Murakami, Internal Animals, and Loss of Self

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/06/984447978/haruki-murakami-ive-had-all-sorts-of-strange-experiences-in-my-life

    In this interview, Murakami talks to NPR reporter Petra Mayer about First Person Singular.  Mayer asks him if he would discuss the origin of a name-stealing monkey within the work, and he tells her that this is not the animal's first appearance. He recounts a fifteen-year-old short story he wrote called "A Shinagawa Monkey", in which the titular primate lived in the sewers of Tokyo, emerging to steal the names of women. Eventually this monkey is banished to the mountains, but he continued to think about its fate for years to come:

That monkey has been on my mind a lot ever since. I was wondering what happened to him afterwards, so this time I set out to write a kind of sequel. For those fifteen years the monkey's been hidden away, inside me (a world deep down), waiting, I think, for the right moment to reappear.

It's not at all clear to me what that monkey represents. He certainly exists within me, though, that much is certain, and has been pestering me to write about him. (Murakami)

This quote got me thinking of the sheep from A Wild Sheep Chase. Within the story, the sheep takes up residence inside of the Boss and the Rat, and in so doing it attempts to supersede their will with its own. The Rat's final actions before becoming completely overshadowed by the sheep are to kill himself and destroy the sheep altogether. 

This monkey functions in a similar capacity to the sheep, in a sense. By taking names, it removes an integral part of each woman's personality. They quite literally lose their senses of self as a result of this animal, and the ultimate solution in the short story is to banish him to the mountains, where he will be unable to steal people's names any longer.

In both cases, the end result is that the selves of characters and the general population are better protected once these animals are dealt with. Loss of self is equated to misery and physical pain (at least with the sheep's ability to harm the brain of its host). To relate all of this back to Murakami, I believe he has been suffering an identity crisis. With this name-stealer supposedly taking up long-term residence within him, it is not unlikely that he feels his own name has been taken. With the monkey in control in a fashion similar to the sheep, he may be guiding the man to steal the names of those around him, or even those of his characters. Such a mentality might explain why many characters are defined only by their relationships to one another rather than with proper monikers. Perhaps wild animals like a monkey and sheep are the metaphors that Murakami chooses to represent loss of self because they do not have names unless a human decides to name them. As has been discussed before, Murakami does not always feel comfortable playing God by giving his characters names. Perhaps, in a sense, Murakami let this name-stealer in to alleviate this anxiety. Whenever he feels too much stress in defining others or himself, he can simply blame the anonymity on the monkey.

-Bruce