The Society for Japanese Studies

Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki Author(s): Matthew C. Strecher Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 263-298 Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/133313 Accessed: 25/03/2010 11:28
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MATTHEW C. STRECHER

MagicalRealismandthe Searchfor Identity in the Fictionof Murakami Haruki

Abstract: This articleis concerned with how Murakami Haruki usedthe has of realism" challenge explore concept indito and the of techniques "magical vidual in It that raison d'etreas a writer to is identity Japan. argues Murakami's in of born exposethesteady decayof individual identity members thegeneration after War,andin each succeeding immediately the SecondWorld generation thereafter. doingso, the articlesuggestsa plausible In for explanation the fact thatwhileMurakami's workswereinitiallyaimedat his own generation-the to in youngest participate the Zenkyoto movement-they remain consistently with between agesof 20 and30. the popular readers When MurakamiHaruki(b. 1949) first appearedon the Japaneseliterary scene some 20 years ago with his Gunzo Prize-winningnovel, Kaze no uta o kike (1979; Hearthe wind sing), few would have predictedthathe would, in less than two decades, establish himself as the majorvoice for the disaffected youth of Japan'scontemporaryera. His style and his message were cool, detached,disillusioned.There was little in that firstbook thatreached out and "grabbed"the reader in the way that, say, MurakamiRyu had reached out and grabbed readers three years earlier with his own Gunzo Prize-winningdebut,Kagirinakutomei ni chikai buru (1976; Almost transparent blue). In sharp contrast with that work, filled with the rage of an determinedto persistwith its experimentswith sex, impotentcounterculture drugs,and violence, Kaze no uta o kike was almost poetic in its understatement. Yet its quiet melancholyand abstractreferencesto the failureof Zenkyoto, chiefly throughthe rebellious characterknown as "Rat," seem to have suited audiences and critics alike in 1979. One is strucknot so much by the underlyingangerof Rat as by the sheer impotenceof the protagonist to quell his disillusionmentwith the end of the 1960s. This seems betterto have capturedthe mood of Murakami's contemporariesthan the raw, livid of Ryu. anger
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Few readersin 1979 needed remindingthat, less than ten years before, Japan's greatestpolitical strugglein the postwarera-Zenkyoto, the popular studentuprisingagainstthe U.S.-JapanSecurityTreaty(Anzen Hosho Yoyaku, "AMPO"for short)-collapsed in utterdefeat. Indeed,fromthe time AMPOwas automaticallyrenewedin 1970, the unifying causes of the Zenky6ot movementwere eliminatedone by one. RichardNixon'speace initiative with the People's Republicof Chinain 1971 began to thaw the dangerously confrontationalsituation on both sides, between which Japan had precariously been positioned; Okinawa was returnedto Japanese sovereignty in 1972; U.S. troop withdrawalsfrom Vietnam began aroundthe same time, and the warended in 1975. At home, the Japaneseeconomy was aboutto embarkon its now-famous "bubble"growthperiod, usheringin a level of affluenceunseen even in the era of "rapidgrowth."In short,during the period from 1970 to 1979, in which Murakamisets his early works, ordinaryJapanesegrew definitely less concerned with politics and more determinedto sharein the wealth and affluenceof theircountry.As JohnW. Dower writes, By 1972the Leftthushadlost holdof manyof its mostevocative peace the nuclear issues:U.S.basesin Japan, Security arms Treaty, weapons, proand A in duction, Okinawa, China. yearlater,withthe armistice Vietnam, of the last greatcause thathad provided modicum commonpurpose a theopposition removed. average citizenturned was The to inward, among new affluence an economic as baskin Japan's international powerandbecomeconsumed material in sloby pursuits, exemplified suchmass-media ' and gansas "MyHome-ism" "MyCar-ism." Ironically,this very affluence,combinedwith a markeddecline in political tensions both internaland external,may pose the greatestthreatto the Japan.At developmentof a sense of self or individualityin contemporary of least, this is the impressionone has from readingthe literature Murakami Haruki,concerned less with the collapse of the Zenkyoto movementthan The imwith the sense of identity and self that it providedits participants. literature always been: how are has plicit question throughoutMurakami's generationand beyond to define themselves as inJapaneseof Murakami's dividualsin the post-Zenkyotoera? this It is important understand as a generation-specific to problem.Murakamibelongs to the leading edge of the first generationto be born in the postwarperiod, withoutmemoriesof hardshipin the Second WorldWaror of in participation the reconstruction Japanfollowing it. Unlike the previous and generation,which understood hungeranddeprivation could defineitself
1. John W. Dower, "Peace and Democracy in Two Systems," in Andrew Gordon,ed., PostwarJapanAs History(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1992), p. 27.

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in terms of affluence via its own participationin the efforts of the rapidgrowthera, Murakami's generation,like the generationin the United States thatreachedmaturityin the 1950s, did not understand affluenceas a goal in itself, and thus could not identify itself in those terms. Indeed,one significantreason thatthe studentmovement-the concept of counterculture general-found such favor with young people in postin war Japan and the United States was that it provided a means of selfidentification,connection with somethingpositive and dynamic.Writingof the discontentof his own generationin the United States,ToddGitlinpoints out that affluence in postwarAmerica amountedto crawling out from the shadow of the Depression and the deprivationsof the Second WorldWar. But this is also precisely what engenderedthe famous "generationgap" of the 1950s and 1960s: Wherethe parental was of generation scourged memories the Depresby of sion, the children this middleclass in the late FortiesandFiftieswere raisedto takeaffluence granted. breadwinners acutelyaware for The were of howhard hadworked afford picture to the the window, lawn,thecar, they theLionel and remembertimewhen a trains; sincetheycould,mostof them, thesweatof their browavailed themlittle,theywereflooded withreliefand and their children feel thesame.2 to gratitude, expected Could one not say the same of the generation-Murakami's generation-that grew up in the relativeaffluenceof rapidgrowth,withouthaving known the hardshipsof the Second WorldWarand the immediatepostwar was threeyears old when the occupationended and seven years?Murakami when the postwar period was declared "over" on economic grounds in 1956, a declarationthat coincided with the beginning of rapid growth;he was raisedin Ashiya, a notoriouslyaffluentpartof the Kobe area(he himself refers to it as a "yuppie" area). By the time Murakamiand his contemporarieswere reachingtheir teens, affluencewas less a distantdreamthan an assumed way of life. No doubt life has grown more comfortablefor every succeedinggenerationin Japansince the end of the Second WorldWar.And yet, an awarenessremains,echoed also in Gitlin'scomments above, thatthe sense of identity provided throughan easy, affluentculture is a bestowed identity,not one createdthroughthe real challenges of survival. For such people, the Zenkyot6 movement provided a means of selfexpression not necessarily offered by the easy comfort of home life and possessions. It is little wonder,then, that the end of the movement should have generatedso severe an identity crisis among Japaneseof Murakami's age and younger,particularlywhen the highly chargedpolitical movement
p. 17.
2. Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Yearsof Hope, Days of Rage (New York:Bantam, 1987),

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was replaced simply with more consumer capitalism. Consumersin the 1950s had been goaded into purchasingwashing machines, in the 1960s color televisions, and in the 1970s largerautomobiles.In the 1980s it was computers, video games, VCRs, and home entertainmentsystems. The productschangedwith the technology,but the game was the same. Tanaka Yasuo's1980 novel Nantonaku,kurisutaru (Somehow,crystal),which celebrated-and at the same time poked fun at-the plethora of consumer Tokyo, also made clear the fact that congoods availablein contemporary sumerismwas now the symbol of culturein Japan.Aroundthe same time, in a film intended to show various layers of Japanesecultural ideology, Donald Richie describedTokyoin the 1980s as "consumerism gone mad."3 It is, then, perhapsonly naturalthat MurakamiHaruki,with his quiet, detachedassertionthatJapaneseare losing theircapacityto know or understandthemselves, should have struckso resonanta note with his readersin 1979. He spoke, initially,to his own generationin Kazeno uta o kike,which focuses on an 18-dayperiod, from August 8 to August 26, 1970, hinting at the despairof returningto the universitiesin the autumnof that year,after the conclusion of AMPO 1970. But he also spoke to readersof latergenerations, who must have sensed that even as Murakamidescribed his own who he was in the fall of 1970, he was also describing struggleto understand their own similar struggles at the end of the decade. From the startMurakami has shown contemporaryreaderstheir own anonymousfaces in the mirror. TheNameless, Faceless Narrator To an extent, Murakamiachieves this in the nondescript,detachednarratorhe habituallyuses, "Boku" (I, familiar).Indeed,it was not until more a than ten years into his career that Murakamigave his narrator definite name at all, and most supporting characters,when named, were called something unconventional,often something derived from their function. in The characters Kaze no uta o kike,for instance,are "Rat," "the Woman called "J," and "Boku." All of the a Finger,"a Chinese bartender Missing charactershave something to offer the narrative,but none of them shows much character development. In 1973-nen no pinboru (1980; Pinball, 1973), the sequel to Kaze no uta o kike,one meets twin sisterswho have no names and a pinball machine that talks. Hitsuji o meguruboken (1982; A wild sheep chase) contains even more bizarre types: a clairvoyantcalled "the Girl," sometimes "the Girl with the Ears"; "the Boss," who rules Japan; "the Man in Black," namedfor the black suits he always wears; "the
3. Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez, prod., The Japanese Version(New York:Center for New AmericanMedia, Inc., 1991; 56 minutes).

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Sheep Professor";"the Sheepman"(half-man,half-sheep);and so forth.In Dansu dansu dansu (1988; Dance dance dance) Murakamiplays with his own name and calls one of his characters"Makimura Hiraku;"anotheris named Gotanda,no doubt after the high-rentarea of Tokyo by that name. literaExcepting "Naoko," a girlfriendwho turns up early in Murakami's ture and will be discussed at length below, it was not until his 1987 novel, Noruwei no mori (Norwegian wood), that the authorgave his characters names that might be consideredconventional. Why should this be? Again, the answeris relatedto identity.Who is the narratorof Kaze no uta o kike, or of 1973-nen no pinboru, now that the excitement of the 1960s is over? Where is his unique individuality?What does it look like? How can it be seen, touched,used to express the Self? Put into the existentialistterms of Jean-PaulSartre,or, later,the psychological theory of JacquesLacan, Murakami's implicit question is, always, how can the first-personprotagonistforge connections with an Other (conscious or unconscious) and thereby identify himself, prove to himself that he even exists? This is the question that is explored from the earliest works to the most recent. Magical Realismand the Unconscious To speak of seeing or touching the "core identity" of the individual,of course, is to suggest a metaphysicalprocess by which that inner mind can be accessed, and this forms one of the most recognizable trademarksin Murakamiliterature.In virtuallyall of his fiction, with the one notable exception of Noruwei no mori, a realistic narrativesetting is created, then disrupted, sometimes mildly, sometimes violently, by the bizarre or the magical. As Yokoo Kazuhiroputs it, Murakamiexplores "how the world, our insignificantdaily lives, mightor mightnot change afterintroducing one 4 work seems to fall into tiny vibration." It is for this reasonthatMurakami's the general category of "magicalrealism," though one must exercise great carein distinguishingMurakami's strainof magicalrealismfromothermore politicized forms of the genre. In a very simple nutshell, magical realism is what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something "too strange to believe." It is the underlyingassumptionthatpermitsTita to pourher emotions into her cooking in Like Water Chocolate and have her diners exfor perience those emotions as they eat; it is the slight aberrationof historical fact thatallows SalmanRushdie'sSaleem Sinai to claim in Midnight'sChildren that the history of India turns on major events in his life; it is the
4. Yokoo Kazuhiro,MurakamiHaruki: kyaju nendai (Tokyo: Daisan Shokan, 1994), pp. 31-32.

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mechanismby which Mikage Sakuraiand TanabeYiichi eat togetherin a shareddreamin YoshimotoBanana'sKitchen.And, more to the point, it is the means by which MurakamiHarukishows his readerstwo "worlds"one conscious, the otherunconscious-and permitsseamless crossoverbewho have become only memories,and by memotween them by characters ries thatreemergefrom the mind to become new characters again. As noted above, however,the concept of magical realism bearscertain political and culturalspecificities that should at least be addressedbefore applying the term to Murakami'swork. For instance, there are those who claim that magical realism is a specifically Latin Americanidea, one that expresses the naturalwonder felt by the people of Latin America toward their land as a "marvelous"-yet real-place. Othersarguefor a more politicized, but equally region-specificdefinitionof magicalrealismas a postEuro-American colonial discoursethatrejectstraditional emphasison realism and positivism in favor of a worldview that permitsthe "magical" to the coexist with the "real." The former is expressed by Alejo Carpentier, realism to the latter by Angel Flores. But Flores wishes to liken magical Surrealismof Kafka, while Carpentier's descriptionof the "marvelous"in marvelousreal) is reminiscentof Russian his term lo real maravilloso (the Formalism,specifically of Viktor Sklovsky's ostranenie, or "defamiliarization," in which the author,poet, or dramatistis urged to make the ordidifferent,unfamiliarto the readeror audiencemember. naryextraordinary, describes Carpentier,similarly using terms reminiscentof avant-gardism, as something "amazing because it is strange. Everything the marvelous strange, everything amazing, everything that eludes established norms is 5 marvelous." Others problematize the linkage of magical realism with any other theory,political or otherwise.Luis Leal, for instance,suggests thatwe view magical realism as a worldview that may appearunder various circumstances, using various methodologiesor literarystyles. He is suspicious of the any attemptto appropriate methodologyof magicalrealismfor political or artisticpurposes. or literature with withfantastic either be realism cannot identified Magical that literature [Juor orwiththesurrealist hermetic literature, psychological realism morethananything describes.... Magical else, an is, lio] Ortega in or in that toward attitude forms, reality canbe expressed popular cultured realism In or elaborate rustic styles,inclosedoropenstructures.... magical it.6 and confronts thewriter reality triesto untangle
5. Alejo Carpentier,"Baroque and the Marvelous Real," in Lois Zamora and Wendy (Durham:Duke UniversityPress, Faris, eds., Magical Realism: Theory,History, Community 1995), p. 101. 6. Luis Leal, "MagicalRealism in SpanishAmerica,"in ZamoraandFaris,eds., Magical Realism,p. 121.

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Leal's willingness to open up the field, to admit that virtuallyany form of literature artmay express itself as magicalrealist,is of some use to this or discussion,for one may propose,using Leal'sdescriptionof magicalrealism as technique or worldview, that the literatureof MurakamiHarukimerely uses the techniquesof magical realism without necessarily involving itself in the various political attachmentsthat Carpentier Flores would insist and upon. In short, Murakami'suse of magical realism, while closely linked with the quest for identity,is not the least bit involved with the assertion of an identity.Put anotherway, magical realism in Murakami used as a tool is to seek a highly individualized,personal sense of identity in each person, ratherthan as a rejectionof the thinkingof one-time colonial powers or the assertion of a national (cultural)identity based on indigenous beliefs and
ideologies.7

This view of magical realism is supportedby WendyFaris, who argues in "Scheherezade'sChildren:Magical Realism and PostmodernFiction" that magical realism, now identified with postmodernism,particularlyits
8 "paradoxical mixing of seeming opposites," i.e., the magical and the real,

expandsits sphereof influencefrom the political and culturalinto the realm of entertainment. "Magicrealistfictionsdo seem moreyouthfulandpopular than their modernistpredecessors,in that they often (though not always) caterwith unidirectional story lines to ourbasic desire to hearwhathappens next. Thus they may be more clearly designed for the entertainmentof 9 readers." To be sure, this will help us to understand betterMurakami's place not only in Japan,where he stands at the apex of'Japanesepostmodernliterature,but in world literature,where he is partof the same postmodernmovement that has begun to erase the barriersbetween art and entertainment, popularfiction and popularfilm (Fariscites the popularityin recentyearsof magical realist films such as Field of Dreams, Ironweed, The Witchesof Eastwick, and Ghost in addition to writers such as Rushdie and Gabriel GarciaMarquez).It also highlightsthe fact thatMurakami,like Rushdieor Toni Morrison(in, for instance,Beloved), uses magical realisttechniquein
7. This is, however,by no means to suggest thatsuch an agendawould be out of place in modern Japan, where an identity crisis has been noted since the early Meiji period. Susan Napier points to the works of Izumi Kyoka, and even some by Natsume Soseki, as early examples of "fantastic"literaturein Japanwhich are concernedwith expressingJapaneseidentity. In more recent times, the same concern can be seen in Oe Kenzaburo'srevival of rural Japanesemythologies in such works as Man'en gannen no futtoboru (1967; The silent cry). See Susan Napier, "The Magic of Identity:Magic Realism in Modern JapaneseFiction," in Zamoraand Faris, eds., Magical Realism, pp. 451-75; cf. Napier, The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature:The Subversionof Modernity(London:Routledge, 1996). 8. Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism(New York:Routledge, 1991), p. 6. 9. Wendy Faris, "Scheherezade'sChildren:Magical Realism and PostmodernFiction," in Zamoraand Faris,eds., Magical Realism,p. 163.

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orderto advancehis own agenda,political, cultural,or otherwise.As noted above, it supportsmost of all his desire to portraythe function of the inner mind, or unconsciousOther,to use the Lacanianterm,andhow this informs the constructionof the Self, the individualSubject. Murakami's Construction the Mind of Murakami's model of the humanmind is fairly uniformthroughout his his literature, motifs andterminologylargelyunchangedin the past20 years. In general it is presentedas a uniformlycoded division between the world of the light and thatof the dark,the lattercorresponding the unconscious to realm. Murakamienvisions the inner world of the mind as dark,cold, and lifeless. At times the unconsciousis only symbolized,othertimes it is real. In 1973-nenno pinboruthe protagonist entersan ice-cold, pitch-black warehouse, formerlya cold-storagefacility for chickens, to reencounter Naoko, a girlfriendwho died at the very end of the 1960s. In Hitsujio megurub6ken his the same protagonistreencounters dead friendRat, this time in a mountain villa, but again in total, freezing darkness.Sekai no owari to hddoboirudo wanddrando(1985; Hard-boiledwonderlandand the end of the world) alternatesits chaptersbetween the conscious protagonist,who lives in daylight, and the unconscious one, who fears light, works at night, and mustwearprotectivedarkglasses when he goes out duringthe daytime.The protagonistof Dansu dansu dansu discovers a musty,dust-filledroom in a deep cornerof his mind, again, dark,gloomy, and filled with dust-covered memories that he cannot make sense of. Anotherroom is filled with dusty kuronikuru skeletons,literallythe skeletonsof his past.And in Nejimakidori (1994-95; Wind-up bird chronicle), his unconscious is presented as an enormous,maze-like hotel, in which "Room208" is the core, the centerof his whole being. It is this center,the location of the core identity,thatconcerns us here. himself uses the expression "blackbox" to describethis porMurakami unconscious.The expressionfirstcomes up in Sekaino tion of his narrator's owari to hddo-boirudowanddrando,when the protagonistis told by a scientist who has been tinkeringwith electrical circuits in his brain that the core consciousness is like the "black box" used to record flight data on idenaircraft: containsall the information it necessaryto formthe individual tity, but it is imperviousto attemptsto open it and observeits contents.This is identity. mindof box' is the subconscious I "Inotherwords," said, "the'black theindividual?" No to "That's principles. one is right.All peopleact according certain Whatis identity? of else. In shortit'sa matter identity. likeanyone exactly memories ourexpeof basedon thecollected A unique systemof thought

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termforit is themind. twopeoplehave No fromthepast.A simpler riences the samemind.Of course,most peoplehaveno real graspof theirown '1 systems." cognitive literature conis Nevertheless,the fact remainsthatmost of Murakami's cerned with opening up that "impregnable"box of memories and experiences, and holding it up to the light for analysis. Nor, one might add, is this strictly a fictional concern for the author,who uses the same "blackbox" sareta in metaphor discussingthe Aum Shinriky6cult membersin Yakusoku basho de: Underground2 (1998; The place that was promised: UnderI ground2): "In Underground, dealt with the Aum Shinriky6... as a menbut unknown quantity-a 'black box,' of sorts. In this new book I acing is have attemptedto open up that 'blackbox' a bit." '' WhatMurakami after in the end is some means of looking at the core identity of the individual and discerningwhat leads it eitherto become partof the "system" of Japato nese society, or, alternatively, fall throughthe cracks. TheEarly Works: MetonymicalLinksand Hints is In his early works,however,Murakami less certainof whathe is dealof ing with in the mind. The compactlyconceptualizedmetaphor the "black box" has not yet come into being. Instead, he focuses initially on what emergesfrom the mind and how it impactsthe protagonist.And yet, even in on these early works one finds a sophisticatedunderstanding the partof the authorof the unconscious as the source for the assertion of the conscious Self, or subjectivity.In its simplest form the model resemblesthe Lacanian one, which envisions the "unconsciousOther"as a soundingboardagainst which the Self, the speaking Subject, orje, constitutesand understands itself. Murakamiis also in agreementwith Lacan that the relationshipbetween the conscious Self and the unconsciousOtheris essentially a linguistic one, for he himself conceives of the images that lurkwithin and emerge from the inner mind as language. And finally,just as Lacan groundsmuch of our psychological interactionwith the unconsciousOtherin the desireto gain possession of that Other,Murakami's protagonistsunconsciouslycreate metonymicallinks with the contentsof theirinnermindsin orderto draw them out, engage them in discourse,and then send them back to wherethey came from. This is not to say thatthe conscious Self is capableof manipulating the unconscious Other at will, however; rather,as Lacanianshave frequently pointed out, these connections are wholly unconscious, nonvolitional.Fur10. MurakamiHaruki,Sekai no owari to hddo-boirudowandarando,in MurakamiHarukizensakuhin,1979-1989 (Tokyo:Kodansha,1991), Vol. 4, p. 373. 11. Yakusoku sareta basho de: Underground (Tokyo:Bungei Shunju, 1998), p. 12. 2

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thermore,becausethe unconsciousis inaccessible,the Otheris unattainable, and these connections, even when successfully made, as they are in Murakami's fiction, are finally unsatisfying.As Ellie Ragland-Sullivan writes of desire and the unconscious Other, "LacanianDesire is both representational-a referentialcontentof images and meaningsinscribedin the place of the Other(A)-and an indestructibleforce that shows up in the orderof chronologicaltime as an insatiablemechanismof yearning."12 The mechanism is "insatiable"because the real object of desire, the unconsciousOther,is inaccessible to the conscious Self, and thereforevarious substitutes,groundedin linguistic connections(one might thinkof this in termsof psychologicalmetaphors), mustbe created.In Murakami's magical realist universethis is taken a step further,however,and the linguistic connections, which in real life are unknown,unconscious,or even unintelligible, become magically visible and tangible.In short,they become magically real. Murakamibegins to reveal his model of the mind to readersin earnest with the novel 1973-nen no pinboru, and the short story "Binbo na obasan no hanashi"13(1980; The story of the poor aunt).In both workshe presents the notion of memory-the object of desire-in a textualizedform, thatis, one constitutedof language,specifically,of words. Textualization the InnerMind of As noted above, Murakami Haruki'searly literature pivots on the intersection of the nostalgic, the linguistic, and the magical. In orderto conceptualize for himself and readershow the conscious Self is informedby the unconsciousOther,he posits a specific nostalgic object of desire in his protagonist'smind. He then "textualizes"it in the sense of creatinga chain of linguistic connections between the object itself, usually the memory of a missing or deceasedfriend,andhow it will appearto the consciousprotagoobsessive desirefor the objectto bring nist. Finally,he permitsthe narrator's it magically from inside the mind out into the externalworld. The resultis somethingjust a little more than a mere image-for these objects are tangible, they arereal-but less thanrealistic,as I have suggestedabove, in the sense that their presence is incongruouswith the detailed realistic setting createdby the author. "Binbo na obasan no hanashi" illustratesthe textual natureof these "nostalgicimages." In this work,the protagonistlounges by a fountainin a park,when suddenlythe idea of a poor,middle-agedwomanflashesthrough
12. Ellie Ragland-Sullivan, Jacques Lacan and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis (Urbana:Universityof Illinois Press, 1986), p. 77. 13. Originallypublishedin Shincho, December 1980.

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his mind. In that instant the idea of the "poor aunt" is imprintedon his consciousness, and soon after he discovers the vaguely defined image of a "poor aunt" on his back. Because of her positioning behind him he cannot actually see her directly, but because she is part of him, he knows she is there. Moreover,precludingthe dismissal of the "pooraunt"as a mere halin makes certainthatothercharacters the story do see lucination,Murakami her. The protagonistattemptsin a varietyof ways to explain to us what she is. She is like the memberof the family who always turnsup at weddings, but to whom no one speaks; she embarrassesherself by using the wrong fork; she brings an unwanted gift. Everyone knows who she is, and she inspires a vague sense of pity, but no one really wants to have anythingto do with her. Because she is a "text," those who see the "pooraunt" visualize her in different ways. To one she appearsas a dog who died in pitiful agony of esophagealcancer;to another,she looks like a school teacherhe once had, who lost her husbandduringthe war and was herself burnedin an air raid. The metonymicallink here is simply a vague kind of pity, an emotion familiarto all, but one to which each individualrespondsdifferently.Finally, appearingon a talk show to explain his oddity,the protagonistdeclaresthat the poor aunton his back is tada no kotoba, "justwords." In describinghis rendersthe emotion of pity into a text which he then image thus Murakami invites the readerto rewriteand reinterpret infinitum, ad bringingthe text to life anew each time it is read. Such play with linguistic connections is also parodiedin early Murakami literature.In "Kangariltsiishin"(1981; The kangaroocommunique), the protagonistis a departmentstore managerwho must write a letter of apology to a dissatisfiedcustomer.His impulse to write her a fairlylong and intimatepersonalletter,however,comes from seeing kangaroosat the zoo. How is this connection formed?We are not told. Murakamimerely teases his readersby claiming that there are 36 specific steps, each of which must be followed in precisely the right order,to get from kangaroosto the letter in question. Similarly,in "1963/1982 Ipanemano musume" (1982; 1963/ 1982 Girl fromIpanema),the protagonistcontendsthatthereis a mysterious connection between the famous song and a hallway in his high school. The textualweaving leads from this to combinationsalads, and finally to a longlost girlfriendwho loved vegetables. These are, of course, little more than games, exercises in word association. One is sympatheticto Masao Miyoshi's somewhatirritabledeclaration thatMurakami's writing amountsto little more than "a symbol-deciphering 14 In these cases it is even less than that; stories like the two just game."
14. Masao Miyoshi, Off Center: Power and Culture Relations Between Japan and the UnitedStates (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress, 1991), p. 234.

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noted may at best be describedas "play" in nostalgicconnection-building, but in which the symbols are neverreally even present. More serious and sophisticatedexamples may be found, particularly in the longer works. 1973-nen no pinboru provides two interestingexamples of metonymicallinking that may be analyzed with a fairly high degree of each certainty.These center,as noted previously,on two distinctnarratives, involving missing friends: "Rat,"who has gone missing at the end of Kaze no uta o kike, and "Naoko," the narrator's girlfriendin 1969, who is dead. The setting of the novel, as the title suggests, is 1973, but the narrator's nostalgicfocus is on the transitional periodfrom 1969 to 1970. is 1973-nen no pinbo5ru organized much as Sekai no owari to hddoboirudo wanddrandolatercame to be, into chaptersthat alternatebetween the world of light and that of darkness.In the former the readersees the first-personprotagonist,"Boku"; in the latter, "Rat" appearsin a lyrical, The interestin this partof the novel lies not merely narrative. third-person in watchingthe movementsof Rat, who (we eventuallyrealize) lives in the unconscious mind of the protagonistas a memory, but in seeing how he emerges into the external,conscious world to interactwith the protagonist. As with the "poor aunt," however, appearancesare always unstable, and when Rat emerges "into the light," he bearsno resemblanceto his original form. This, incidentally,is foreshadowedin the final lines of Kaze no uta o the kike, which ostensibly quote FriedrichNietzsche: "Canone understand 15 depthsof the gloom of night in the light of day?" This essential metamorphosis the objectof desireinto somethingelse of mirrorsthe process of signification and metonymy,but it also signals the mystery of the unconscious and the insatiable natureof that desire. The nostalgic image is one of a symbolic nature,strictlya surrogate,andfor this this very reason it can never be satisfactory.As a critiqueof representation as strikesa resonantchordwith postmodernism well: neitherhistorynorthe the past can ever be anythingmore thantext, thus one can never apprehend or words. Linda Hutcheonargues similarly past as anythingbut language that one of the chief projectsof the postmodernis to underminethe notion that "history"is somehow more real or true than "fiction"by virtue of its reliance on fact. Because facts must be expressed as language,or text, she argues, they are no more certain or true than fiction, which uses the same medium. been has of Thetwentieth-century discipline history traditionally structured it to that and assumptions haveworked separate by positivist empiricist In its usualsetting of fromanything smacks the "merely that up literary." or to of the "real" unproblematic as presence be reproduced reconstructed,
Harukizensakuhin,1979-1989, Vol. 1, p. 120. 15. Kaze no uta o kike, in Murakami

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is for to the of history begging deconstruction question function thewriting of history itself.'6 Hutcheon'sinterrogationof history goes beyond the mere question of whetherwe can ever get to "the Truth"to question more importantlythe effectiveness of language, the written text, to substitutefor history itself: "What is the ontological nature of historical documents?" she demands. "Are they a stand-infor the past? What is meant-in ideological termsof by our 'natural'understanding historicalexplanation?"17 In similar terms, one may understandwhy the "past" in Murakami's texts-in this case specific memories-may not appearin the present(conscious world) as it did in the past (unconsciousworld). As language,it must be represented metonymically,symbolically,just as the historicaldocument or text stands in for the reality of history itself. It should, then, come as no great surprise that the memory of Rat in 1973-nen no pinboru, when it emerges, bears no visual or physical resemblance to the man himself. In fact, it appearsas twin sisters, roughly 20 years old, whom the protagonist discovers sleeping on either side of himself one morning after a night of heavy drinking. Entrances,Exits, and RodentTraps The metonymicalconnectionbetween Rat and the Twins (as they come to be known, for they have no names) seems obscure at first but in fact is quite discernible.Once again, the readermust play a game of signification. The process is as follows: the Twins, realizing that their lack of names is becoming problematicfor the protagonist,invite him to name them, and provide some suggestions: "Right and Left," "Verticaland Horizontal," "Up and Down," etc. This kind of naming is a source of controversyin Murakami'sliteratureand has led KarataniK6jin, among others, to argue thatMurakami seeks to deconstructmeaningsandrealitiesin the world. "To dissolve propernames into fixed signifiersis to dissolve them into bundles of predicativeterms, or to put it anotherway, into bundles of generalized Harukitries so persistentlyto do is concepts," he claims. "WhatMurakami to eliminatepropernames, and thus make the world more random."18 But the names the Twins offer, while unconventional,are neitherrandom nor general;rather,they suggest very clearly a symbiotic relationship in which one half of the pair is meaninglesswithoutthe other.The relationmodel, yet as with his model ship between the Twins suggests a structuralist
16. Linda Hutcheon,A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory,Fiction (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 95. 17. Ibid., p. 93. 18. Quoted in NakamuraMitsuharu,"Yukue fumei jinbutsu kankei," in Kokubungaku, Vol. 43, No. 3 (February1988), p. 105.

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of the internaland externalminds, interchangeis possible. When the protagonist notices that the Twins can be identifiedby their sweatshirts-one says "208," the other "209"-they wordlessly peel off the shirts and exchange them. Clearly there is to be no permanent,visible means of identifying the Twins. At the same time, the Twins seem to representthe opposite, yet symbiotic relationshipbetween the protagonistand Rat as well: the protagonistis a settled, fairly conventionalman, whereasRat is a rebellious,angryretrohippie who has been out of place since the end of the Zenky6ot period. Finally,however,the metonymicalrelationshipbetween Rat and the Twins is cemented throughthe linguistic connections that Murakamiweaves. In response to the "names" offered by the Twins above, the protagonistsuggests "Entranceand Exit," which leads him to philosophize on the nature thereis an entrancethereis also an exit. of entrancesand exits. "Wherever Most things are built that way: mailboxes, electric vacuumcleaners, zoos, turkeybasters. Of course, there are also things that are not built that way. Mouse traps,for instance."19 Invokingthe mouse trap,and the memoryof a mouse (nezumi), brings the protagonistback to the once having caught more importantrodentin his life, Rat himself. The protagonist'snostalgic desire for his missing friend thus pivots on the word nezumi,brought,via obsessive nostalgic desire and magical realism, into the external world in the form of the Twins. Lost Loversand Pinball A similar analysis can be performedon the image of "pinball,"which appearsin the title but does not become importantuntil well into the text. One may, of course, make the obvious parodicconnection between 1973and nen no pinb5oru Oe Kenzabur6's1967 novel, Man'en gannen no futtoboru (1967; Football, 1860, trans. as The silent cry), but parody, while Mitsucertainlyvisible in the relationshipbetween Oe's brothercharacters, of sabur6 and Takashi,and their representation passive and active heroes, respectively,is secondaryto the use of pinball as a metonymicalimage of nostalgic desire. In fact, while one could hardlyimagine the title of Murakami's book to be accidentallysimilarto that of Oe's, the parodicelement The actual strikes one more as a diversion from the real issue at hand.20 focus of this work is nostalgia and memory,and the importanceof pinball deceased girlfriend. lies in its relationshipto Naoko, the protagonist's In fact, 1973-nenno pinborubegins with Naoko. The openinglines conHaruki 19. Murakami 1979-1989,Vol. 1,p. 129. zensakuhin,
20. During a conversationwith the presentauthoron October24, 1994, in Cambridge, admittedthe similaritybetween the books' titles, but denied thathe Massachusetts,Murakami had intendedto parodythe contentof Oe's work.

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confession to being obsessively fond of hearingstories tain the protagonist's from strangelands. This leads him to relatesome of the stories he has heard over the years, includingsome supposedlytold to him by visitorsfromother planets. Finally he comes to his favorite stories of all, those relatedby Naoko herself. In one instance, he recalls, Naoko told him the story of a man whosejob was to locate good spots for digging wells, andhow he was struck andkilled by a train;in another,we learnof a lonely trainplatformon which a dog paces endlessly back and forth. Are these stories supposedto be true, or are they merely fabricationsfor the protagonist'samusement?One suspects the latter,for none contains a coherentplot; rather,all the stories give the sense that they are intended as descriptive sketches of mental images ratherthanreal narratives. Our confidence, however, is shaken when, in the "real time" of 1973nen no pinbiru, the protagonistsuddenly decides to visit "the" trainplatform in Naoko's story of four years earlier and to look for "the" dog. He waits for about an hour, measuredin the numberof cigaretteshe is able to chain-smoke,but sees no dog, only a group of old men fishing in a nearby pond. Finally, however, he notices a dog sitting next to one of the men. Coaxing the animal throughthe fence separatingthe pond from the train platform,he pats it on the head severaltimes, then leaves satisfied. But he cannot be wholly satisfied. As he returnshome, he realizes that the closure he seeks for his relationshipwith Naoko is not so easily obtained.This is hardlysurprisingwhen one reflectsthatthe best he can hope for is to encountera textualizedimage of Naoko, somethingwhich, as noted above, can never satisfy his desire. This occurs to him on the way home: Onthetraingoinghomethesamethingkeptrepeating itselfoverandover in my mind: is it. everything finished, forgetabout Isn'tthatwhyyoucame all thisway?Buttherewasno wayI couldforget I hadlovedNaoko, that or thatshe wasdead.Because was nothing reallyfinished.2' Not long afterthis, the image of the dog reemerges,this time in the form of a telephone switch panel that has gone dead in the protagonist'sapartment. When the Twins ask the repairman from the telephonecompanywhat the switch panel is for, he replies thatit is like a motherdog who looks after her puppies. "But if the motherdog should die, then the puppies also die, Thus the right?So we bring in a new motherdog to replacethe old one."22 pivot word is "dog," which links Naoko's story (and thus Naoko herself) to the switch panel which, as a mechanicaldevice, leads shortlythereafter a to pinball machine. As if to make certainthatno one misses the connectionbetweenNaoko
21. MurakamiHarukizensakuhin,1979-1989, Vol. 1, p. 136. 22. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 156.

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funeralfor and the switch panel, the Twins insist on holding an impromptu it at a local reservoir.There the protagonistmakes a stirring speech that drawssomewhatincongruouslyon Kantand hurlsthe switch panel out into the deep, chargingit to rest in peace. Only a few pages laterthe protagonist raises the image of pinball and, in particular,a machine he was fond of duringhis college years known as "the Spaceship,"once again forming a link to the extraterrestrial stories told to him early in the work. Soon he is obsessed with finding this machine,and this forms the title quest of 1973nen no pinboru.

When the machine is finally located, throughthe cooperationof a college professorwith an encyclopedic knowledgeof pinballand the kindness who collects old pinball machines,the protagonistmust of a philanthropist enter a pitch-black,ice-cold warehouse(quite literallyhis "blackbox") to complete the journey. Enteringthe inky blackness, he flips the electricity on, bathing the place in blinding light, revealing row upon row of pinball machinescoming to life, theirflashinglights giving the readerthe image of rows of electric tombstones.It is an eerie, magical, intensely spiritual journey into the "otherworld" of his innermind, a worldof deathand memory, but it grows even morebizarrewhen, locating "the Spaceship,"he does not play it, but insteadholds a conversationwith it in the tones of loversmeeting again after a long separation.As with the dog, however,nothing is solved in this encounterwith the unconsciousOther,for the meeting is temporary and mitigated by the layers of symbolism throughwhich Naoko must be expressed. The strong contrastbetween light and darknessin this scene, a regular motif in Murakamiliterature,as noted previously,remainsstill in its early stages in 1973-nen no pinboru.One notes thatthe protagonistis not permitted to see Naoko in her "true"(or at least more familiar)form for the blanket of darknessplaced over the scene. Readerscan only imagine what he would have found had he left the lights out. But this, again adheringto the rule final lines of Kaze no uta o kike,is the one unbreakable in Murakami's no literature: protagonistis ever permittedto illuminatefully the interiorof his mind and see his memoriesas they once appeared. This becomes clearerin laterworks. In Hitsujio meguruboken,the sequel to 1973-nen no Pinboru, the same protagonistactuallydoes meet Rat as Rat, in the confines of his inner consciousness. The location, Rat's secluded villa in the mountainsof Hokkaido,remains cloaked in darkness, becauseRat insists thatit be dark.A similaradmonitionis givenOkadaToru in Nejimakidorikuronikuru the woman who inhabitsthe motel room at by the center of his consciousness not to turnon his flashlight.Whatwill Murakami'shero find should he ever break this injunction?There can be no way of knowing, for the unconscious mind is as much definedby its darkness as the darknessis requiredby the unconscious. To illuminatethe unconscious in the Murakami universe,then, would be merely to transformit

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into consciousness, the realm of the light, and so the exercise would be pointless. Identityand the Japanese State Murakami's efforts at locating a sense of individualidentity in his first two works might be regardedas largely apolitical. In both Kaze no uta o kike and 1973-nen no pinboru, the protagonistdeals with his sense of loss in the aftermathof the Zenkyoto period but never really focuses the source of this loss on any particularentity, political or otherwise. With his third work, Hitsuji o meguru b6ken, however, Murakamibegins to portraythe Japanese state as a sinister presence that seeks to promulgatea sense of collective identity,a dictatorship over the mind, amongmembersof contemporaryJapanesesociety. The implicit assumptionhere-probably a historically correct one-is that the disappearanceof the student radicals after 1970 was due either to their mass-assimilationinto the "system" of Japanese society or, alternatively, their destructionby that system, which is intolerantof the individual.This has become the theme in virtuallyall Murakami literature,fiction and nonfiction,since 1982. In every novel he writes, a world of perfect contentmentis offered to the protagonist(or, in the first work, to Rat) in exchange for his individuality. In Hitsujio meguruboken,for instance,the narrative centeredaround is the image of an all-empoweringsheep which inhabitsits host like a parasite, then uses the host to carryout its plans of domination.In the same gesture, however,it must graduallyeliminatethe contentsof the host's mind in order to replacethem with itself. Thus, the host enjoys the contentmentof luxury, and freedomfrom the tediousnessof thinking,but no longer enjoys the personal fulfillmentof an individualidentity.Moreover,the sheep's use of the host is by no means benevolent, though it may appearso at first. Neither "the Sheep Professor"nor "theBoss" surviveshis encounterwith the sheep with his mind intact, nor, indeed, does Rat, whose suicide at the end of the novel is his finalconscious act. Ultimatelythe utopiandreamofferedto each successive character revealedto be a thinly disguised curse. At the end of is Hitsuji o meguru boken, Rat (now a memory/image) explains to the protagonist why he chose death over the utopian dream of the sheep. "'It's because I like my weaknesses. I like my pains and hardships.I like summer sunlight,the smell of the breeze, the songs of the cicadas. I can'thelp liking them.'"23 It is, however, uncertainwhat the destructionof the sheep will mean for Japanesesociety and culture, for the power structurecreatedby the sheep remainsin place at the end of the novel, while the protagonistis left with nothing. A similarfate awaits the protagonistof Sekai no owari to hado-boirudo
23. Ibid., Vol. 2, p. 356.

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wanddrando. Because of electronicswitches implantedin his brain-again, an organof the state-he faces perpetualimprisonment an artificially in by constructedfragmentof his core consciousnessknownas "theTown."Like the empty utopia offered to Rat, the Town is perfectlypeaceful but rigidly intolerantof even fragmentsof mind or volition. Indeed,the firstthingdone when he entersthe Townis thathis shadowis carvedaway to the protagonist who is careful to keep the a sinisterfigureknown as "the Gatekeeper," by shadow isolated from its owner. We soon realize that the shadow,the most memoriesandidenancientmarkerof time, is symbolic of the protagonist's the his past, and thus his mind. Not unnaturally, longer the protagonist tity, is without his shadow,the less inclined he is to give up the easy peace of this mindlessutopia.Nevertheless,at the end of the novel he compromises, refusingeither to reunitewith his shadowor to let it die altogether.Instead he helps his shadow to escape (to where, we cannotknow) and accepts life in the no man'sland outside of the Town. is Finally,in Dansu dansudansu, the protagonist simply wooed by those who have given themselvesto the orgiasticeconomy of mindlessconsumption in contemporary Tokyo in exchange for theiridentities.The prominent of high-pricedprostitutesin this work is a constant reminder appearance themselvesto in thatall of the affluentcharacters the novel have prostituted the system. As the protagonistlearns, sex is not the only part of our huof as manitythatcan be purchased, indicatedby the persistentattempts other charactersto "buy" the protagonist'sfriendship.In exchange simply for high-priced being a friendhe is offereda Maseratti,an expensiveapartment, prostitutes,and even an all-expenses-paidvacation to Hawaii. It is a situation the protagonistfinally cannot solve; at the end of the book he flees to Hokkaidoto sort things out in the quiet countryside,away from the fetishconsumerismof Tokyo. centraltheme for most of his careerhas thus been that the Murakami's of individualidentity runs counterto the dominantsocial structure concept of post-1970 Japan,what he refersto as the "system,"in which contemporecent rary Japaneselive. In fact, this is even the subject of Murakami's saand Yakusoku nonfiction works, Anddguraundo(1997; Underground), 2. reta basho de: Underground The formeris a collection of interviewswith survivors(or survivingfamily membersof victims) of the March20, 1995, poison gas incidentin the Tokyo subwaysystemby the Aum Shinriky6cult. The latterpresentsinterviewswith formermembersof the cult. Murakami's self-avowed purposein writing the work is consonantwith his evident purpose in writingworks of fiction as well. exists the is Thereality thatbeneath mainsystemof Japanese societythere This the thosewhoslipthrough cracks. no no subsystem, safety to catch net, is There a basicgapin our of as has reality notchanged a result theincident.

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we how out society,a kindof blackhole,andno matter thoroughly stamp the AumShinrikyo to cult, similargroupsare sureto formin the future the bringabout samekindsof disasters.24 When he speaks of "systems" and "subsystems,"Murakamiis speaking precisely of identity drawnfrom one's role in society. But today'sJapanese "social system" is one in which individualsare defined accordingto their role in the economic and industrialmachine that runs Japan.There is very little room for deviationin this society, and the lack of a "subsystem" -a means of defining oneself outside the parameters ordinarylife as a of sarariiman(white-collarworker),factoryworker,or otherpredefined roleis highly problematicfor those who wish to be different.It is not unnatural for Murakamito be interestedin such types, as he himself has always resisted the conventional.But it also meansthatthe choice presentedto young Japanesewho think aboutsuch things is a paltryone: eitherbecome partof the system, or become isolated, forbiddento participatein the affluentsociety that surroundsyou. This comes up especially in Hitsuji o meguru boken, in which the protagonistis intimidatedby "the Man in Black," a in high-level character the Japanesepolitical-industrial-media system of the late 1970s, who tells him that he can either play along with the system, ensuringthe success of his business, or he can resist and simply disappear withouta trace.Examplesof those who do not "playalong" are to be found along the wayside. These include "the Sheep Professor,"who lives out his life in miserable solitude in a crumblingHokkaidohotel, and "Rat," who resists more fiercely and is given a choice between submission or suicide. He chooses the latter. Identityin Murakamiis thereforea matterof will. The question in Murakami,as for many writersbefore him, is often one of action versus pascharacters passive, and thusthey arefrustratingly are sivity.Most Murakami devoid of real identity.Yet all of them seek thatidentityby rooting aboutin their internalminds, recognizing that the inner mind is the ultimatesource of Self and identity. Kokky6 no Minami,Taiy6 no Nishi: Magical Realism, or Ghost Story? Most Japanesecritics have noted the paranormal Murakami's in literaof ture,but few seem to have graspedthe essential structure the internaland externalminds that is supportedby Murakami's of magical realism, or use the critiqueof the society versus the Self that it presents.Expressionssuch as "the other world" persist, and even Yokoo Kazuhiro,who accurately describesa literarylandscapethatis primarilyrealistic,finallyresortsto the conventionaldescriptiveterminologyof the "ghoststory" to understand the
24. Murakami,Underground p. 12. 2,

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The various "ghosts"he pointsto arethe Twins in 1973author'sliterature. nen no pinboru, "the Girl with the Ears" in Hitsuji o megurub6ken, and "the Girl in Pink," who is the granddaughter the scientist responsible of for the protagonist'spredicamentin Sekai no owari to hado-boirudowandarando. The main object of Yokoo's inquiry,however, is Kokkyono minami, taiyo no nishi (1992; South of the border,west of the sun).25 Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi, regardedby a numberof critics as a failurefor its lack of trulynew ideas, was evidentlywrittenin the same spirit as the bestselling Noruweino mori, using the generalstructure the popuof lar romance.Unlike in previousMurakami literature, however,the protagonist of this work is happilymarriedwith two childrenand, more important, he is no longer a peripheral,isolated type, but a successful bar owner (reown experience runninga jazz cafd in the flecting, no doubt, Murakami's 1970s). As if reactingto the financialpressureunderwhich the protagonists takes pains to show thatthe hero of his previousnovels operate,Murakami of Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi is well-to-do and even enjoys a stable home life with his family. But beneaththis veneer of stabilitylurks a familiaremptiness:the proto tagonist soon reveals a lingeringattachment a girl named "Shimamoto" whom he knew as a child and who, he is convinced, is his "soul mate."As the novel progressesit becomes clear that the easy comfortof the protagonist's home is actually a facade for the sense of emptiness in his marriage. While hardly a loveless relationship,there is no real inner connection between the protagonistand his wife. three One notes in this novel, for the first time in Murakamiliterature, distincttypes of knowledgethatcombine into a true "connection"between that two people: the firstis emotional,a kind of innateunderstanding apparand Shimamotoduringtheir childently emerged between the protagonist in hood; the second is sexual, represented the relationshipbetweenthe protagonist and his girlfriendin high school, "Izumi."The thirdis knowledge of the historicalpast, "the mind,"which comes only throughcompletetrust and total disclosure. The conflict in this story stems from the fact that the protagonistcan never combine all three types of knowledge in any single desire, then, is to combine the emotional bond he person. The narrator's with Shimamoto,the sexual desire that engulfed him with Izumi, once had and knowledge of the historical past he has with his wife now. The latter two aspects seem easily within reach, but the internalemotional bond he knew with Shimamotois missing and must somehow be recreated. It should come as no surprise,then, that "Shimamoto"turns up suddenly in the novel to help the protagonist(partially)to satisfy his desire.But like "the Twins" or "the Spaceship,"one is awarethat she can only be a
Haruki. 25. Yokoo,Murakami

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nostalgic image emerging to stand in for the original Shimamoto of his from darknessto light are necessary childhood. No majortransformations in this case, since Murakamineed only have her grow up into a woman. However, perhaps feeling the need for some differentiationbetween the original and the image, Murakamiportraysthe childhood Shimamoto as having a clubbed foot, which has since been cured in the grown character. When Shimamoto turns up in the protagonist'sbar one night, he becomes instantlyattracted her, even before he knows who she is. After she to has revealed her identity and given a plausible story about finding him by readingabouthis bar in a magazine,they begin an affairthat goes on for a yearbefore they finallyconsummatetheirrelationship.Spendinga weekend at the protagonist's villa at Hakone, "Shimamoto"makeslove to him, promising to revealeverythingabouther past to him the following morning. With unfortunate however, "Shimamoto"disappearsfolpredictability, lowing their one night of intense physical passion withouthaving revealed her story at all. So complete is her disappearance the protagonist that cannot even find her footprintsin the gravel outside the villa. This is what leads Yokoo to conclude thatShimamotois "withoutquestionan apparition from anotherworld, ratherthan from the real world,"26 and to schematize the novel into two very distinct worlds:the "real" and the "other,"right down to the title: "south of the border"refers, he believes, to the "real" world, whereas "west of the sun" is the land of the dead. To this point Yokoo's argumentis consistent with my analyses above; the unconscious Other is a place of death. One might even think of the memories of lost friends as the "ghosts" of the protagonist's past, who live in the "other world" of his internalmind. But Yokoo assumes that these images are separatefrom the protagonist,thatthe impeccabletiming of their convenient appearancesand disappearancesis attributable their knowlto edge as spirits of both past and future. "The fact that 'Shimamoto'disappears immediatelyafterthe protagonistresolves to leave everythingbehind and go away with her can only be attributed the fact that she has forecast to his distantfuture."27 Such a schematizationis not altogetherinsupportable,but in the end Yokoo's reluctance to recognize the psychological underpinningsthat go along with a magical realist setting, his inability to see that the source of these "ghosts" is the protagonisthimself, leaves him with more mysteries than he can possibly solve. When, for instance,did the real Shimamotoactually die, he wonders, or was she perhapsa spirit even when the narrator knew her as a child? He concludes, with little textual support,that Shimamoto must have met with an unhappydeath in her early twenties and has
26. Ibid., p. 23. 27. Ibid., p. 37.

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now come back to hauntthe narrator. is quite possible, in fact," he ar"It gues, "that many of Murakami'scharacterscome into being after having previouslymet theirown ends."28
Doubtless one may read Kokkyo no minami, taiyo no nishi as a kind of

romantic ghost story. To externalize Shimamoto as a ghost does at least in acknowledge the presence of the paranormal Murakamiliterature.But such a reading does little to shed light on Murakami'sraison d'etre as a writer and fails completely to address the real identities of the other "ghosts" in his earlier works. Why would Murakamicreate "the Twins," for instance,as the ghost or ghosts of people who are neverto be mentioned otherwise? as Instead,it strikesone thatto view these kinds of characters nostalgic images originatingas partof the unconsciousOther,drawnout fromwithin his mind,in a concentrated attemptto recoverhis past andtherebyreconnect with the constitutivepartsof his personalidentity,providesa moreeffective and plausible reading of the author'swork. Such a readingwould account for the amazing sense of timing noted by Yokoo above. Moreover,this scheme is demonstrablyapplicableto all but a few of Murakami's major works. And, of course, it would go a considerabledistance in providing answersto Yokoo'smost pressingquestions aboutShimamoto,specifically, who she is, why she has come, and to where she returns.
There is, in fact, very little in Kokkyo no minami, taiyo no nishi that

should strike us as mysteriouswhen viewed in the context of previousMurakamiliterature.If anything, one might say that the work is too overtly and disappearance Shimaof aroundthe predictableappearance structured moto. One sees it coming from the beginning.The novel's weaknessesstem not, as Yokoo suggests, from its leaving too many questions unanswered, but ratherfrom its inability to strike out furtherinto new territory.Mukai Satoshisuggests thatthe workwas writtensolely in orderfor the protagonist to express his sense of emptiness and his need for Shimamototo fill that void. The work is, in his opinion, too fixated on its centraltheme of loss.29 to This is certainlytrue, but it would be an overstatement suggest that
Murakami breaks no ground in Kokkyo no minami, taiyo no nishi. Rather,

severalimportant explorationof identityoccur developmentsin Murakami's here. First,the notion of the "blackbox," the objectifiedcore identityof the individual,reemergesfor the firsttime since Sekaino owari to hddo-boirudo wanddrando.In this case, however,the "blackbox" is not a matterof science fiction, but a real, organic thing that representsthe inner self. This is not to suggest that readersare given any new insights aboutthe interiorof
28. Ibid., p. 23. Vol. 47, 29. Mukai Satoshi, "Shudaini shisshite monogatario ushinau,"in Bungakukai, No. 1 (January1993), p. 303.

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has thatbox, however;indeed, Murakami discardedeven the poetic descriptions of his "Endof the World"in thatpreviousnovel, with its golden unicorns and medieval walls, in favor of the far less revealingexpressionnani ka, "something." He tells Shimamoto that he has long been aware that "something" has been missing from inside of him, and that only she can restore this. He seeks a similar "something" from his girlfriendIzumi in high school and feels almost as if he can reachinside of her and touch it. Theonlyimportant wasthatwe wereviolently thing engulfed something, by therehadto lurksomehidden andthatinsideof thatsomething thingthat wasimportant me.I wanted knowwhatthatthingwas.I hadto know. to to Hadit beenpossibleI wouldhaveplunged handinto the core of her my
flesh to touch thatsomethingdirectly.30

In the context of previous Murakamiliterature,there can be no doubt but that this "something" is the same missing "core identity" that leads the protagonistson their variousquests in previousbooks. ThroughoutKokkyo no minami,taiyo no nishi, and laterin Nejimakidori we kuronikuru, encounter this term, one which, despite its abstractnature,seems to stir in the protagonista greaterpassion thanever before. The second majordevelopmentseen in Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi, more importantthan the first, is the protagonist'snewly developed dethe terminationto reach out and understand core identities of those around him. This is an extraordinary for Murakami,whose charactershave thing always been so absorbedin themselves and their own problemsthat critics are unitedin dubbingthemjiheiteki, a medical termmeaning "autistic"but in this case perhapsbetterexpressed with the idiom "self-centered."Even work, such as Kato Norihiro,Aoki Tamotsu,and apologists for Murakami's KawamotoSaburo, agree that Murakami'scharactersare too out of touch with their society, though this is generally understoodto be a symptom of the times.3'KurokoKazuo, who termsthe 1980s the "Walkman Era,"simiuses the termjiheiteki, lamentingthat "contemporary man is now calarly pable only of relationshipswith passive objects."32Murakamiis not unaware of this characteristicin his hero, of course, as is clear in Sekai no owari to hddo-boirudowanddrandowhen his unconscious protagonistis told by a fellow character, "I wonder if there isn't something else you need? ... I feel that if you had that something, it would help you to open
30. Murakami Haruki,Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi (Tokyo:K6dansha,1992), p. 60. 31. Kato Norihiro, "Jiheito sakoku,"in Murakami Ryu, ed., MurakamiHaruki:siiku & fuaindo (Tokyo:Seidosha, 1986); Aoki Tamotsu,Karucha,masu karucha(Tokyo:Chiiokronsha, 1985); and KawamotoSabur6, "'Monogatari' no tame no boken," Bungakukai,Vol. 39, No. 8 (1985). 32. KurokoKazuo, MurakamiHarukito dojidai no bungaku(Tokyo: KawadeShuppan, 1990), p. 14.

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up, just a little, the hardenedshell of winter that surroundsyou."33The conscious protagonistis told essentially the same thing, that he has surroundedhimself with a protectivebarrier,one that finds concreterepresenwalls thatsurround town as well. the tationin the impenetrable no It is, then, a sign of change that the protagonistof Kokkyo5 minami, taiyo no nishi is passionatelyconcernedwith makingcontactwith another. Kuroko sees evidence of this impendingchange even earlier,in the 1989 short story "TV piipuru"(TV people), in which the protagonistlearns,too late, that the secret of existence, of life itself, is to communicatewith othhis ers.34In this story, as in the later Nejimakidorikuronikuru, wife is an this enigma to be solved, but by the time he understands it is too late, and she is gone forever.It is with Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi, however, becomes trulymilitantin his desireto makecontactwith thatthe protagonist others. And yet, while one is temptedto see somethingaltruisticin this shift in the protagonist'sattention,from himself to another,the fact remains that seeking connectivitywith the identitiesof othersis still, finally,an expedient for the protagonistto discover himself, for in seeking out "Shimamoto"or, his in Nejimakidori kuronikuru, wife Kumiko,the hero still seeks an Other who will reaffirmhis existence as well. This is clear from the very first a chaptersof Nejimakidorikuronikuru, work that, despite its considerable than 1,200 pages) and complexity (at least three majornarralength (more tives are given), is still simply about recognizing and acknowledginganother(an Other)person. The NejimakidoriKuronikuru: OtherStrikesBack One might say that Murakamispent the first 15 years of his careerprein paring to write Nejimakidorikuronikuru, which every majormotif and theme from previousliteratureis present.The inner mind is presentedas a a gloomy, maze-like structure, hotel, as it turnsout, at the centerof which is a dark, vaguely sinister room in which a woman awaits the protagonist, Okada Toru, and repeatedlydemands that he learn her name. This is the object of his desire, Kumiko herself, the key to the main conflict in the novel, for Kumiko emerges early in the text as an enigma that T6ru feels compelled to solve lest his relationshipwith her disintegrate. But what makes the work exceptional among Murakamiliteratureis the complexly interwoventhreadsof textualitythat marka new departure for the author.I have noted above that Murakamishowed a tendency toHarukizensakuhin,1979-1989, Vol. 4, p. 321. 33. Murakami 34. KurokoKazuo,MurakamiHaruki:za rosuto wdrudo(Tokyo:Daisan Shokan, 1993), pp. 206-8.

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wardtextualization(of image, memory,history) from his earliestliterature; in Nejimakidorikuronikuru reaches a new level of intertextuality, he weava tapestryof narrative that encompasses two distinct historicalperiods ing (present-dayTokyo and Manchuriaduring the Second World War), and three disparatestories connected by sharedmagical experiences,violence, and a persistentstrugglefor controlover the core identitiesof the characters involved. but Brevity precludes a detailed synopsis of Nejimakidorikuronikuru, the principalplots may be broadly sketched. In the main story line, Okada Toru expresses concern that he does not understand wife, Kumiko,and his fears he will lose her. This is what actually happens in the second volume of the novel, where it is revealedthather brother,WatayaNoboru,a sinister politician of some note, has spiritedher away.The quest of the novel is thus the retrievalof Kumikoand the restorationof T6ru'srelationshipwith her; the conflict, obviously, is between himself and Noboru, who goes from merely sinisterin the early partsof the novel to purelyevil by the end of the third and final volume, where we learn that he makes a practice of doing precisely what the protagonistof Kokkyono minami,taiyo no nishi wanted to do to Izumi:he reachesinto the bodies of women andphysicallyremoves their "core identities,"leaving them bereftof an individualself. To counter this, Toru's occupation in the third volume is to restore the "internalbalance," or core identity,in women who have lost it. All the while he continues his searchfor Kumiko. The second narrative, told to T6ru for purposesnot clear until the third concerns a veteranof the Japanesecampaignin Manchuria named volume, "LieutenantMamiya" who, while on reconnaissancewith an intelligence unit in OuterMongolia, is capturedby a troop of Mongoliancavalryled by a Soviet officer whom we come to know as "Boris the Skinner."The nickname comes from his penchant for torturingprisoners by skinning them alive. Readersare given a graphic descriptionof this as a memberof Mamiya's unit is interrogated. Finally,Mamiya is flung into a deep well in the desert and left to die. He is eventually rescued, however, and Mongolian reencounters"Boris the Skinner"at a gulag in Soviet Asia, where he tries to kill his enemy but fails in his task. The significanceof the narrative to is foreshadowa similar relationshipbetween Noboru and Toru, with the expectationthatToruwill also be called uponto destroyhis enemy.The reader must wait in suspense to know whether he will succeed where Mamiya failed. concerns a woman calling herself "Akasaka Finally, the thirdnarrative Nutmeg" and her son, "AkasakaCinnamon."This mother/sonteam operates an exclusive clinic specializing in restoringequilibriumto internally unbalancedwomen and eventually employs Toru to do the actual work of healing. Mingled with this text is the story of Nutmeg's father, a cavalry

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veterinarian who witnessed severalmassacresin Manchuria duringthe war, in and her husband,who was murdered 1975, his body found lacking all of are its internalorgans. These subnarratives told to T6ru by Cinnamonvia computer,for Cinnamonhas been mute since his childhood. What permeatesthe entire novel is the sense of magical connections between various distinct "worlds":the internaland external "worlds" of Toru, the historical "worlds" of 1930s Manchuriaand 1980s Tokyo, the Nophysical and spiritual"worlds"of the innerbody, assaultedby Wataya boru and restoredby Okada T6ru. And, of course, there is the "wind-up bird" of the novel's title, a creaturenever seen but heardto be winding the springs that keep the earth turning-and thus keep time/history moving. The significance of the bird is, of course, this movement of time, and its signifies a temporarystoppagein time, a momentwhen characappearance ters with special mystical abilities have visions of past, present,and future, all at once. But the novel begins and ends with T6ru, Kumiko,and Noboru.We do not meet Noboru initially; he is representedin the couple's cat, currently missing, whom they call by the same name. Even so, the cat becomes a source of tension between T6ru and Kumiko, who accuses her husbandof not caringenough abouttheirpet,just as the real WatayaNoborueventually betweenthem. He is, we finally becomes a source of almost lethal antipathy loss of "internalbalance,"renderingher inrealize, the cause of Kumiko's comprehensible,even unrecognizable,to Tiru. Her pleas for help come from the very firstchapterof the book, when she calls Toruon the telephone from his internalmind and insists that if he can give her just ten minutes, Her talk then turns seductive, finally "we can understandeach other."35 and Toruhangsup on her withoutgiving her the ten minutes overtly sexual, she so earnestlydesires. Yokoo, writingeven as this novel was being serializedin Shincho,wonders who this woman can be and suggests that her use of the telephone symbolizes an age in which directhumancommunicationis no longer posThis is true,of course,but thereis moreto the image of the telephone sible.36 than merely the fact that Toru cannot see who he is talking to; rather,it is merely one more version of the "tunnel"that always separatesthe internal and externalminds of the Murakamiprotagonist.As to the identity of the "telephone woman," as she is called in the novel, few regularreadersof Murakamiwill fail to have grasped that she is Kumiko by the end of the novel's second chapter,in which we aregiven clues thata gap exists between Toru and his wife.
kuronikuru 35. Murakami Haruki,Nejimakidori (Tokyo: Shinch6sha, 1994-95), Vol. 1, pp. 7-8. 36. Yokoo,Murakami Haruki,p. 52.

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In a perfectly everyday scene, Kumiko comes home from work, exhausted,to find thatT6ruhas cooked her a meal of stir-friedbeef and green peppers,forgettingthat she cannot toleratethis combination.Kumikoalso scolds him for having bought blue tissue paper and patternedtoilet paper, while recognizing that these which she also cannot abide. Not unnaturally, are "completely trivial things, hardly the sort to cause so much commotion,"37Toru begins to wonder how much he really knows about his wife. He wonders-rightly!-if this might not be the start of something much more serious, if he is not perhapsmerely standingpoised at the entranceof somethingmuch more deadly. out Inside be Thiscouldjustbe theentrance. there might a world stretching It thatwasjustKumiko's. mademethinkof anenormous room,pitchdark. but I was in thatroomwithnothing a tinycigarette lighter. the lightof By of fraction theroom.38 thatflameI couldsee onlythebarest In the context of previousMurakami novels,Toru'sinabilityto recognizethe voice of the "telephonewoman,"despite the fact thatshe knows everything his abouthim, fits a regularpattern; admissionin the passage above cements our suspicions that the quest in this novel will be for T6ru to bring himself into direct contact with her hidden, unrecognizable"core consciousness." It will not be easy, however, for almost immediatelyfollowing this incident Kumiko goes to work, never to return.She is, we eventually learn, imprisoned by her brother,who eliminates her ability to act on her own volition by strippingher of her core identity. We do not actually see this of operationperformedon her, but we learnof it from the narrative another Kano Creta,a formerprostitutewhose last customerwas Wataya character, Noboru. She describes how Noboru literally reached into her body and pulled out something utterly unknown to her, again reminiscent of the "black box" metaphorfrom previous Murakamiliterature.The operation, erotic. however,is unquestionably "Then plunged he into something mefrombehind.... It wasas though I hadbeensplitin two,rightdownthemiddle. thepainwasn't But normal, I I because eventhough wasin agony, wastormented pleasure. and Pain by one." became pleasure fromwithinmy openedflesh,I felt something "Then, pulledoutof me thatI hadneither seennortouched before.I couldn't howlargeit was, tell butit was dripping like a newborn wet, baby.I hadno ideawhatit was.It hadbeeninsideme only a moment and of earlier, yet I hadno knowledge it. Yetthismanhadtaken frominsideof me. it "I wanted knowwhatit was.I wanted see it withmy owneyes.It to to
37. Murakami, Vol. 1, p. 56. kuronikuru, Nejimakidori 38. Ibid., Vol. , p. 57.

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I was,afterall, a partof me. I hada rightto see it. ButI couldn't. wastoo 39 in thetorrent painandpleasure." of caught up In the thirdvolume T6ru learnsthat somethingsimilarhas happenedto named "Ushikawa"tells him that "someKumiko,when a seedy character thing has been missing from inside of Kumikoall this time. Somethingthat had been supportingher like a pillar until that point finally broke."40The readercan well imagine that Kumiko has sufferedthe same fate as Kan6 Creta. Various other narrativesin the work suggest that Kumiko and Kano Cretaare not the only victims of this form of assault.Kumikotells of how her elder sister, evidently Noboru's first victim, committed suicide after "something" concerned with their brotherhappened to her. One thinks back also to the deathof AkasakaNutmeg'shusband,whose body was discovered with its internalorgansremoved;did this foreshadowa similaroperationon the bodies of the three women mentionedabove? AkasakaCinin also includes a scene abouthis grandfather Manchuria namon'snarrative to death,specialcarebeing taken in which Chineseprisonersarebayonetted to destroy the internalorgans in the process. Even the skinningof Lt. Mamiya's commanderin Mongolia might be seen as a process of penetrating the outerbody in an attemptto gain whatevermay lurkinside-in this case, information. As the examples above suggest, there is a link between the "core identity," sexuality,and violence, one which is perhapsinevitablegiven the fact that coitus itself involves a penetrationand is thus innately a violation, a literal invasion of the body. Murakami'suse of images related to bladed weapons-the knife used to skin Lt. Mamiya's commander,the bayonet used to kill the Chinese prisoners,or the knife WatayaNoboruwields in the final confrontationwith Toru-suggests no more or less of a penetration thanNoboru'sinvasion of Kano Creta'sbody. Perhapsit is inevitable,then, that the means to restoringthe core identities thathave been lost is also sexual, and thatT6ru,an essentiallypassive being up until the end of the novel when he bludgeonsNoboruto deathwith a baseball bat, is the key to this. Much of his function as a mystical healer is foreshadowedin his relationshipwith Kan6 Creta,the formerprostitute who, throughmagical means, now visits T6ru in his dreams.Significantly, for her characteroverlaps with that of the "telephone woman"/Kumiko, when they meet it is in the unconsciousmotel room, andKan6Cretawrithes atop him wearinga blue dress he recognizes as his wife's. Unlike the encounterbetween KanoCretaandWataya Noboru,in which
39. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 234-35. Italics mine. 40. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 358. Italics mine.

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Noboru clearly occupied the position of dominancewhile Kan6 Cretawas helpless, the sexual roles between herself and T6ru are reversed in his dreamscape,where he lies on his back and she sits astride him, or, at the end, brings him to climax orally.This not only helps Kan6 Cretato restore her own inner balance, severely damaged by Noboru, but also suggests throughthe superimpositionof her characteron Kumiko'sthatthe secretto reversingthe effects of Noboru'smutilationis for the victim to take an active role. The opposition of action/passivity representedin the behavior of Noboru and T6ru,respectively,is cementedin the thirdvolume of the novel, in which Toru works as a healer for AkasakaNutmeg, who is attractedby a purple mark on his face, a mark that appearedafter a narrowescape from his unconscioushotel roomjust as Noboruentered,bent on killing him. The markis a sign of his mystical power, but also a living presence, an external emblem of the "black box" that lurks inside his mind. Like that "something" that was drawn out of Kano Creta, it is warm and alive, pulsating with energy. Like a sacred relic, it contains the secret to the magic healing powers T6ru possesses: his "patients" are healed through direct contact with the mark.Here, too, total passivity and sexuality combine to recreate the earlier scenes with Kano Creta/Kumikoin his dreamscape.As he sits alone on a sofa, his eyes covered with darkgoggles (the darknesssignaling the approachof an "unconscious" experience), a woman enters the room (he can tell from the scent of perfume that it is a woman) and begins to strokethe markon his face with her fingers, "as if she were tryingto discern in it some secret buried there in ancient times."4 What follows is purely sexual: Thenshe stopped me, stroking got upfromthesofa,and,comingfrombehindme,usedhertongue.... Hertongue cunning thewayit nuzzled was in the the the it the myskin.Varying pressure, angles, movements, tasted mark, sucked it, stimulated I beganto feel a warm, achedownbelow.I at it. wet didn't wantto get hard. wouldhavebeentoo meaningless. I couldn't It But
stop it.42

After the woman leaves, T6ru discovers, just as he does after his dreams involving Kan6 Creta,thathe has ejaculated. Thus the sexuality relatedto identityhelps us to place into greaterrelief the true import of the suggestive telephone calls T6ru receives, but flees from, at the startof the novel. Kumiko'sattemptsto reach out to Toru are, long before he can possibly realize it, aimed both at revealingherself completely (as she does in describing her body over the telephone) and at re41. Ibid., Vol. 3, p. 64. 42. Ibid.

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ceiving the same kind of healing thatToruoffers to his anonymousclients. Toru's inability to recognize her voice merely perpetuatesthe injunction against any image from the darknessof the unconsciousappearing(or, apeven sounding)the same in the light of the conscious world.At the parently, same time, Noboru'sremovalof Kumiko'score identity,literallyerasingher that she will not be recognizableas the Self, makes it inevitable,perhaps,, same personto T6ruin any case.
The Act of Naming

As noted above, names are a point of some interestin Murakami literature. In the early works they are used as a means of identifyingthe images that emerge from the protagonists' minds, sometimes for creating metonymical links between those images and the original object of desire. In other cases the names, usually absurdones, are offered simply as a source of humorin the work. offers numerousexAs the above analysis of Nejimakidorikuronikuru amples, Murakamihas not given up on the use of unusual names for his characters.But in this work he also adds a new facet, one more closely relatedto the critiqueof identity I have been describing,for partof Toru's quest, as I noted above, is to discover the name of the woman in the hotel room, to identify her, and thus to free her from her unconscious prison.43 This is, of course, merely a recreationof themes seen from the beginning, of of the need for acknowledgment the Self by an Otherin orderto establish identity.The only differenceis that in this case the task is performedby an externalOther. When Okada It is also the central theme of Nejimakidorikuronikuru. Torumeets the woman in the unconscioushotel room in the second volume of this work, she tells him sadly, "You want to know who I am. Unfortunately,I can'thelp you with that.I know all aboutyou, andyou know everyI thing about me. Unfortunately, know nothing about myself."44 Immediately afterthis, the woman announcesT6ru'squest in the novel: even look for it; you T6ru.No, you needn't "Findout my name,Okada
already know it! You need only rememberit. If you could just find my

I name,I couldget outof here.ThenI think canhelpyoufindyourwifeOkada Kumiko, right?If you wantto findyourwife, thenyou mustfind

Gen'ichiro'snovel Say&a 43. Murakami reinvigorates theme madepopularby Takahashi nara, gyangutachi (1982; Farewell to the gang), in which bestowed names (hence bestowed identity) are rejectedin favor of names selected by the principalsthemselves, but eventually bestowed names come back into fashion as a sign of affection between lovers, a means of notes, names are useless in the normalsense, beshowing one's love. However,the narrator cause they are used exclusively between the lovers, who do not disclose one another'snames to others. Vol. 2, p. 138. 44. Murakami kuronikuru, Haruki,Nejimakidori

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You my namefirst.Thatwill be yourleverage. haveno timeto lose. Every Kumiko a recedes littlefarther my daythatyoudelayfinding name,Okada 45 fromyou." The woman is, of course, Kumikoherself, but withouther core identity, now stolen by WatayaNoboru, she cannotfind her way back. However,the mere name, "OkadaKumiko,"as the above passage suggests, has no power to connect with her in the absence of that identity.Near the end of the final volume, in fact, when Toru has finally understoodthe truth,he tells her that she is Kumiko,but this has little effect on her, so long has she been drifting in this unconscious world without her identity. Like the unconscious protagonist of Sekai no owari to hddo-boirudowanddrando,the longer she is separatedfrom her "black box," the less likely she is to understandthe means to reconnectwith it or, for thatmatter,to care aboutdoing so. At the moment that OkadaT6ru "names" Kumiko,therebyattempting to restoreher identity,WatayaNoboru enters the room, wielding his knife. The two men struggle, and Toru beats Noboru to death with his baseball bat. At the same moment, the "real" Noboru in the conscious world collapses of a brainhemorrhageand teeterson the point of death. One might imagine, now thatToru has solved the mystery of Kumiko's whereaboutsand dispatchedhis enemy, that the novel might end with the returnof Kumiko as Kumiko and that Nejimakidorikuronikuru might be the first novel in which the hero gains his heart'sdesire. Indeed, this might actually be the end result, but the readernever witnesses it. Instead,T6ru must content himself with correspondingwith Kumikowhile she recovers, rebuildingher identity.We might well imagine thatT6ru'spower as a mystical healer would save her, but, unfortunately, with the destructionof Wataya Noboru, Toru'sconnection with the "otherworld" of the unconscious disappears,and with it his ability to heal. He can now only wait for his wife to rediscover her individualidentity, now that he has helped her to rediscover her name. Murakami'sSignificance:History and Identityin Contemporary Japan As the above analyses of Nejimakidorikuronikurusuggest, there is a vital connectionbetween identity and history,and between identity and the past. As the scientist in Sekai no owari to hddo-boirudowanddrandosays above, identity literally is our collection of memories of past events. Moreover, this identity has become jeopardizedby a determinedattempton the one handto assimilateall contemporary Japaneseinto a system of consumerism and on the other to eliminate, or at least gloss over, the events of history thatmake the Japanesewho they are. This is not an issue specific to Japan,of course. JeanBaudrillard writes
45. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 138-39. Murakami's emphasis.

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in TheIllusion of the End of a worldwidetrend,at least amongthe industrialized nations,to reversethe trajectoryof historyuntil time actuallymoves backward,giving us both the opportunityto redressthe errorsof the twentieth century and also to avoid the reckoning that the fin de siecle must inevitablybring. in Are we condemned, the vain hope of not abidingin our present destruction... to the retrospectivemelancholiaof living everythingthrough again in orderto correctit all, in orderto elucidate it all . . . do we have to

all summon pasteventsto appear before to reinvestigate all as though it us, A has we wereconducting trial? mania trials taken a for holdof us in recent with for at times,together a mania responsibility, precisely thepointwhen hard this latteris becoming increasingly to pin down.We arelookingto all the remake clean history, whitewash the abominations: obscure a to the is itself of (resentful) feelingbehind proliferation scandals thathistory
is a scandal.46

Baudrillardexpresses the same caution as Rat in Hitsuji o meguru boken,that even in its imperfections,the past should be preservedas accurately as possible, because that is who we are, and to give up the "glory, 47 character,meaning and singularity" of our historical past is to give up Baudourselves and whateversense of identityremainsto us. Interestingly, rillardtoo makes referenceto the past as a "shadow,"arguingthatwe seek to reverse history in order "to leapfrog our own shadows, leapfrog the 48 shadowof the century." Murakami'sliteratureconfronts such attempts to whitewash history, which are acutely visible especially in how the "official"Japanesehistory (sanctionedby Monbusho,the Ministryof Education)has dealt with Japarehearsalof the nese activities during the Second WorldWar.Murakami's lesser-knownevents of that war, the fighting in Manchuria,remindsus of the tendency since the postwaryears to rewritethe history of this period in more desirablelanguage. Implicit in his retrievalof the virtuallyforgotten Battle of Nomonhan,or in his descriptionof Chinese studentsbeing slaughtered, are narrativescontaining the ignored or forgotten sentimentsof the soldiers who took partin the massacres,whose personalbeliefs rancounter to the ordersthey followed. The armylieutenantin chargeof executing the Chinese studentsexpresses this tension succinctly when he notes to Akasaka Nutmeg's father, "We've already killed enough Chinese, and I just don't see the point of adding to the body count."49Nevertheless, "good"
The Illusion of the End, trans.by ChrisTurner(Stanford:Stanford 46. Jean Baudrillard, UniversityPress, 1994), pp. 11-12. 47. Ibid., p. 12. 48. Ibid. Vol. 3, p. 320. 49. Murakami kuronikuru, Haruki,Nejimakidori

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soldierthathe is, the lieutenantignoreshis personalscruplesandcarriesout his ordersto the letter.Murakami's interestin the war is based on this tenas he told interviewerIan Burumaseveral years ago, he is intersion, for, ested in how war "stretchesthe tension between individualsand the stateto
the very limit." 50

It would be accurate to say that Murakami'sfocus on the peripheral battles in Manchuriain Nejimakidorikuronikuru,events that few have heard of and even fewer care much about, is a challenge to "official" hishas tory,just as his literature consistentlyproveda challenge to the sense of the system has "officially" bestowed upon the Japanese.His work identity offers an opportunityto reevaluatethe hypocrisy of a nationalhistory that annuallycommemoratesthe atrocitiesof Hiroshimaand Nagasakibut still refers to the massacreof Chinese civilians at Nanjing as an "incident."It speaks to the self-delusion of a nation that, in KurokoKazuo'sestimation, dedicates itself to peace and prosperitybut supportsits affluenceby tacitly in participating the destructionof the environmentin the ThirdWorld.5l Kuroko'sview of contemporary Japanas a "Walkman Society," one in which people are "self-centered"(jiheiteki), is essentially accurateanddescribes the Murakamiprotagonistwell. His viewpoint largely agrees with that which has emerged from this discussion of Murakami's literature,but it is importantto remindourselves that the result of this is not a greaterindividuality;the otaku-zoku(introvert)in Japan does not possess a more highly developed sense of self than the so-called group-oriented Japanese of 20 years ago. Rather,the lack of everydayhumaninteractionthatKuroko (along with Kato, Kawamoto,and Yokoo) laments in contemporary Japanese society is precisely what Murakamihighlights in his literature.The dilemma,of course, is not new, but really a ratherdated existentialistproblem: how can the Self proclaimits existence in the absence of meaningful interaction with an Other? Murakami'sprotagoniststry to solve this dilemma firstby seeking the Otherwithin themselves, with predictablyunsatisfactory results, and more recently seek a similar solution throughtheir efforts to reach out to others. All the while such attemptsare hinderedby a social system thatencouragespeople to accept an identitybestowedthrough participationin the consumeristeconomic utopia of late twentieth-century Japan,ratherthanby seeking somethinguniquewithin themselves. There is no question that the utopia offered to the protagonistsin Murakami'sliteraturesince Hitsuji o meguruboken is attractiveand tempting. Murakamichallenges his readers:who among us has not envisioned, even if only for a moment, the chance to forget all of our problems,ignore our responsibilities,let someone do our thinkingfor a while? Rat declaresthis
50. Ian Buruma,"Becoming Japanese,"New Yorker, December 23 and 30, 1996, p. 62. 51. Kuroko,Murakami Harukito dojidai no bungaku,p. 15.

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idea quite early in Kaze no uta o kike: "thinkingyour way through50 years is a hell of a lot more tiring than spending 5,000 years not thinkingabout
anything." 52

Conclusion:The Crisis of Identityin Contemporary Japan I noted at the beginning of this essay that MurakamiHaruki'sappearance on the Japaneseliteraryscene in 1979 was no accident, that the historical moment was exceptionally conducive to the emergence of such a writer.It is also probablytrue that his first intendedaudiencewas his own generation,those who were between 17 and 20 yearsof age in 1969, in other words those most in a position to use the doomed Zenkyot6movementas a vehicle to establish their sense of subjectivity.This would explain two things: first, why a novel as vaguely written as Kaze no uta o kike would prove so popular,and second, why the Gunzo Prize committeefound it so The difficultto explain its preferencefor the work.53 membersof this committee were not insensitive in their reading;rather,separatedfrom Murakami by a generationof experience, they simply found it difficultto grasp the vacuum of post-Zenkyotodisillusionmentin which Murakami'sprotagonist seeks his identity.WhereasJapaneseof the prewarand war years were given a sense of purpose and identity by their government(whether in recoveryafterthe they liked it or not), and those who participated Japan's war had the clear purposeof rebuildingthe physical and economic basis of the nation, the aftermathof the Zenkyoto movementleft a void of disillusionmentthatwas enhancedby the apparent success (symbolizedin the conspicuousaffluenceof the 1980s) of the establishment. the Murakami's concern for identity,his desire to recuperate past in order to rediscoverthe sense of identity lost in 1970, is echoed in the works of otherwritersof his generation.Murakami Ryu (b. 1952), as notedabove, in attemptsto recover the violent, angry atmosphereof counterculture his first work, Kagirinakutomei ni chikai buru, but achieves a more sensitive nain (1987; 69), a work that recalls Ryu's activities nostalgia in Shikkusuti as a 17-year-oldhigh school studentin 1969, his gang's attemptsto create a "miniatureZenkyot6" movement of their own on the high school campus. Similarly,NakagamiKenji's(1946-92) short story "Juhassai"(1980;
Harukizensakuhin,1979-1989, Vol. 1, p. 15. 52. Murakami 53. Among the five-memberpanel, only MaruyaSaiichi felt that the work, representing of pointedto the new direcsignificantunderstanding the style of Americanpopularliterature, tion Japaneseliterature was taking.Of the others,Sasaki Kiichi and Sata Ineko liked the work but found it difficult to articulatetheir reasons; YoshiyukiJunnosukerankedit "somewhere between 60 and 85" out of 100 on his first reading, and after rereadingit decided it was "a good work," and Shimao Toshio selected Kaze no uta o kike as the least objectionableof the choices. See "Gunzo shinjin bungakushosenbyo," in Murakami,ed., MurakamiHaruki, pp. 36-40.

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18), which the authorclaims to have begun writingat aroundthatage, presents the self-assuranceof teenagers on the verge of graduatingfrom high school in the mid-1960s. But the writerwho most closely resemblesMurakami's approachto the past via magical realismis probablyShimizu Yoshinori(b. 1947). Like Murakami,Shimizu'scharacterslive in a world that is realistic but tinged with the magicaland look to theirpast experiencesto rediscoverthemselves.One sees this especially clearly in Shimizu's "Guroingudaun"(1989; Growing down), in which time is suddenlyreversed.No one can say why, but as time goes backwardthe dead rise and grow younger, while the living gradually make their way towardinfancy and birth,the end of the line. Yet the experience is not frighteningto the narrator/protagonist; rather,it is a pleasant for there is a sense of anticipationas he draws steadily nearerto the one, magical era of the 1960s and graduallyregains his childhood innocence. And why did time suddenly reverse?The protagonist'sspeculationechoes the concernof Baudrillard above: "There werethosewho saw the Year 2000 as a kindof wall.It seems thatpeoplewereafraid goingbeyond Year of the 2000." It suddenly occurred me thatit was the uneasiness ourtimethat to of hadmadethishappen. usedto thinkthatall thetime.I hadcompletely We forgotten. Thattimehadbeenawful.It waswidelybelieved humans that wereraptheir idlyapproaching destruction.54 Time, then, reverses because people sense their doom in the fin de siecle, 55 for in a sense, the "projectof modernity," as JtirgenHabermas would have it, will at the end of the centurybe proveda failure. Yet, in its reversal of time, the work also contains a caveat: after the sophisticationof the 1980s, can one really returnto the comparativesimplicity of the 1960s and 1950s? Shimizu'sprotagonistnotes thatat one time there had been intellectualswho studiedthe problem,but as time went onward (backward)they grew younger and more ignorant, and eventually there was no one left with sophistication enough to think the problems through.Technology,he also notes, especially computers,has gone steadily backward,making the task of studying the fin de siecle increasinglydifficult. With symbolismthatis perhapsa little too clear,Shimizu'sprotagonist readsFlowersforAlgernon, suggesting thathis characters, too, arestepping away from knowledge, from the savoir-faire of contemporaryurbanJapa54. Shimizu Yoshinori,"Guroingudaun," in Guriongudaun (Tokyo: KodanshaBunko, 1989), pp. 28-30. 55. JiirgenHabermas,"Modernity-an IncompleteProject,"trans.by Seyla Ben-Babib, in Hal Foster,ed., PostmodernCulture(London:Pluto Press, 1985), pp. 3-15.

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nese and the cool savvy of TanakaYasuo'sNantonaku,kurisutaru, redisto cover theirinnocence. One must not permittermssuch as "innocence"or "simplicity"to give the sense that the nostalgia in Murakami(or even Shimizu) is naive, howin one ever, thatit simply "misses" the past. Particularly readingMurakami recalls thatthe author,like his protagonists,has generallydenied any fondness for the 1950s and 1960s, for Zenkyoto or the issues it represented. What he seeks through his nostalgia is not to "whitewash" the past, as Baudrillard suggests, but to use it as a meansto seek the identitythathe and his contemporaries between 1969 and 1970. One hardlyneed add that lost the realities of the 1980s and 1990s have as yet given little evidence that those in the 20-30 crowd in today's Japanhave much more on which to build theirsense of identitythandid Murakami's generation,which helps to remainschiefly in thatage group. explain why his readership There is no real solution to the serious dilemma Murakami presentsin his literature. Despite the persistentrecession thatslows Japaneseeconomic expansion outward,Japan,like other industrializedstates, remainslargely withoutdirectionor cause. The quest for economic dominationabroadand affluenceat home has been largely achieved,perhapsmoreevenly in Japan, where 97 per cent of the populationconsiders itself "middle class," than anywhere else in the world. What is left? Murakamiimplicitly questions whetherthis goal of affluenceis sufficient,whetherit can adequately replace a true sense of self, and whatwill happento those who findit unsatisfactory. Perhapsthese questions are too philosophicalfor some, too prosaicfor others, but the author'sstrong readership,one that cuts across the boundaries that normally divide popularwriters from the more serious sort, sugeconomic gests thathe is not alone in his sense of forebodingtowardJapan's for the individual.As Murakami obsession and its consequences suggestsin who doubts the existence of a Undergroundand Underground2, anyone serious philosophicaland spiritualgap in contemporary Japanhas not yet real significanceof the events of March20, 1995. consideredthe
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