Strecher Discussion Questions

1. If magical realism "bears certain political and cultural specificities," was the Zenkyoto a main influence of Murakami's established mystical setting? Keeping the events of Zenkyoto in mind, do you think that the United States contributed towards the loss of a collective Japanese identity?

2. Before answering the following question, read the excerpts found in Strecher's article.

"The sheep must gradually eliminate the contents of the host's mind in order to replace them with itself. Thus, the host enjoys the contentment of luxury, and freedom from the tediousness of thinking, but no longer enjoys the personal fulfillment of an individual identity."

"how are Japanese of Murakami's generation and beyond to define themselves as individuals in the post-Zenkyoto era? (...) Indeed, one significant reason that the student movement found such favor with young people in Japan was that it provided a means of self identification, connection with something positive and dynamic."

Although the question has been asked multiple times in class, Strecher's article can allow us to answer it from a different perspective. In A Wild Sheep Chase, what does the sheep represent? Could it be linked to the affluence Strecher said Japan witnessed after WW2?

3. "Murakami's use of magical realism, while closely linked with the quest for identity, is not the least bit involved with the assertion of identity." Do you believe that the protagonists from Murakami's novels assert their own identity by the end of the story? 

4. "He tells Shimamoto that he has long been aware that something has been missing from inside him, and that only she can restore this." In light of the interview read last week, do Murakami's female characters contribute to the self-realization of the novel's protagonist?

5. Is the contrast between light and dark, the conscious world and the unconscious realm, only present in Murakami's more surreal works, or also in more realistic stories like Norwegian Wood?

- Daniele Piperno

Beyond the Other World: Locations of Murakami’s Other World

        We have extensively discussed in class the concept of the other world and its supernatural aspects as well as the theory that it is a representation of the world of death. However, most of the other worlds we have encountered in the context of this class are located in remote areas of Japan, such as Junitaki and the sanitorium in a Wild Sheep Chase and Norwegian Wood, respectively. There are other locations which could be considered the other world, such as in “Samsa in Love”, which is set in the modern Czech Republic. Similarly, “Ghosts of Lexington” is set in Lexington, Massachusetts. All these locations are either familiar to Murakami, being in Japan or Massachusetts, where he lived for some time. The other countries his main characters travel to are all located in the West, which are at least somewhat familiar to Murakami and a Japanese audience. 

        However, there are other locations mentioned which are even more foreign than the US or the Czech Republic. For example, in “Barn Burning,” the main girl travels to North Africa, specifically Algeria, after father’s death. Also, in Norwegian Wood, though it turns out to be a lie, Midori tells Toru that her father is living in Uruguay. Both these countries are more unusual locations for people to travel from Japan and seem more ‘foreign,’ as they are not economic and political powerhouses. In addition, the main character does not go to these more obscure other worlds, but rather more minor characters. There is also little description about the experiences of those characters in the other world, it is typically mentioned but the reader does not go to this other world with them. 

        These locations, though they are quite different from the typical other worlds in Murakami stories, also seem to portray death. The most obvious example is in Norwegian Wood, while Midori claims her dad has moved to Uruguay, it is revealed later that Midori lied and her father is dying in the hospital. She explains that before the brain tumor, however, her father had expressed a desire to go to Uruguay. In this sense, Uruguay represents both a world of death, but also a world of dreams and aspirations. In “Barn Burning,” the main girl, shortly after her father’s death, chooses to travel to Northern Africa, upon which the main character introduces her to his connection with the Algerian embassy. She seems to go to Algeria to flee her father’s death, but she returns with a Japanese man, who later kills her under the guise of ‘burning barns.’ Though both deaths in this story both occur in Japan, this mysterious trip to the other world of Algeria is both the girl’s form of fleeing death and bringing death back with her. 

        I couldn’t find any information about whether Murakami had a personal connection to either Uruguay or Algeria, but these other worlds seemed quite distinct from the other worlds we have seen in his writing. But at the same time, they seem to represent a sort of detachment from reality and seem to indicate a sense of death more strongly than his typical settings for the other world, which as the reader, we able to accompany the protagonist there. 

Sarah 

Commentary on Gender Norms in Murakami's story "Sleep"

By Angelina Not (Lina)

I wanted to write this blog post dedicated to analyzing Murakami’s story “Sleep”. I know the abrupt and vague ending is something that is common to stories that Murakami writes, but the final scene in this story left me especially curious. My personal understanding of why she had insomnia in the first place was because she had went through sexual assault. This is only hinted towards the end of the story where the topic is brought up through the policeman cautioning her about a case of assault and murder around the neighborhood. In the final scene she also recalls an uncomfortable situation in the car with one of her boyfriends, which I felt like was a repressed memory related to sexual assault. I feel like her not being able to sleep with her husband and fall asleep in general may all be just another connection to how she does not feel safe around men anymore after the experience. 

Notably, this is one of the few stories where I felt like Murakami was making a statement on how little we have advanced in terms of not putting women into restricted boxes of their roles as mothers or wives. If we think of the story as a whole, a possible understanding of it would be that it is an allusion to women being stripped of their individuality by being mainly defined through their roles. In this story the character is finally able to focus on herself by indulging in the things she loves doing such as swimming, reading, and eating chocolate with brandy. But as a result of focusing on herself she is in turn cut off from the rest of the society, in her case she gets cut off from her friends, her husband and her child. 

Further, throughout the story she starts to feel amazed at how much freedom and satisfaction she gains by choosing to reject the more traditional roles that women often define themselves with. In her insomniac state she starts seeing all her housewife or motherly duties as nothing more than routine. With the realization that she is confined in her role she starts feeling more beautiful and empowered when her mind is focused on things that she enjoyed doing before her married life. The insomniac state therefore was a liberating and eye-opening experience where she was able to enjoy life without the societal expectations that are often still pushed on women today. I think that the final scene of the car being rocked by the men from the outside is supposed to be reminiscent of rocking a crib almost like trying to make her go to sleep. This would symbolize a societal response, specifically from men, to trying to make her go sleep or in other words not allowing her to liberate herself from the constraints of the gender norms. 

Murakami and the Invasion of Ukraine - Special Radio Program

I thought this article was intriguing to read and shed light upon a side of Murakami that enriches the depths of the kind of person he is. He keeps up-to-date with the current issues of the world and shares his opinions about them on his radio program. Recently, he did one on the invasion of Ukraine and sided with support for those in Ukraine. The program was centered around a call for peace and for the war to be put to an end. It was titled "Music To Put An End To The War". He featured 11 musical pieces each from his own personal collection of music. Each one had a unique meaning for why he chose to play that particular piece and he explained the lyrics and context after playing them. He wanted to create a focus upon the importance of human life, love, and dignity.

There were some things I felt were weirdly stated. Such as this quote he recited from Martin Luther King Jr. who said, "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." I couldn't really understand what he meant by this quote and perhaps others may be able to give a better idea about it, but it seems very weird to hear this being said. Could be my lack of knowledge about history as well, but I believe killing thousands of innocent people, forcing them into camps, experimenting on them, and doing much, much worse things could hardly be seen as being legal, but maybe the catch to that is the fact of it being "in Germany". 

The rest of what he said in the article, I can understand where he is coming from. He pushes forth the mentality of individualism and having the courage to question leadership instead of following blindly. To have the dignity to look at a law or order and determine whether it is a good or logical thing to obey. Overall, I wish I had been able to catch this radio program and experience it first-hand. The article covers it well in the terms of being a summary, but not really an in-depth or detailed overview of the whole program that took place.

Author Murakami voices sorrow over loss of young lives in Ukraine war

~ Jonathon Little

The Body and Murakami

     by Nobel Chan

    In William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic," the pairing of a technologically-sophisticated future with an Asian setting harkens to the concept of "techno-orientalism," which Yiqin describes in her post as reflecting "Western fears about Eastern imperialism". To be more specific, techno-orientalism not only exposes Western fears of the East, but also acts as an 'othering' tool that dehumanizes Asian bodies. In "Johnny Mnemonic," all the presumably Japanese characters have Westernized names (Johnny, Molly, Ralfi). When Johnny poses as Eddie Bax, Ralfi calls him "Johnny" to indicate that he knows his true identity, suggesting that names are linked to who one really is (3). This link does not hold true for the body: characters are said to "wear" faces, and many major characters have had technological implants that change their physicality (the Lo Teks' teeth, Molly Million's fingernails). The story suggests that the body is artificial where the soul is not; the Westernized names are then the 'true' identity, and the presumably Japanese bodies are the external wrappings, the technological containers. The technological body is a body that can be fixed and replaced, which bears significant consequences for how Asians are perceived in the West. Recent controversies such as Scarlett Johansson's casting in Ghost in the Shell and Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange exemplify how Asian bodies are often dismissed and re-appropriated by White people (see also Ex Machina, where the White android literally dresses herself in her Asian predecessors' skins). The Asian body in SF is usually an empty shell, then, for Western authors to fill in for their own purposes.

    If this description of Asian as container and Western as content sounds familiar, it's because Murakami has proclaimed something similar about his own work, with one crucial difference. Murakami's works flip the script: the Western elements are now the 'container', and the Japanese identity is the central content. Part of why Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is less difficult to read than "Johnny Mnemonic" is because Murakami doesn't pelt the reader with new terms, signifying that Murakami is not trying to portray his world as 'fantastically othered' as Gibson does with his Japan. Rather than race being something 'put on', as in "Johnny Mnemonic" where people can wear faces of a "sharp-faced Caucasoid," Murakami's take on race goes much deeper than skin (Gibson 1). It goes straight down to the bones: "there were human skulls[...] Caucasoid, Negroid, Asiatic, Indians" (Murakami 28). The old man in Hard-Boiled Wonderland studies "the language of bones," imbuing the body with a fundamental, and fundamentally racialized, voice (26). While Murakami writes with Western influences, he is undeniably writing from a Japanese perspective and a Japanese body, and that bleeds into how he (possibly unintentionally) subverts techno-orientalist tropes. 

     One would be remiss to discuss bodies in Murakami's works without turning to the issue of sex. Though the racialized body gains subjectivity in Murakami's world, women oftentimes do not. They tend to be interchangeable, from the dead girlfriend/girlfriend with the ears in A Wild Sheep Chase to Reiko wearing Naoko's clothes in Norwegian Wood. Women's bodies are constantly borrowed/exchanged/confused, undermining their individuality and consciousness. Though there are examples of male bodies being taken over, for instance the Rat in A Wild Sheep Chase, they are mostly allowed to regain subjectivity through their own agency (in the Rat's case, suicide). Importantly, the Rat's suicide does not end his voice, as he communicates with Boku after he dies; Naoko, on the other hand, is effectively silenced by her death, and was silenced well in advance of her suicide by her inability to write letters. In Sleep, the female narrator is the one to confuse the other gender's bodies, noticing that her son and husband have the same expression while sleeping. This similarity disgusts her, which is interesting because the interchangeability of women does not seem to gall either Boku in A Wild Sheep Chase or Toru Watanabe. This discrepancy is suggestive of Murakami's attitude towards women's vs. men's bodies, though any hard conclusions will be hard to come to. Either way, the body in Murakami is a rich playing field for exploring gender and race, and also for other things I haven't touched on here such as sexuality, disability, and age.

Murakami, His Sources, and RPGs

Something that I've noticed as we've gone through the semester is that some of the Murakami/Murakami affiliated works we've gone through that have directly inspired tabletop role playing games. Though I'm quite unfamiliar to the genre, I've mentioned some of the readings to friends in passing and was surprised to see that they were extremely familiar with the material as a result of playing these games.

The one most directly inspired by Murakami comes from a Dungeons and Dragons story quite literally called "A Wild Sheep Chase" (shoutout to Amanda for pointing this piece out to me). Though not identical to Murakami's story, a few similarities are apparent from the game's summary. The main characters are approached by a sheep holding instructions on how to speak to animals, and after using magic they find out that the sheep was once a wizard. This wizard was tricked by an apprentice and transformed into the animal, and he recruits the main characters to help him take revenge/transform back to his original state. A lot of these details can be construed as Murakami's plot points in reverse. In Murakami's story, a sheep becomes a man (more accurately it takes over a man) and in the DND story a man becomes a sheep. Instead of Boku being approached by a man to track down a sheep, a sheep approaches the main characters to track down a man. Whereas the Rat allowed the sheep to enter his body, the wizard was turned into a sheep against his will. I don't have access to the full story so I can't glean anymore similarities, though I am certain that more exist.

Shifting away from Murakami, W. Gibson's short story "Johnny Mnemonic" directly inspired a number of details in the tabletop game Shadowrun. The character Molly Millions was lifted wholesale from the piece and exists in the Shadowrun universe as an NPC "runner". Working as a runner is functionally identical to her profession in "Johnny Mnemonic", as she does illegal jobs for the highest bidder as a sort of mercenary. Past this, the idea of an "information economy" is reflected by the numerous means by which characters can be tracked. Aside from physical tracking using cameras, microphones, and sensors, one's technology can be directly monitored if someone creates a backdoor into it. In addition, people's spiritual presence can be determined should a character be sufficiently well-endowed with magic. One final similarity between the two is the weapon used by the Yakuza hitman. Much like Molly Millions, this weapon was ported directly into Shadowrun as a Microfilament Whip. Players can purchase and wield the whip as a melee weapon, but many choose to get it as an implant embedded in the body. The most advantageous and popular place to implant it is within the thumb, exactly like in "Johnny Mnemonic".

Though I'm not super familiar with tabletop games, the fact that they frequently incorporate concepts from magical realist/sci-fi literary sources is proving to be extremely appealing to me. I hope to play through the "Wild Sheep Chase" mission sometime soon, and I will report back if I find anymore similarities.

-Bruce

Murakami's Rich Characters

 Even without applying a Marxist lens, it is interesting to look at Murakami's portrayal of wealthy characters. Boku is almost always comfortably middle class, and seems to take much pride in not being too wealthy nor poor. Similarly, many of his closest companions are of similar socioeconomic standing. We sometimes find characters of a higher "social standing" than Boku, which gives us insight into how Boku (and in turn, Murakami) views rich people. 

The most obvious example from our class is Nagasawa from Norwegian Wood. Despite his apparent wisdom, he is insufferably arrogant. He is a textbook "rich asshole," and yet Watanabe is still drawn to him. It may be due to pure boredom and loneliness that Watanabe continues to associate with him, but it isn't until Hatsumi's death and Nagasawa's aloof reaction that Watanabe cuts him off. I see this as a comment about how we associate with people we perceive to be of a higher status even if we do not value them as individuals. Would Watanabe (who seemingly doesn't care about wealth) still tolerate Nagasawa's flaws if he was of a lesser social standing? 

Another favorite example are Yuki's parents in Dance Dance Dance. They are both famous, wealthy artists who do not care enough for their daughter, and expect a certain degree of involvement from Boku, who is little more than a complete stranger. Boku, who likes Yuki and has nothing better to do, agrees to their tasks and is her main parental figure. I see this as Boku being exploited by the rich parents, but again, he seems to overlook this and be okay with it. 

However, in the same novel, Boku is quite sympathetic to Gotanda, the famous actor he knew from his childhood. A troubled figure, Boku invests real time and energy into his friendship with Gotanda. I think Gotanda is certainly meant to be a tragic, sympathetic figure in the novel, and perhaps this is a comment on how the rich and famous are humans too – Gotanda has no real friends and suffers from true loneliness – and deserve sympathy.

I find Murakami's apolitical stances interesting because it seems to lend more merit to the social and real life roles that the rich and famous have in our lives. He recognizes the degrees of exploitation asserted by such people, while also showing that they are given a large degree of forgiveness and sympathy for their actions. However, he looks beyond actions and into the personality of some such figures, showing a human behind the seemingly untouchable and perfect class. This duality allows us to understand the perspective that a middle class man might have in a hypercapitalist nation like Japan, and gives us insight into the daily lives and broader social commentary of its consquences.

John M. Spaulding