Ryan's post

 

This post will be more of a meditation than an outright thesis, but I made what I think to be a very important connection in the understanding of both The Strange Library and Pornography As a Winter Museum. In Audre Lorde’s essay (I will link it below) The Uses of the Erotic, Lorde makes a clear distinction between the “pornographic” and the “erotic.” The “pornographic,” the obscene, the relegated-to-only-sexual, the masturbatory (both physically and conceptually), and the focus of Winter Museum, is a body of content developed from society’s repression of the “erotic”: the honestly pleasurable (sexual or otherwise), fulfilling, informational, and the focus of The Strange Library. The suppression of the erotic, as you will see Lorde describe, is intrinsic to the perpetuation of the power of the conventions of our contemporary society. Commodified work, the continuation of hierarchy, and the suppression of individual thought necessary for modern labor/ transaction/ political systems all hinge on the erotic being, at the minimum, sequestered to the limited context of the bedroom and the escape of intimacy or, worst case, obscured entirely; this can push to the extremity of an individual never knowing it at all, and thus needing to rediscover it for themselves. The Winter Museum primarily (and explicitly!) orbits the pornographic; sex is cold, a collision of bodies without the effort to understand the other, a moment of possible sensate pleasure only (“like orphans hoping for warmth”). Murakami does not provide an answer to the pornographic, but instead illustrates its existence—it’s something he’s not necessarily aware of in name, but very attuned to in phenomenon, as almost all of his sexual encounters play out this way (devoid of the erotic). Winter Museum is not a thesis in and of itself, but a display of evidence supplementary to his larger canon, to his larger illustration of contemporary society as prolifically, and almost inescapably, pornographic. The short story, then, acts as a contrasting work or primary example of this problem that helps us to better understand the outcome of The Strange Library. The Boku of the story engages, before anything else, in the erotic, and seeks to live his life erotically. He wishes to consume information for the thrill of the activity, for the fulfillment of knowledge, finds honest pleasure in good food, and learns to reject the pornographic, the commodification of his effort (as harvested by the old man), the destitute prison cell, and the ball and chain—all figments representative of external society, or internalizations of expectations of internal society, at large. The sparrow/ girl is the very internal, honest, communicative urge for the erotic, a human’s desire to chase it to freedom, the impetus with which one may escape the self-destructive labyrinth of the pornographic. Also significant is Lorde’s attribution of the erotic to the feminine (not the womanly) layer of society/ the unconscious, and the female human form of the sparrow.

 

https://www.centraleurasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/audre_lorde_cool-beans.pdf

Different Translation of "A perfect day for kangaroos"

Ted Goossen's translation uses more literal words than Philip Gabriel's which is the version we read first. For example, Goossen uses "Maybe it's turned neurotic and gone into seclusion," whereas Gabriel says "But what if it had a nervous breakdown and is hiding off in a corner." The latter is much more conversational and comprehensible. 

In Goossen's translation, the part where Boku tried to console his girlfriend by wrapping his arm around her is eliminated, shedding an indifferent light onto Boku's character. The context of the deleted part is the girlfriend is disappointed at the baby kangaroo growing into a teen kangaroo. The Boku in Goossen seems to make a minimal effort to console her by saying "it could still be called a baby" and goes off to buy ice cream without replying to his girlfriend's remark. But the Boku in Gabriel has much more internal thoughts like trying to console her but afraid to say anything to further upset his girlfriend. I wonder why Goossen's translation is missing that part. But Goossen's translation includes the girlfriend's remark about Doraemon that isn't included in Gabriel's translation. The added line adds more awkwardness to the conversation, furthering the gap between Boku and his girlfriend.

 

                                                                                                                            Xiaoya 

Either Way You Turn, I’ll Be There: The Wall That Moves With You

While reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I was reminded of Radiohead’s “Climbing Up the Walls.” The song's lyrics — “And either way you turn, I’ll be there / Open up your skull, I’ll be there” — echo the novel's unsettling sense that even in solitude, you are never truly alone. This struck me because it mirrors how Murakami’s wall doesn’t just keep people in or out, it infiltrates the mind – it moves, reappears, and watches. 

In Chapter 24, the narrator is confronted with this directly. He comes upon a wall that appears out of nowhere — one that wasn’t there before: “I suddenly knew: The wall was able to freely change its shape and location. It could move anywhere it wanted to. And the wall had decided not to let us get out.” This wall isn’t a fixed boundary. It’s an omnipresent, sentient force that adapts to your thoughts, your fears, your movements. It relies on fear to separate the inside from the outside. 

As the narrator continues forward, the wall shifts from threats to taunts that anticipate failure: “No way you guys can get through the wall. Even if you did get through one, another wall would be waiting for you” (Chapter 25). These are psychological tactics. The main deterrent is not physical – the wall doesn’t have to stop you; it just has to make you stop yourself. Thus, what actually stops you are the internalized rules that you accept before you even try to break them. 

This is where I saw the connection to the song — in “Climbing Up the Walls,” the haunting is embedded in your psyche, rather than being imposed from the outside: “Open up your skull, I’ll be there.” In The City and Its Uncertain Walls, chillingly, the wall mocks the narrator and says: “Run as far away as you’d like… I will always be there” (Chapter 24). 

Interestingly, this is not a warning — it’s a guarantee that no matter where you flee, no matter how fast or far, escape is just an illusion if the watcher is already inside you. The phrasing “I’ll be there” and “I will always be there” is also perturbing, since it subverts what is usually a comforting sentiment and turns it into a promise of invasive surveillance. 

The terrifying thing about Murakami’s wall isn’t that it can’t be climbed – It’s that it becomes a part of you. The City and Its Uncertain Walls reflects how fear can create walls within the psyche, leaving us trapped not by someone else but by ourselves.

Irina

Multiple selves in Murakami's writing

I am intrigued by the idea in Murakami’s writing that people have "multiple selves." In The City and its Uncertain Walls, Murakami uses the unusual phrases “the real me,” “the real you” in the conversation between the girl and Boku. The “real self” of the girl, and the self Boku is interacting with, are separate. Boku also separates into two, when his shadow (or maybe his real self?) splits from him. I thought this language—“the real me”—was very unique yet closely mirrored language Murakami used when talking of Miu’s experience on the ferris wheel in Sputnik Sweetheart. When Miu looks through her apartment windows from the ferris wheel, she sees herself. “I’m right here,” Miu thinks, “looking at my room through binoculars. And in that room is me.” Murakami didn’t write, “but in that room is me,” he wrote “and,” creating an emphasis that the two selves are not mutually exclusive, whether those two selves are Miu’s two selves, or the two selves of the girl or Boku in The City and its Uncertain Walls. In Sputnik Sweetheart, Miu continues to refer to her second self without negating its reality/existence: she refers to it as “the Miu in the apartment,” “the Miu inside the room,” and “another me.” And then there is the question of “Which me, on which side of the mirror, is the real me?” that is mirrored by the question in The City and its Uncertain Walls of whether the narrator Boku is a shadow or his real self, or whether his “shadow” is actually his real self. This clearly connects to Murakami’s exploration of the subconscious and conscious—but it also made me think of a NYT article I read recently on “The Artists Finding New Ways to Depict the Human Body.” The author talks about how even as we are becoming more able to regulate the body through medical treatments, hormone therapies, organ transplants etc, the body is simultaneously becoming more vulnerable, under increased scrutiny from social media and becoming increasingly and negatively subject to laws and environmental crises. As it becomes more apparent that there is no inherent “‘human’ body anymore,” art is starting to reflect “profound anxieties over permanence.” I think this, in a way, relates to these examples in Murakami’s writing. Murakami emphasizes that his characters have multiple selves when he is also emphasizing their vulnerability or a struggle they are going through. The girl in The City and its Uncertain Walls, in my opinion, is struggling with severe depression and that’s what creates this split—same with Boku, in a way. As for Miu, she has a traumatic experience: Ferdinando rapes her. I also think it connects to anxieties around eternity, particularly with the theme of eternity in The City and its Uncertain Walls.

Hallie

Emma's post on The Strange Library

 I really enjoyed The Strange Library, it was one of my first introductions to Murakami and it still sticks with me even after reading much more of his work. One thing I found interesting about the story was the topic of voice. Most of the characters in the story do not have access to their own voice in one way or another. As we learn, the young beautiful girl who turns out to be the starling cannot speak, this is the most physical example. I find this first example particularly interesting because she is a bird and birds are first and foremost known for their voices. Secondly, the protagonist finds himself unable to say no or be impolite in any way to the old man, even when he learns what his motives are. The sheep man, too, describes how he loses the ability to resist the old man when he is faced with the whip which can be seen as another inability to use one’s voice or own volition. Lastly, when the boy returns home at the end of the story, his mother does not ask him at all what happened and not a word about the event was ever spoken between them. I think that this must be connected with the mother’s death at the end of the story when she passes away from an inexplicable illness. Perhaps the mother’s death has something to do with internalized pain and the inability to share or express trauma?
Emma Larkin

Museums, Sex, and Lonliness

Pornography as a Winter Museum is emblematic of the character's psyche, encased in a physical space. Within the 'uncertain walls' of the museum encases the hallmark of human shame, sexual desire, "when sex becomes the talk of the town and the darkness is filled with its waves, I’m always standing at the door of the winter museum". This space appears to represent the nature of the narrators mind when engaging in sexual acts. The common and mundane objects that would normally represent artifacts of a museum, significant symbols of ones mind, are devoid of meaning to the narrator, "of course the stove and fridge and toothbrush have no history - they're just things I got at the nearby electric shop or general store". 

I interpreted this story as someone struggling with a plausible sex addiction, and their inability to experience intimacy as a result. When this man thinks of sex he is brought to a cold space where things seem devoid of meaning. The narrator attempts to find warmth in this space, he warms up milk for himself, which is probably representative of some female relationship he is longing for. His acts in the museum, which I think represent different sexual acts, are procedural. He checks off his list of what I interpret to be acts of arousal as if he is incapable of doing anything else. But once "sex strikes the door" of his museum, and he allows it in by opening the door, the milk loses its warmth. He is confronted with the opportunity of sex, Jar 36 slips into a dense slumber, and he is filled with a sense of meaninglessness. There is someone at the door, but the narrator doesn't care. He's "given up on people", given up on any form of intimacy, and is left devoid of feeling. I think this story is about internal world of a lonely sex addict, someone who is unable to curb their sexual urges, who is blinded by them until they are complete, and is ultimately left after completion with an overwhelming emptiness. He yearns for the warmth of another, but is too depressive and removed to make a change.

                                                                                                                            Gia

Shadows Blog Post 5

Throughout this course and my reading of Murakami something I have noticed is his focus on people who don't have shadows. When a person doesn't have a shadow, this entails them having some kind of quirk or difference that sets them apart from a "normal" human. I first noticed this reading, Kafka on the Shore where Nagata, one of the dual protagonists, who does not have a shadow. He once did have a shadow, but due to a random event, he lost it as a child. When he had his shadow he was normal, when he lost it he became "stupid," but also gained supernatural powers. He could call fish from the sky, see things others can't, and has an intrinsic understanding of magical events. Due to losing his shadow he can no longer exist in society as a normal member, but lives on the outskirts. 

Not all shadowless people have magical powers, but they all can no longer live in normal society. We can see this in A City and Its Uncertain Walls. In ACAIUW all residents of the City are shadowless. It is described in detail how they differ form normal human societies. They don't use clocks, they eat on a different schedule, are less social, among others. We see another shadowless person in part 2 of ACAIUW, with Mr. Kayasu. He does not have a shadow because he is dead. 

In both cases someone not having a shadow represents them no longer being just human. There is something special about them and should be regarded as such. They could have magical powers, be a ghost, or live in a magical place, but none-the-less they are no longer the same "species" as a person with a shadow. Therefore, I would say that shadows represent something distinctly human. When someone loses it they lose a bit of their ability to connect with other humans. A shadow is an intrinsic and necessary aspect of living in human society. 

One could further this and say that shadows don't just represent an aspect of humanity, but of being apart of the normal world itself. After-all animals still have shadows and so do the trees. Shadows could represent being a cog in the machine of "normal" society. A place without shadows would then be a "non-normal" society, such as the city in ACAIUW. 

-Cam Hoff 

strange library

 Strange Library was a really fun read. I especially liked how he writes from a child's point of view and how it’s different from his normal protagonists. Despite the circumstances he finds himself in, this Boku can’t help but remark on his distaste for the strawberry toothpaste in his cell and how fried doughnuts are one of his favorite things (This may be the most well-fed character in a Murakami story). It’s not unlike Boku to ignore the gravity or absurdity of his situation, but in this case, he questions the circumstances but is shut down by the old man. It’s also one of the most compassionate protagonists. Typically, they seem very caught up in their own world and sadness, but this Boku is a definite people pleaser. The old man guilts him to the reading room, Boku gets in the cell so the sheep man doesn’t get whipped, and he escapes due to worrying about how his mother will react if he doesn’t come home. 

I feel like the story has a clear message about becoming an adult. Boku, going to the library for some pleasure reading, is taken and forced to read so that his brain and knowledge can be consumed by someone in the future. All the while he’s given a cell and three meals a day. I wonder if Murakami is making a statement on how our creativity and passion to learn for the sake of learning in our youth is corrupted by becoming an adult and entering the workforce. I have to learn x to do x. All the while someone profits off what you learn and you remain a prisoner til the end. It seems like Murakami wanted to write this from the perspective of the child growing up. Of course, adult life isn’t really like that, but that’s how it feels when people guilt you into doing things and you become a prisoner of your own choices. 

I’m curious what everyone thinks about the ending, why the mother didn’t react to his disappearance and the mysterious illness she succumbs to. It may just be Murakami making it more mysterious and weird so that everything doesn’t wrap up too nicely, but it definitely feels significant

-joe

Strange Library Blog Post

     I really loved Strange Library. Many of the themes we have already explored are seen here again, especially the concept of entering and meeting other people from other worlds. We see again that the narrator takes a journey to a far away place, and also does eat when he gets there. I found it interesting for this to be in a central area such as a city library, rather than a removed and rural area as we saw in A Wild Sheep Chase and Norwegian Wood. It seems that A Wild Sheep Chase was published one year before this story first surfaced in 1983, according to Wikipedia, so I wonder why he decided to use a very similar character in this story. I appreciate that we can understand that reference and connect those otherwordly elements across his different works. Another thing I absolutely loved was the physical reading experience of this book. I actually often love the art in children's book in general, but the visual elements in this story in particular are so unique that it added a lot of intrigue to the story for me. I found the collage elements beautiful, and it's interesting since it looks kind of the opposite of a typical informational library book you would find. Yet, the variety of images still have certain symbols and visual images that connect to the narrative of the story. I wonder why Murakami published something like this and if he plans to go back to another work like it.

Kaito

Strange Library

 A tiny little surreal book with a lot of parallels in symbolism. In this volume everything seems to mean something, and we get the resurgence of the sheep man, plus a little girl who is mute and talks with her hands. So what is the meaning behind that? The font when she is speaking is blue rather than black, and nobody sees her other than the narrator. She mentions that each person is in their own world, and sometimes the worlds overlap and collide. Murakami is cross-referencing himself a little bit. The narrator gets locked up in a prison cell in the basement of the library with a ball chained to his foot, kind of an eerie image. He reads alone about taxes in the Ottoman Empire until the girl or the sheep man visits him. This is kind of a full circle moment for him, I guess. I think he was feeling deeply nostalgic when writing this as well, just read the very last passage. The narrator laments his mother, who dies of a mysterious illness, and with her his childhood and the woman who had always looked over his shoulder. The sterling, sheep man, girl, all gone. When he was in the cell he wasn't alone because the girl and the sheep man would come visit him, and I'm sure both of these people have their models from real life, and he was able to make it out of the library, while the girl turned into the sterling and the sheep man stayed behind and punished by the old man. There has to be some sort of survivor's guilt on Murakami's part that was explored at length in Norwegian Wood. This is all just such a strange dream and he keeps having the same dream over and over, in all shapes and sizes. We saw it in A Wild Sheep Chase, we saw it in Norwegian Wood, we saw it in The City and Its Uncertain Walls, and now we see it come full circle in this short story.

-Bruce

Trauma in Murakami’s “Sleep”

I think “Sleep” might be my favorite of Murakami’s short stories. The amount of layers he was able to pack into just 35 pages is remarkable. I think two of the most important talents an author can master are efficiency and restraint, both of which are perfectly displayed here through his ability to both tell a compelling story about domestic ennui and sexual trauma depending on your reading.  

Anyhow the aspect I want to focus on is the exploration of trauma throughout the piece. Through my reading, Boku’s inability to sleep seems to be a dissociative state that is likely the result of some kind of latent trauma. With the freedom that comes with her new free time, Boku begins to slip back into her childish habits. This kind of regression could be seen as her inability to cope with the events, causing her to find comfort in the past.

The reason I think this all stems from a sexually traumatic event, despite never explicitly using the word “rape”, is because of her aversion to men, the hallucination she has, and her college boyfriend. While more ambiguous, she makes a point of the fact that her husband is “strange-looking”, telling us that even prior to her sleeplessness she had an aversion towards him. It's also important to note that referring to him as “strange-looking” is pointedly different from saying he's unattractive, especially since she says that he’s not exactly ugly. Rather than finding him repulsive, she just can’t seem to connect with his face, saying that she can’t draw him from memory despite their long marriage. This alienation might be something that she has with any man that she’s in a relationship with. 

As for the hallucination, the fact that the beginning of her sleepless nights comes from an old man pouring water on her feet could have a couple of meanings.  Obviously, the hallucinations of being a man further support her aversion to them, but then there’s the pitcher. She describes it as almost phallic, saying it’s a “tall, narrow, rounded thing that shone white.” If we’re to go with that thread, the fact that the man is pouring water on her feet then makes some sense, as washing feet is a fairly intimate thing, and for this strange man to be doing it to her without her consent we can see the links to the sexual trauma she might’ve endured.

And finally, there’s the mention of the college boyfriend. Near the end of the story, Boku mentions a college boyfriend she had who tried pressuring her into sex, and though she says she denied him, she doesn’t go into details of the aftermath, simply saying “I can’t recall his face. It seems to have happened such an incredibly long time ago.” Seeing as she mentions that her previous bout with sleeplessness also came during college, it's not a stretch to believe that it might have also happened as a result of this event. 

Now, if we see this view as plausible, I want to talk about the most interesting coping mechanism that Murakami lays out: Boku’s parking lot visits. During one of her visits to the parking lot, a police officer warns her of the recent murder/rape of a man and a woman, respectively, in this lot. Despite hearing this, Boku then proceeds to go back to the lot, dressed as a man. I thought this was a really clever but subtle way of showing us Boku’s struggle to accept what happened to her. By going back to this spot Boku seems to be trying to rewrite her story so that she could have been the man in the situation, and end up being killed rather than raped. It’s so tragic and emotionally compelling thanks to its simplicity. It's really just emblematic of what Murakami does best. Also, the story is so economic with its language that I don’t even think I’m close to actually having outlined all of the different symbols that he uses either, despite only being a short story. 

-Nicholas

Cindy/Jiahan Lyu's Blog post 5

 Cindy/Jiahan Lyu's Blog post 5

Murakami's otherworldly reality

As in The City and Its Uncertain Walls and The Strange Library, we encounter quintessential elements of Murakami’s otherworld: the Sheep Man, a mysterious beautiful girl, beasts with golden fur that eat Scotch brooms, and surreal occupations like the Dream Reader. These absurd yet dreamlike figures not only blur the boundaries between reality and imagination—or the subconscious—but also challenge our belief in an objective truth by continually moving across those thresholds. Rather than drawing a firm line between what is real and what is imagined, Murakami invites us to adopt a faith in perceptual relativity—to accept that subjective truths shape our experience of the world as a fundamental part of the human condition.

As the starling-girl in The Strange Library says:
"The Sheep Man has his world. I have mine. And you have yours, too. Am I right? ... So just because I don’t exist in the Sheep Man’s world, it doesn’t mean that I don’t exist at all" (section 14).

I take this as a message from Murakami—a quiet affirmation that perception is truth in itself. A phantom or figment of the imagination can hold just as much reality as tangible fact. Existence, in this sense, is not confined to what can be seen; it unfolds in memory and kokoro, the heart-mind, which together construct an individual’s private universe—firm, real, and unquestionable.

Cindy Lyu

The City She Dreamed, the City He Escaped Into

 In The City and its Uncertain Walls, I felt like Boku was separating himself from reality, like he had some kind of emotional schizophrenia. After he lost contact with the girl, he changed The city once she once described as quiet,walled with peace and no pain became his reality, he no longer seeked any human connection rather he sinked in the world without shadows being with his real self. In Chapter 1, the girl tells him, “You just need to wish your way in… But truly wishing for something, from the heart, isn’t that simple… You might have to give up all sorts of things.” This hit hard and felt like a warning, but he went in with that anyway. It almost feels he doesn't know which side he belongs to and that uncertainty is the core. He wanted to be in a world not to live but to hide in. The town became everything for him because it asked nothing from him, no memory, no love. He disappeared in a place that cost him nothing but his whole self.  

- preeti

The Town Inside Boku and The Wall as a Defense Mechanism

        To me, the quiet town surrounded by the perfect large wall exists solely in Boku’s head and notebooks. I just don’t see any other option. I am unsure whether he is dreaming or sometimes separating his mind from the real world to live in a fantasy world. Regardless, I believe the formation of the town in his head is a trauma response to being abandoned by his first girlfriend at such a young age, as the made-up town is the only solid truth that remains of his lost girlfriend and the wall acts as a defense mechanism against abandonment.

        Slightly before Boku receives his last letter from his girlfriend, he comes to the realization that “[he] knew next to nothing about [her],” (96, of my PDF). There was “almost no concrete information or objective facts, nothing [he] could state with certainty was for sure,” (96). He starts to question if everything she told him was fake, which is likely overthinking caused by sudden abandonment. However, he does note that the only certain thing he knows is the town surrounded by a wall, (97). It seems that his mind latched on to the one thing he knows for certain about his lost girlfriend, the town surrounded by a wall, which also happens to be the only place where he can see her again. It makes sense that someone so destroyed by abandonment may so forcefully latch onto the only certain fact about the person who hurt them. It is a way of reclaiming power.  
In the real world, Boku seems very aware of his abandonment issues. He went out with multiple women and considered getting married, but he could never get past his issues. He always screwed things up, personally sabotaging relationships because he was always thinking about his abandonment. He had “a constant fear inside” that “if [he] managed to unconditionally love someone, there would come a day when the person [he] loved would suddenly vanish … and [he] would end up rejected for a reason [he] could never fathom,” (134). His fear is a wall, it’s a defense that saves him from rejection by rejecting. When it speaks, the wall says that there is no way past it and that “[it] will always be there,” (142). Boku is aware that his defense mechanisms caused by his abandonment issues harm his relationships, yet he does nothing to work on it. The wall’s claims that another wall will always be waiting for him sounds like internal defeatist or depressed self-talk. Thus, I view the wall as representing the mental barrier between Boku and a healthy relationship. Connor

Beasts of Burden

    I feel very sad with the concept of the beast. On the surface, the imagery of a unicorn is magical and should evoke a feeling of amazement within someone observing the beasts(the reader). The best equivalence I can make is the 2003 Barbie move: Swan Lake. Upon entering the alternative world, the magical forest of the swan lake, Barbie encounters a unicorn and is amazed by its existence and what it's very existence means in terms of the magical nature of the forest.

Upon actually observing the actual beasts in the Town(the city and its uncertain walls), we see that their existence is tragic. They are forced into a cycle of life and death to carry the "emotions" of the town people. Then they must die as a way to expel those emotions and human experience from the town. It feels very biblical. We see a similar story with the story of Jesus. 

"For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, so that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have ever lasting life." I don't think there could be a more clear connection. The town offers its inhabitants ever lasting life and comfort. In exchange what it asks for is full belief in it. I believe that giving your shadow/soul is a physical act of faith in the town- that is sacrificing a part of yourself to be able to enjoy everlasting comfort. I believe the mythical nature of a unicorn should allow us to understand the preciousness of their very existence within the town and the town sacrifices these precious mythical creatures in exchange of providing the town residence with the everlasting comfort. They are the beast of burden for the town people's sin of being human.

                                                                                                                                Kashai

Blog 5: Knowledge, Truth, and Censorship

While reading both “The Strange Library” and segments of The City and its Uncertain Walls, I kept returning back to ideas surrounding the accessibility of knowledge and truth, whether it be more introspective or factual truth. In both of these works, knowledge and/or truth is sought after by the protagonist: boku searching for the girl and town from his youth in The City and its Uncertain Walls and boku seeking information about tax collection during the Ottoman Empire at the strange library. Yet these pieces of knowledge are guarded, and inevitably censored, by a system of sorts, leaving little opportunity for dispersal.

The City and its Uncertain Walls in particular reminded me a lot of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, where the lead protagonist lives within a sterile, perfect, and emotionless society; this protagonist takes on a designated role of The Receiver who receives memories of the past, many of which include pain, love, or suffering. Boku takes on a similar role in this town, where he is the only one able to read the past dreams of its residents. Why are these memories and dreams locked away to the general public? Why does only one person become burdened with the role of carrying these pieces of information? 

In “The Strange Library,” boku actively seeks answers to questions he has at the trusted location of the library, yet upon identifying sources to these questions, he becomes imprisoned by the old man and enters a strange, surreal world. The Sheep Man’s warning that the Old Man will eat his brains signified to me a form of censorship, and it also reminds me of the current issue of banning books in the U.S. A strange camaraderie between the girl, boku, and Sheep Man reflected a kind of oppressed group of individuals with whom knowledge and voice is forcibly taken away from them. 

Perhaps these magical realist and bizarre narratives are Murakami’s way of critiquing systemic issues regarding accessibility and education. 

Shi Shi

The City and its Uncertain Walls

 After reading the excerpt from Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland, I started paying attention to descriptions of sounds when reading his work. In The City and its Uncertain Walls, I noticed that mentions of sounds are not only recurring, but also prominent in the distinctions between the real and the imagined self. Many of Boku’s remarks of how something sounds often conflict with his expectations. In other words, the tangible truth conflicts with his perception. For instance, he observes that a knife “made a dry scratching sound, but didn’t make a single white line” (Ch. 7). The sound conflicts with his vision. This discrepancy even manifests into people as Boku questions “how could such a crude, coarse-looking man produce such a soft, charming sound?” (Ch. 3). A certain voice ultimately belongs to a certain person, a certain soul belongs to a certain body. Exemplifying one's possession of a certain voice, Boku notes that the girl’s “voice didn’t sound like your voice” (Ch. 5). Boku even undergoes this dissonance himself as his voice “didn’t sound like my own voice” (Ch. 14). In failing to recognize the girl and even himself, sounds are depicted as producing a sense of estrangement from the self, perhaps the real self. In that vein, sounds can be a means of transformation, a sentiment consistent with Boku’s new eyes when he becomes the Dream Reader. 

- Agnes

The Other World

Murakami's short stories and novels usually include the notion of the other world, the subconsciousness or an alternate reality, like a parallel universe. At first, I had a hard time grappling with this notion because I didn't know how to respond to a fiction with a realistic setting, but as I read more into his works I realized the magic of Murakami's works lies in the surrealism with a touch of humor. In the majority of his works, the other world often is a dark, cold place, where time has stopped. In "Sputnik Sweetheart," the other world is the carriage of the ferris wheel. Miu found herself trapped in the carriage, unable to escape, forcing her to observe herself having sex with Ferdinando. In this case, I argue that the other world is actually inside her head. My interpretation is that Miu actually has sexual intercourse with Ferdinando, but she does not want to admit it for some reasons. She is trapped in her subconsciousness, forcing to see herself having sex with a creepy Italian guy. Therefore, when she recounts the experience, she consciously or subconsciously separates herself from the scene by imagining the ferris wheel – the other world with another Miu – which sounds like dissociation, a situation where the mind is detached and separated from what they are experiencing. "The Girl from Ipanema" contains the exceptional other world that is full of music and sunshine, where Murakami talks to his childhood self or the singer who seems not aged at all. Looking back in time, or time travel, is like going to another world. This other world concept can totally just be one's mind, the imagination, that is a completely different world from the real, physical world we are living in right now.

-- Xiaoya

Small Acts, Big Connections: Exploring Murakami and Carver

Through reading Haruki Murakami's The Second Bakery Attack and Raymond Carver's A Small, Good Thing, we are brought into the intersection of human need, relationship, and the subtle transformation that defines their characters' lives. Both stories examine the quiet, yet powerful, way in which everyday acts of survival such as food can become moments of personal insight. 

Murakami skillfully combines humor and existential need in The Second Bakery Attack, a story about a married couple who return to satisfy their hunger following an almost ridiculous robbery attempt. However, the pair needs more than simply food; they also need a greater sense of purpose and healing. This urge, articulated in an apparently ludicrous way, exemplifies Murakami's use of surrealism as a means of examining internal conflict.

Similarly, Carver's A Small, Good Thing is about a mother, grieving the loss of her son, whose interaction with a baker, initially a source of irritation, turns into an unexpected source of human connection. In this story, the baker's act of "something small and good" is a moment of comfort amidst tragedy. The story embodies the fragility of life, where little acts of humanity can bridge the gap between hope and despair.

And as Carver said, "They had no choice but to accept the kindness of strangers." Murakami and Carver both mark how people's experiences, traditionally provoked by seemingly minor circumstances, can produce changes deep and extended in their understandings and associations.

- Preeti Lamba

The lonely reader

 Something that seems obvious now but I hadn’t really thought about before reading “Sleep,” was just how truly alone practically every Murakami character is. Even when they find love or a family, there’s always something preventing full connection or something that takes it away. In “Sleep,” this comes in the form of the wife’s desire for independence and escape from the monotony of her house life. But in other stories, the characters’ loneliness comes from a force outside their control, or at least one more unclear to them. 

This made me wonder what role we as the audience play. It often feels like the narrators are directly telling someone the events from the future or as they happen. So does this make us an unwilling confidant? Their conscience working through the logic of their choices? In “Sleep,” it feels like the latter. At the end of the story, she tells herself, “Just calm down and think, then everything will be okay. Think. Just think. Slowly. Carefully. Something is wrong” (109). Our ability to understand the situation becomes incapacitated by the narrator’s panic. The sentences and descriptions become short, fragmented as the perception of reality for the character changes. This, in Murakami’s other stories, leads to the incomplete, dreamlike descriptions of locations and people. If the characters’ mental state perceives a situation one way, that’s the only way we get to see it. 

This must be why Murakami liked Metamorphosis so much. The narrative forces the character into the mind of something they could never fully understand which allows Kafka to create a version of the world familiar but altogether separate from our own. By inverting the setup of the story, Murakami is able to do the same but show us how, even as a human, we can feel alienated from the world around us. Samsa experiences our emotions, embarrassment, love, physical attraction, but does not ascribe the same meanings or logic to them. Murakami doesn’t use first person for this story, forcing us to simply observe and increasing the sense of alienation. 

• joe

An Audible Creak: Splitting in Murakami

 The concept of people being “split” comes up in almost every Murakami story one way or another. It’s probably my favorite recurring theme thanks to how he uses it to explore themes of love and connection. The two examples that stick in my mind come from Sputnik Sweetheart, the Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, and Kafka on the Shore. In the three cases, we see different explorations of this idea. In Sputnik Sweetheart we see how Miu’s struggles with her perception as a foreigner in both Japan and Switzerland caused her to split herself, with her other persona having sex with Ferdinando. The traumatic experience of watching herself have sex with someone and having no control over it causes her so much stress that she is left without a sex drive, her ability to play the piano, and her hair color. The idea hadn’t crossed my mind till I was writing this that this might not have been the second Miu’s first time with Ferdinando. It’s said that he had been kind of following her around for a while. So it could be that this second Miu had come into being while she was in Switzerland, as a result of her increased feeling of alienation, and that her alter ego had been having relations with Ferdinando for a while, and the discovery of this manifestation is what caused her to lose connection with it; like the sudden awareness of their separation causing the two of them to actually separate (Like the checking if Schrodinger's cat is alive or not causing it to enter one of the two states rather than living in superposition). In any case, the alter ego manifests from Miu’s insecurity from her foreign background.

In the Wind-up Bird Chronicles, we see a different take on the dual personality through Toru’s wife: Kumiko. Kumiko’s split is brought on by the guilt and shame she feels as a result of her sexual abuse at the hands of her brother, and the promiscuity she engaged in while married to Toru. Kumiko’s alter ego resides in the pitch-black hotel room in the other world, where she implores Toru to not turn on the light. This more clearly shows how insecurity comes into play with these doubles. Kumiko doesn’t want Toru to see this shameful side of herself, seemingly believing that this side doesn’t deserve to be with him. The idea that if she were to show herself in its entirety to Toru he wouldn’t be able to love her causing so much mental turmoil that she literally splits herself. 

The final example comes from Kafka on the Shore (this one is more my interpretation). Unlike the other examples, Kafka finds himself split in two, but rather than having his second persona be an aspect of himself, it manifests as Miss Saeki’s deceased ex-boyfriend. We see the shift between the two personas most noticeably when he confronts Miss Saeki about abandoning him with his father. While Kafka seems to embody the spirit of her deceased boyfriend during their sexual encounters, it's during their emotional discussions the true Kafka comes to the surface. The two sides seem to be at war with each other, one longing to be with the girlfriend he’s been separated from, and the other a lost child just yearning for maternal love. 

In all of these cases, the “other” side of the characters’ personalities symbolizes an aspect of insecurity. Miu struggles to reconcile her status as a foreigner in Japan, Kumiko feels unworthy of love due to her childhood abuse, and Kafka struggles to fill the void left by Miss Saeki’s abandonment. 

                                                                                         

                                                                                                            Nicholas 

"Cathedral" and "Burning" - Maya Thiart

As I mentioned in class, after reading the story “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver, I can clearly see the influence his style of writing had on Murakami’s own voice. Many lines I could picture one of Murakami’s protagonists (like Boku or Watanabe) saying, with the kind of candidness and bluntness of the thoughts of those narrators. The open-endedness of the ending, the sense of traversing to another world/reality, mentions of music— all aspects I’ve come to know as Murakami-esque. The protagonist even uses food as a gateway to enter some sort of other reality, like in other Murakami stories. The blind man also fulfills the common Murakami role of someone possessing an “unusual” aspect (as we’ve talked about in class, a scar or missing fingers— no magical ears this time, however). The story ends ambiguously, with a lot of unexplained questions that leave the reader confused, just like the works of Murakami in his fiction (like found in the ending of Norwegian Wood and many of his short stories).

For another class I’m currently taking, I had to watch the movie “Burning” which is based on the Murakami story. Since I watched the movie before reading the story (although I had already read it last semester), I was surprised to find out that elements of the film that I would think to be classic "Murakami"-isms weren't from the original work-- for example, in the movie the girl talks about the being trapped in a well when she was younger, a very common trope within Murakami's writings. This, however, wasn't mentioned in the first work. While I think the adaptation is faithful in this regard, much of the changes also feel less accurate to the short story-- the characters' relationships are less ambiguous (as the married man and the girl in the story) and the ending clears up the vagueness of how the girl disappeared.

-Maya Thiart

Closer Look at "Samsa In Love" and Comparing It to the Original

If the original Metamorphosis was a commentary on the existential dread and discomfort of the human condition, Murakami's Samsa In Love is a completely reversed reinterpretation of the short story. They are so different, in fact, that one might think Murakami was mocking Kafka's take on humanity.

In this rework, or sequel to the original, if you will, Murakami combines masterful storytelling with vivid imagination to redeem the original bleak and drastically grim sentiments of Gregor Samsa's life. If Gregor Samsa can one day senselessly wake up to find himself a monstrous cockroach, then why--asks Murakami--can't the same thing happen in reverse? Not only did he reverse the main event of the story, he also reversed and retorted the central message of it. Metamorphosis was an absurdist piece that conveys the ridiculousness and raucous undertone of human existence: Gregor Samsa's manager doesn't show him the least bit of kindness, and his family gives up on him despite all his good graces when he was once human. The story had an infinitely negative ending. If one were to take a look at 

It is interesting as well to consider how Kafka employed the "metamorphosis" as a symbolism for humanity--Samsa's absurd condition is no better than that of a cockroach--yet Murakami's use of the metamorphosis serves as a distinction between humans and simple vermin. He chooses to explore what is it after all that separates humans from just an ordinary fish or sunflower. His answer is our fear of the mundane, our voracious desire for company, and the transcendence of memories. Murakami is saying that if he chose to start this all over again, much like Gregor Samsa in his remix, he would still have the unwavering and relentless faith in the humanity that resides within the human heart, despite everything, despite the tanks and cannons dispersed through the city of Prague.

Casting the similarities aside, Samsa In Love has many original elements that were in all honesty nothing short of captivating. What's the deal with the hunchback woman? Obviously, she is the love interest suggested in the title. But some questions I have are: what is the significance behind her role as an apprentice locksmith? and why is she a hunchback? We know Murakami likes to utilize special characteristics to promote a certain idea: for example, the ears of the narrator's girlfriend in A Wild Sheep Chase signifies an extraordinary ability to listen to the sounds of the universe. What is the significance of the hunchback, then, in this case? Is this also a nod at Gregor Samsa in the original, where he was flat on his back and unable to get out of bed?

There is also--quite prominently, actually--a Biblical allusion in this short story. This again calls to Murakami's status as an international writer: you don't really see references to the Bible in Japanese stories. In Samsa In Love, Samsa's house is clearly a miniature Garden of Eden--the protagonist awakes in stark nakedness, unaware of the idea of clothes and garments, saving but a desire to protect himself from the pecking of birds (what is the significance of birds in this short story? There were at least three mentions of it). As if he had bitten the forbidden fruit, he covers himself up in the most comfortable piece of clothing he could find: a dressing gown. In that sense, not only does this story subvert the intentions of Metamorphosis, in some ways it also retorts the sentiments expressed in the Book of Genesis. To Murakami, human desires that were considered a sin worthy of expulsion from Eden in the holy book is transcended into a source of profound joy and humanity. Learning and understanding humanity is a mission that by itself alone is enough to serve as life's purpose. Instead of being condemned for knowledge, humanity is blessed with the search to find out the definition of the things that we once did not understand: clothes, brassiere, war, tanks, fucking, and even God. No longer is it a curse, but rather a newfound motivation for Samsa that leads to a new life for him.

Despite Murakami's efforts to provide a more optimistic outlook compared to the original, one cannot help but view his riffing on the original as somewhat of a mockery. I'm conflicted about this message because one has to choose what to believe between Kafka and Murakami's messages--the two cannot simply co-exist. One side of the coin is a desire to trust that humanity was good after all (because of our simple, pure, and dear desire for company), and the tail side reveals the harsh truth about the darkness of the human soul that is ungrateful and seeks to rid of all inconvenience and abandon all liabilities, even those that were once so near and dear. If nothing else, this story conveys one thing with certainty: humans may be vile and knowledge may be cursed, but the desire for human company and the quest for knowledge unlearned will always be pure.

--Bruce

On Barn Burning

Ray Carver's "Cathedral" and Murakami's "Barn Burning", when read side by side, display the structural and storyline influence that Carver's work likely had on Murakami's dark short story. The introductions and character dynamics of either story are strongly paralleled, with Carver's narrator describing a relationship his wife had with another man, as does Murakami's. In both pieces, the wife experiences some hardship or dissatisfaction in her life with her husband, decides to leave, and is driven to engage with these other love interests, as if the engagement is without fault, but simply a result of circumstance. Both women also think it right to invite their love interests over to the home of the narrator, where husband and love interest meet.

Particular body parts and their abnormalities are always of interest in a Murakami, so when first comparing Carver's "Cathedral" to Murakami's "Barn Burning" I was struck by the attention drawn to the fingers of the wives' love interests. These fingers of 'the other man' are described in Carver's story when the blind man touches every part of the wife's face, his means of engaging intimately with her. And this intimacy affects her so that she must write a poem about it, and poem which later in life she feels the need to revisit. 

In "Barn Burning" Murakami seems to pull from this same attention to fingers, with the novelist narrator first describing the man dating his wife as having large hands with long fingers. When the narrator shares a smoke with this other man while listening to his jazz collection (another classic Murakami detail), the narrator remembers a song about a glove maker who won't sell his gloves to a fox cub. Then, when the Barn Burning man first tells Murakami of his 'hobby' the narrator notes the man's fingertips tracing the pattern of his lighter, and then later his fingertips are described stroking his own cheek. Throughout their conversation about their pastimes, the narrator as a novelist and the tradesman as a barn burner, Murakami repeatedly notes the actions of the tradesman's hands. Once the tradesman leaves the home with his girlfriend, the narrator asks himself if, in the play he recalled, the fox cub ever did get his gloves. 

This final comment about a fox cub and gloves convinced me that in the story, the boyfriend 'barn burning' is really him killing the women he is involved with. If fingers, hands, and the connection with someone else that can be achieved through them is significant for the connection between the wives and love interests in either story, it makes sense why the narrator questions whether or not the tradesman will get his gloves. Since the tradesman describes his barn burning as an inevitable obliging act to his 'barns', I wonder if Murakami is asking if there is a barrier needed to be placed between the hand and the man and the act of murder on his girlfriend in order for this man to commit this act?

Gia