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