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Ethan Eldred

Kilpatrick/ ENGL 2600

04/17/22

A historical criticism of Haruki Murakami’s “A wild Sheep Chase”

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kobe but eventually moved to Tokyo where he

attended Waseda University and published his first book “Hear the wind sing” in 1979. He

would later have a vast majority of his novels translated from Japanese to English with “Hear the

Wind Sing” in 1987. When he had first started his career, it was without much support, he had

owned a jazz club for years prior before attempting writing as a profession, and within two

decades he had boomed into popularity with the dissatisfied young population of contemporary

Japan. One central belief has stood out above other in his continuing works and it is concerned in

the loss of identity within society, specifically in postwar Japan. However, this message again

had a broader impact once it was translated into English and boomed into popularity relatively

quickly within the western young adult audience. This turn of narrative also challenged the social

status and it was with his release of “A Wild Sheep Chase”(1982) we begin to see a more vocal

author on his stance of social and political issues. Through looking at “A Wild Sheep Chase” we

will be examining the history of the Japanese university riots that took place in 1968-69 and the

preceding years and how they influenced the view of the loss of identity that is found inside of

“A Wild sheep chase.”

Haruki Murakami remained, for the most part, neutral on the political and social scale in

his writing but would allude to something much greater without committing to that idea. That

was until he released “A Wild Sheep Chase.” This is a narrative set around a nameless

protagonist and the hunt for a parasite like creature, known as the Sheep, that was photographed
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by his friend “Rat”, who has been traveling the world avoiding his responsibilities, had sent it to

him within a letter. The protagonist owns an advertisement business and in using the picture of

the sheep he draws unwanted attention. He is commanded to find the sheep by the Man in a

Black Suit, and he threatens that if he doesn’t find the sheep then he will never find work after

this day. The rest of the story is the journey the protagonist goes through to find the sheep and

“Rat.” This leads him all over Japan in search of hist lost friend and the Sheep. Haruki

Murakami’s history is pivotal in grasping the full scope of his novels but also the sudden change

to a more political and social landscape in his novel “A Wild Sheep Chase.”

I’ll be focusing on the historical context that impacted Haruki Murakami influencing his

change to a more outspoken author through the lens of a critical historical approach. A critical

historical approach is considering the surrounding context in which the piece had been written in,

while also taking in the events of the authors life and the social and political circumstances at the

time. Understanding the history of Murakami helps us understand the central idea of the loss of

identity throughout preceding generations but also why his books are remaining popular with

young adults in each generation.

As explored in another essay “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction

of Murakami Haruki” written by Matthew C. Strecher. He delves into multiple novels while

exploring Murakami’s use of magical realism to explore the concept of the self and individuality

within Japanese society but as an internal journey to connect the unconscious and conscious. In

connection with this essay, he focuses in on the “systems” and “subsystems” that Murakami

believes were at play during his college years. In here he explores multiple novels such as Dance

Dance Dance, A hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world, and A Wild Sheep Chase

while making the argument that Murakami explores the concepts of ones own will being the
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source for your identity. I will be focusing on similar concepts as his own but will be taking the

historical approach as the events that took place in Murakami’s life can provide insight into what

“systems” were at play to cause the oppression and identity crisis that is still plaguing

contemporary Japan.

Haruki Murakami had been born as part of the generation right after World War II and at

the tail end of the rebuilding of Japan. With the growth that followed the war it brought about a

boom in the number of kids being born from 1947-1949. This increase caused the Japanese

economy to flourish and with this they were becoming a figurehead of efficiency but as

Murakami’s generation began to enter the universities and into the working world they began to

push back against the government. The students were becoming disillusioned to the reality of

what university and the job market would look like after their studies. In the early 60’s people

had small skirmishes with police over treaties that were being renewed, money being stolen from

colleges and governments influence on how schools operated. However, it wasn’t until 1968 at

the Tokyo university known as Zenkyoto, that the students engaged in the largest scale riots that

Japanese law enforcement had taken on at that time.

However, for Murakami he had not been within Zenkyoto but at a neighboring university

within Tokyo known as Waseda. This uprising was in response to new laws requiring medical

students to work within a hospital setting without pay but they would have housing and food

provided, the students however saw this as a form of free labor. The skirmishes that Murakami

watched waned at the beginning of 1969 marking the ending of the riots as the police were

authorized to engage in much more aggressive manners. Many students, who had staked

everything in these riots, started to vote against the creating of more riots and the closure of some

universities. Most people wanted life to return to normal during this time. By the end of 1969,
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most of the barricades were torn down and by spring of 1970 the universities were back to

normal operations. Moving forward, the next ten years showed incredible growth but within

production-based industries, sales positions and the increase of western influence of

consumerism. Murakami though saw this economical growth and the impact it had on the

individual, which having seen the riots and the way the universities and government used

students but also how the government played a role in the universities decisions, it influenced the

way he portrays power but also displays the loss of identity to the “system” Stretcher mentioned

earlier.

“A Wild Sheep Chase” is Murakami’s conclusion to a trilogy but something consistent to

the end was how Murakami never gave his characters names, and if they do get a name, it

usually is something that is more of a function than personal. For instance The protagonists

girlfriend, who we are with through out the novel and is tracked down based on a picture of her

ears, is known as The Girl or The Girl with Ears. She is labeled as what makes her beneficial and

not as who she is. We see this again when the protagonist is discussing the money he is earning

from tracking the sheep down, “There's that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to

have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it's gone.” This touches on

how the students of Waseda had viewed the changes to the medical program, even though they

made it through they were betrayed and this built upon the unease across the country as each

university had similar events happening. Students wanted to be upset but the schools were just

part of the “system” Stretcher talks about and it is inside of the system we see the fear students

had towards the government expanding.

The people began to fear the government in the early 1960’s as they had felt oppressed by

the government into fulfilling one specific role in society through a thin veil of a promise, Like
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the way Murakami only labels characters as their utility and not personable. The students in the

early 1950’s - early 1960’s spent their time in overcrowded schools that held basic schooling ex-

ams and university entrance exams as a number one priority. Schools held test preps three hun-

dred and sixty-two days in the year and most classes were another form of test prepping. The stu-

dents had been given an idyllic picture of what university life was going to be, between the per-

sonal relationships with professors, the hard work it took to get into the universities, and the op-

portunity to stand out among what had been a small class of elites. The students graduated and

found that the elite positions they had been promised gone. This led to many taking positions at

jobs that promised security but over this developed an uncomfortable feeling in the lack of au-

tonomy they had in their lives. This was part of the beliefs that sparked the riots but towards the

end of the riots in 1969 Japan began to change its social standards as consumerism began to rise

in the preceding years. But this lack of autonomy would be still existent but overshadowed by

the rise of consumerism, However Murakami encapsulates that manipulation they felt within the

character The Sheep.

The Sheep is a parasitic like creature that disguises itself as an actual sheep with a black

star on its back and will infect a host to carry out its own will after “consuming” their mind leav-

ing it blank. Even if The Sheep leaves, he leaves you broken and sometimes in a worse physical

condition than before. The Sheep is an undefined character that we never meet, we never get a

one-on-one conversation, but it is through the characters that we understand what it is. We see

this reflected in three separate characters the sheep inhabited. The boss is left comatose, The

Sheep professor lives disheveled and mentally broken within a hotel his son owns and the Rat, in

what may be seen as heroic decision, chooses to take his own life to stop the Sheep’s plans from

coming to fruition. If at any point you deviate from the path the sheep set it leaves you with your
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mind broken and shattered. This relates back to the fear they held for the government and the

sheep intertwine, Murakami relates the tension he watched physically to the Man in the Black

suit and the Sheep a representation of that promise they sold but each character shows how they

reacted to their individuality stripped from them. This is not to say that Japan's corporate state is

entirely detrimental to its people. The corporate state can provide many positive enhancements in

the work force, but it was in the pressures the government put onto the students to fulfill roles

that began to spark the riots.

In 1951 the percentage of graduates getting office jobs with large companies right out of

university was 43 percent of graduates but by 1967 the numbers had dropped to 31 percent. This

happened alongside an increase into basic office jobs such as sales which had increased from a

scant 3 percent to 19 percent in the same time frame. This seems like a good thing but the unease

that they carried changed with the rise in sales embracing new pleasures that came with rapid

economic growth. The sales positions increased which provided security and stability for fami-

lies, which is a value of a collective society, but it led to businesses that began to become facto-

ries. People identified solely with their roles in society, and it was around 1975 the working class

began to ask themselves, what am I not? Murakami skillfully navigates this with the protagonist,

we begin to see where he offers some semblance of an answer, but it is not a complete answer.

The protagonist at the end of novel walks away from the situation with more money than

he’s ever known but even then he gives it to a friend for safe keeping, he has no friends left and

his girlfriend left him to return home without a goodbye. The protagonist states “I was feeling

lonely without her, but the fact that I could feel lonely at all was consolation,” in saying it was a

consolation to be feeling like this it shows he was tied to her. The protagonist through out the

novel had been unemotional even through his divorce and found his working life just as boring.
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However, it is inside of losing those people that we see the mundane, it isn’t until the girlfriend

leaves that the protagonist finally cooks for himself again, he drinks and smokes while just sit-

ting. The Sheep professor tells the protagonist “the daily-life level is missing from our thinking.

We minimize the time factor to maximize the results. It's like that with everything.” This is re-

flecting also how the students of the riots and the years after began to wear down the people

causing the uproars that they did, and it is with the protagonist that Murakami offers something

of a solution in the mundane.

Haruki Murakami has made an impact on the views and support of the Japanese Audi-

ence, and it is in understanding the riots and the preceding years that saw the rise of a similar un-

ease that shaped Murakami’s views within contemporary Japanese society. Understanding now

why so many young, disillusioned readers in contemporary Japan gravitated towards this book

and when released into English it boomed into popularity with a similar crown inside of the

western culture. We see these characteristics of the hollow promises that the government and

universities brought forth through the promises of power that the sheep promises. Murakami

never wanted to paint any individual as the villain even when it comes to the government and

corporations, He understands the importance of the systems that need to stay in play. However,

Murakami is commenting on the governments and corporations needs to take responsibility for

their actions in oppressing students and its citizens. Murakami in his novels also is a critique, one

that is applicable today, of how to live a life of individuality inside of a collective society that

wants to push you to conform.

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Works Cited

Strecher, Matthew C. “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of

Murakami Haruki.” Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 1999, pp. 263–98,

https://doi.org/10.2307/133313. Accessed 19 Apr. 2022.

Onishi, Norimitsu. “A Rebel in Japan Eyes Status in America.” The New York Times,

The New York Times, 14 June 2005, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/books/a-rebel-in-

japan-eyes-status-in-america.html.

Marotti, William. “Japan 1968: The Performance of Violence and the Theater of Protest.”

The American Historical Review, vol. 114, no. 1, 2009, pp. 97–135,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/30223645. Accessed 26 Apr. 2022.