The Literary Landscape of Murakami Haruki - SOAS Research Online

334 Pages·2013·2.05 MB·English

by  Midori Tanaka Atkins

Akins, Midori Tanaka (2012) Time and space reconsidered: the literary
landscape of Murakami Haruki. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London
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Time and Space Reconsidered:
The Literary Landscape of
Murakami Haruki

Midori Tanaka Atkins

Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD
in Japanese Literature

2012

Department of Languages & Cultures
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Declaration for PhD thesis

I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the School
of Oriental and African Studies concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material
presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or
in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the
published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the
work which I present for examination.

Signed: ____________________________ Date: _________________

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Abstract

This thesis examines the literary landscape of the Japanese writer Murakami
Haruki (b. 1949), as shaped by the author’s depiction of time and space and his
application of language. Incorporating what can be described as post-national
cosmopolitanism, the thesis highlights the transformation of notions of individual and
communal identity in the context of Murakami’s own cosmopolitanism by using two
perspectives: ‘The world of Murakami’, in which a new type of literary landscape is
created, and ‘Murakami in the world’, in which Murakami might be described as a
cultural provocateur through his literature.
For ‘the world of Murakami’, the thesis conducts a narrative analysis, focusing on
Murakami’s language, construction of space and treatment of time and history in
narratives of his protagonists’ search for identity. For ‘Murakami in the world’, the thesis
approaches the subject of social criticism of cultural politics firstly through the author’s
position as a new type of Japanese writer within the discourse of world literature and
secondly via a survey of writings by three Japanese critics on Murakami’s novels which
analyzes their cultural politics versus Murakami’s zeitgeist writings.
The thesis concludes that identity formation and the negotiation of the mind
between “I” and Others in Murakami’s literature reflects the author’s cosmopolitan sense
of belonging. Murakami’s language renders a transnational mood and depicts his
protagonists’ ambivalent emotional distance from and proximity to others. Murakami’s
depiction of space and time, on the other hand, portrays the author’s own imagined space
as well as Japanese cultural and communal history. His literary landscape, thus, explores
a social consciousness that is located in a new sense of self, underscoring a tension
between modernity and post-modernity both in contemporary Japan and on the global
stage that can be described as neo-modern.

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Contents

Declaration for PhD thesis ...................................................................................................... 2

Abstract ................................................................................................................................... 3

Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................. 5

A Note on the Text .................................................................................................................. 6

Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 7

The World of Murakami
One: Language of Distance and Proximity ..................................................................... 28
Two: Murakami Haruki and his Landscape: Satellitic, Voyeuristic and Subconscious . 69
Three: Time and Memory .............................................................................................. 127

Murakami in the World
Four: World Literature and Murakami: A Writer Who Sits Outside ............................ 180
Five: Cultural Politics and Murakami Haruki: The Critics' Murakami ......................... 238

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 295

Appendix
Appendix A: Chart Showing the Country and Authors that Japan's First Collection of
World Literature, Sekaibungaku zenshū, Included ........................................................ 302

Appendix B: Chart Showing Authors, Titles, Publishers, and Dates of All Japanese
Works of Criticism Published after the Publication of 1Q84 ........................................ 303

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 305

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Acknowledgements

During the course of my research and writing of this thesis, I enjoyed a stream of advice,
guidance, encouragement, and support from many generous people. I am deeply indebted
to many friends and teachers, all of whose names I cannot mention here. My particular
thanks go to Dr. Stephen Dodd who was ever patient, generous with his thoughtful
guidance and enthusiasm. Prof. Norihiro Katō and the late Prof. Satoko Kan’s kind words
of encouragement remained in my heart until the last word of this thesis.

I am grateful for the many hours of discussions with Dr. Wen-chin Ouyang whose
invaluable support, encouragement and friendship guided me to the completion of this
thesis. I owe special thanks to Mary Anketell, Glada Lahn and Eric Schneider for their
proofreading, editing, and insightful comments. I have been blessed and encouraged by
the critical curiosity of Ben and Cecilia Atkins who took interest in Murakami and
Japanese literature at their young age. Last but not least, I thank William Atkins who has
been my biggest, consistent supporter.

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A Note on the Text

In this thesis, I included Japanese at only when I consider it necessary as an aid to
comprehension. I attempted to adhere as closely as possible to the original Japanese texts
in my quotations.

In the footnotes to each chapter, Murakami Haruki zen-sakuhin is abbreviated to
MH ZSH.

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Introduction

The contemporary Japanese writer Murakami Haruki (b. 1949) has established
himself as a best-selling, transnational novelist, short story writer, translator and essayist.
Murakami’s novels have been translated into more than forty languages and have reached
the far corners of the globe. His writings have prompted much discussion among readers
on a wide range of subjects. During the course of Murakami’s thirty years of prolific
writing, Japanese critics have adeptly responded to Murakami. Many have criticized the
lack of social consciousness in his novels. Kaze no uta o kike (Hear the Wind Sing,
1979), which won the Gunzō Shinjin Bungaku-shō (The Gunzō New Writer’s Literary
Award) in 1979, for example, prompted polarised reactions from prominent critics.
Yoshimoto Takaaki (1924-2012) and Maruyama Sai’ichi (b. 1925) praised and supported
Murakami’s works1, while Ōe Kenzaburō (b. 1935), after receiving the 1994 Nobel Prize
in Literature, felt compelled to voice his disapproval of the materialistic and non-
committal messages he found in Murakami’s stories.2
Other critics, however, note an increase in the level of his protagonists’ social
consciousness in Murakami’s novels written after 1995, describing this using the term
‘from detachment to commitment’.3 This identification relates to the sense of historicity
found in Murakami’s later works, such as Nejimakidori kuronikuru (The Wind-up Bird
Chronicle, 1995) and a collection of short stories entitled Kami no kodomotachi wa mina

1 Maruya Sai’ichi, ‘Atarashii shōsetsu no eikyō, ‘Kaze no uta o kike’ hyō,’ from the 22nd Gunzō shinjinshō
in Gunzō Nihon no sakka Murakami Haruki
2 Ōe Kenzaburō, Aimaina Nihon no watashi; Numano Mitsuyoshi ‘Murakami Haruki wa sekai no ‘ima’ ni
tachimukau – ‘Nejimakidori kuronikuru’ o yomitoku’ in Kuritsubo Yoshiki and Tsuge Teruhiko (eds.),
Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 04

3 Kuronuma Katsushi, ‘‘Detatchimento’ kara ‘komittomento’ e’ in Kuritsubo Yoshiki and Tsuge Teruhiko
(eds.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 04

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odoru (After the Quake, 2002), and it has been the subject of a number of studies, many
of them focusing on the theme of the romantic irony and the uncommitted or committed
attitude of his protagonists and linking them to Japan’s aggression in China from the
1930s, the student strife from the 1960s and 1970s, and the 1995 Sarin Gas Attack on the
Tokyo subway system and the Great Hanshin Earthquake of the same year.4 Ōe later
praised Murakami for his commitment to incorporating social issues faced by Japan in his
writings.5
The subject of geography in Murakami’s novels, urban space as well as ‘other
world/other side’ and its connection with Buddhist concept of the other world has been
interrogated as a critical background for the protagonist’s self-search in his short stories
and novels by many.6 For example, Tsuge Teruhiko finds Murakami’s various ‘other
worlds’ in the hierarchy of ‘other worlds’ that is described in Origuchi’s ‘Minzokushi-kan
ni okeru takai kannen’ (The Notion of the Other World in View of Ethnological History,
1952).
 7 Katō Norihiro (b. 1948) claims that there has been a shift in Murakami’s short
stories and novels in which the ‘other world’ can no longer be characterized as a
netherworld and it has become a different, weird world.8 Matthew Strecher’s research

4 Kawamoto Saburō, ’1980nen no nō jenerēshon – Murakami Haruki no sekai I’in Kuritsubo Yoshiki and
Tsuge Teruhiko (eds.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 01; Kawamura Minato, ‘‘Nejimakidori kuronikuru’ no
bunseki, Gendaishi toshite no monogatari – Nomonhan jihen o megutte, - Haruha-gawa ni kakaru hashi’ in
Murakami Haruki – Yochi suru bungaku, Kokubungaku vol.40 no.4; Stephen Snyder, ‘Two Murakamis and
Marcel Proust: Memory as Form in Contemporary Japanese Fiction’ in Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder
(eds.), In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture; Yokoo Kazuhiro, ‘Murakami Haruki x 90-nendai’
saisei no konkyo
5 ‘Commitment’ in the sense of ‘commitment as a Japanese writer who writes in the Japanese language’ is
also evident in Murakami’s writing style and language in his post-1995 novels.

6 Kasai Kiyoshi, ‘Toshi kankaku to iu inpei – Murakami Haruki’ in Kuritsubo Yoshiki and Tsuge Teruhiko
(eds.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 01; Kawamoto Saburō, Toshi no kanjusei; Katō Masahiro and Oshiro
Naoki (eds.), Toshikūkan no chirigaku; Matsumoto Ken’ichi, ’Shudai to shite no ‘toshi’’ in Gunzō Nihon
no sakka Murakami Haruki
7 Tsuge Teruhiko, ‘Enkan/takai/media – ‘suputonikku no koibito’ kara no tenbō’ in Kuritsubo Yoshiki and
Tsuge Teruhiko (eds.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 05
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 Katō Norihiro, Yellow Page, Murakami Haruki (2)

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connects identity search with magical realism and argues that Murakami’s magical
realism operates as a mechanism that portrays the protagonist’s unconscious.9
Philip Gabriel’s examination of Murakami’s travel essays finds similarities
between the self-searching process and the narrative development of his protagonists’
self-search in his novels.10 Murakami’s translations into Japanese of works by American
writers have prompted studies that examine the American authors and the effect of
Murakami’s own literary aesthetics found in his translations. Conversely, the influence of
the American writers on Murakami’s literary aesthetics, styles and narrative development
has also been investigated.11
Murakami’s standing as a transnational writer is the subject of many studies. His
novels and their international reception are interrogated in the cultural context and social
background of countries such as China, Korea, America, Germany, Russia, and Poland.12
The motif of America and Murakami is a frequently discussed topic, ranging from the

9 Matthew C. Strecher, ‘Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki’ in
The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 25, no.2.
10 Philip Gabriel, ‘Back to the Unfamiliar: The Travel Writings of Murakami Haruki’ in Japanese
Language and Literature
11 Hatanaka Yoshiki, ‘America bungaku to Murakami Haruki – mata wa, Haruki to American parupu no
kaori – ‘ in Kokubungaku vol.30, no.3; Miura Masashi, Murakami Haruki to Shibata Motoyuki no mō
hitotsu no America; Shima Hiroyuki, ‘Sekai, ishiki, sakuhin aruiwa genbun, jisho, yakubun’ in Honyaku no
sekai
12 Den Kenshin, ‘Chūgoku no Murakami Haruki – shinsen ketsueki’ in Murakami Haruki – Yochi suru
bungaku, Kokubungaku vol.40 no.4; Margaret Hillenbrand, ‘Murakami Haruki in Greater China: Creative
Response and the Quest for Cosmopolitanism’ in The Journal of Asian Studies, vol 68. No. 3; Kyo Kin-zui,
‘Chūgoku Murakami Haruki wa ‘meido in Chaina’ no Haruki-teki sakuhin o umu ka’ in Aera Mukku, 2001,
12; Kyo Kin-zui, ‘Taiwan ni okeru Nihon gendai bungaku juyō ni tsuite – dokusha no Murakami Haruki
sekai’ in Imai Kiyoto (ed.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 2000-2004; Michale Fujimoto Keezing, ‘Naze kare
wa sonna ni subarashii no ka – Murakami Haruki ga America de seikō suru riyū’, trans. Ōgushi Naoyo in
Eureka, vol. 32, no.3; Kim Sokuza, ‘Kankoku no Murakami Haruki’ in Murakami Haruki – Yochi suru
bungaku, Kokubungaku vol.40 no.4; Suganuma Noriko, ‘Kankoku Murakami Haruki wa Nihonjin to shite
hajimete besuto serā o dashita’ in Aera Mukku, 2001, 12; Nozaki Kan, ‘Yōroppa, Murakami Haruki wa
Furansu de Nihon bungaku shinkyū ronsō o makiokoshita’ in Aera Mukku, 2001, 12; Shibata Motoyuki,
Numano Mitsuyoshi, Fujii Shōzō and Yomota Inuhiko (eds.), A Wild Haruki Chase, Sekai wa Murakami
Haruki o dō yomu ka, a Kokusai Kōryū Kikin (Japan Foundation) project; Jurgen Stalph, ‘Doitsu no
Murakami Haruki’ in Murakami Haruki – Yochi suru bungaku, Kokubungaku vol.40 no.4; Tōyama
Yoshitaka, ‘Doitsu ni okeru gendai Nihon bungaku no juyō– Murakami Haruki no baai’ in Imai Kiyoto
(ed.), Murakami Haruki sutadīzu 2000-2004

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