?

"I don't think it's like the pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb."

 Is this ma a uniquely Japanese concept? By adding ma to his works, is this how Murakami Japanifies the Western fiction he loves and is inspired by? Moments when he pauses the story to have Boku make a cup of coffee, or scrounge up all the leftovers in his fridge to make dinner, or admire the view of the mountains outside his home, suggest that it may be. However, Chandler uses moments like making a cup of coffee and making dinner in The Long Goodbye, but it seems to have the opposite effect that Murakami's use does. Chandler adds in his narrating protagonist's commentary, which cues the reader into the character and what's happening to him, while Murakami leaves space between his words to leave it open to interpretation. Perhaps that may be a reason why his protagonists are always nameless; the space where his name should be is ma.

Juliana