Cindy/Jiahan's first blog post on Murakami detective short stories.

"Where I'm Likely to Find It": This short story reads like a blue melody composed of a combination of ostinato (continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm, paralleling the motion of going-up and down the stairs and encountering with specific people at specific time) and rubato (a stretch of a certain musical note, beat, or phrase, paralleling the end of lingering wonders and expected inspirations of the readers' thoughts). It tells a story of a mysterious case of a missing husband, who disappears between two-floors stairs, as if suddenly falls into an Alice's rabbit hole. This reminds me of a Japanese term, "Kamikakushi", or literally, "hidden by the kami", or "spirited away", which is used to describe the mysterious disappearance or death of a person (especially a child), after they had angered or encountered the spirit(s) in Japanese folklore. And on account of "Kamikakushi" is tied with Japanese beliefs in animism, mononoke, and historical Japanese efforts to make sense the unknown, this story thus shows a quite conventional Japanese manifestation, which poses as a little deviation from Murakami's usual style of creating a sense of foreignness or alienation through inclusion of foreign brands, food, terms, or idioms. Mr. Kurumizawa has mysteriously disappeared and is found in Sendai safe and sound after twenty days, as if he has undergone a real Kamikakushi. Thinking about what this Kamikakushi symbolizes, I tend to think it as a desirable, temporary, imaginative/surreal escape from daily responsibilities that are becoming too overwhelming over time, like what our nameless protagonist private eye dubbed as "the three sides of [] beautiful triangular world". What also intrigues me are the conversations between different people and our protagonist detective, through which dynamics Murakami gives us something like the iceberg theory. Through Boku's talking with the old man of the 26th floor, who's overly immersing in philosophical thoughts and muttering deep ideas without seeming to pay any attention to Boku, even without any word hinting at his loneliness, I can tell how lonely he is by reading their dialogic conversations. There is a term called Kodokushi in Japan for when somebody dies alone and their body goes undiscovered for a long time (especially unmarried old people), which comes to my mind as I am reading this). Although the old guy in this story do lives with his son and his daughter-in-law, he's emotionally distant from his family, and the overwhelming loneliness implied by having him coming down the stairs for smoking raises melancholy emotions. Every character in this story appears so weary, lonely, and sort of jaded, like a sad song.

"South Bay Strut": This is a short story both speedy and motion-intensive like an action movie with all the gun shots scene. And it seems to be inspired by The Long Goodbye, especially the interaction between boku and the police, reminding me of the scene in The Long Goodbye between Marlowe, the police, and Menendez. I enjoy reading it. One important thing I notice is that this story's setting is quite unusual, as it happens in a city as South Bay city, which locates in southern California yet in everything (the ocean color, and the inhabitants) different from a real southern Californian scenery, which creates an estrangement to me.

"Stockings": I do not like unfinished stories, but the count down in the end is intimidating, and funny, too.

Cindy/Jiahan Lyu