The Interpersonal collateral damage of Generational Trauma explored in Murakami’s writing

 In Murakami’s Abandoning a Cat, Murakami talks about his father’s experiences, specifically the war, and how his father’s experiences made him the person he was. And because of the person his father was, Murakami became the person he is. In simpler terms, we discussed generational trauma. We explored this theme of generational trauma specifically when we talked about the raindrops metaphor, “ ‘ We are just an unnamed drop in the vast numbers of raindrops that land on the vast earth. I feel like a drop of rainwater is a drop of rainwater. We have a history of a drop of rainwater, and we have a responsibility to inherit it.’” I personally thought it was a beautiful way to describe something negative. I wanted to talk about the generational trauma within Murakami’s writing. In Tony Takitani, his father’s life is and the trauma created from what he experienced in the aftermath of the war is described. His father had a near-death experience while he was imprisoned by the Chinese Army. Due to this experience, I felt as if Tony’s father couldn’t properly process things related to death and grievances.  I felt like the father’s reaction to Tony’s mother’s death wasn’t the best way for Tony to overcome the emotional needs of a child without a mother. It sounded like his father was having a difficult time dealing with his wife’s death in that he barely spoke about her and was so disconnected from his child that he didn’t even name Tony until after the major named him. It sounded like he lacked the ability to be an emotionally available parent. He was so consumed in his grief that he couldn’t care for his child. This is an abnormal reaction to a new born child. “Shozaburo Takitani had no idea how he was supposed to deal with this. He was a stranger to such emotions. He could not seem to grasp with any position what ‘death’ was all about, nor could he come any conclusion regarding what this particular death meant for him. All he could do was swallow it whole as an accomplished fact.” He even described how he wasn’t exactly sure how much his father loved his mother. When a child is raised by a distant parent who is emotionally unavailable the child also becomes emotionally unavailable. The child doesn’t learn how to navigate the world and their emotional needs. The story described how Tony was similar to his father in that he lived in solitude without making any real interpersonal relationships. Living alone without many friends and lacking intimate relationships. The one relationship he did finally invest in on a woman who later became his wife, also died. Like his father, Tony followed the news of becoming a widower in an abnormal way. He wanted to hire a woman to wear his wife’s clothes because he didn’t know how to internally deal with the reality of the external world. His wife died. The emotional wounds of his father affected the way Tony grew which in turn affected how Tony dealt with his heavier emotions. Generational trauma is a curse that many suffer. In Murakami’s Abandoning a Cat I got a sense of Murakami’s relationship with his generational trauma and I just thought it was interesting how this theme is explored in his writing. 

Christy