Japanese Literature: Haruki Murakami

This post is going to be a little different. Whenever I mention to someone that I’m interested in Japanese literature, the name of Haruki Murakami inevitably comes up; and I find myself having to explain my own sort of complex view of him. Since he’s been on my mind recently, I thought I would set down that view here, if only for my own future reference; but I get the feeling some people might find it of interest.

To begin with, it has to be said that Murakami is not only a highly skilled writer, but a great author; and for me, taking him seriously means adopting a critical attitude. The issue I have with him is basically twofold; part of it has to do with the response of other critics to him, the other with his work itself.

I have to call a spade a spade: it seems to me that much of the response to Murakami is rank Orientalism. The term orientalism was coined by Edward Said in his book, of the same name, in reference to the Middle East; but obviously it applies to, say, China, Japan and India in similar ways. I don’t find Said himself an especially deep thinker, but perhaps it’s because the concept of Orientalism is so obvious in retrospect once he’s pointed it out. Fellow author Kenzaburo Oe once accused Murakami, along with Banana Yoshimoto, of presenting an Orientalized version of Japan; and perhaps because, as a Nobel prize winner, Oe views himself as a spokesman for Japanese literature, his view was too harsh. But there is something here, and I’ll return to it later.

Now take a look at this New York Times review of Murakami’s recent After Dark. It’s subtle, but what is the reviewer really saying about the book? These reviews always seem to stress Murakami’s mystique, his whimsy, his opacity, all qualities associated with the “mystical Orient”–and at the same time this protects him from criticism and accounts, I think, for the overwhelming positive attitude. Critics view Murakami as a sage, and this prevents them both from criticizing him and from appreciating what he is actually doing. And this might be a stretch, but I wonder if in fact he’s being consciously marketed like this; look at his author pictures, he’s never smiling. He’s always framed like some Asian sphinx.

In examining Murakami’s work itself, I think it’s important to break it once again into two elements. Part of what accounts for its undeniable charm (and this returns to Oe’s criticism) are elements I think he shares with manga and anime. Murakami’s work is full of moe elements: take Dance, Dance, Dance with its obvious lolita and the meganekko whom the narrator loves for what he calls her “hotel spirit.” This is cute, and critics who’ve never read manga are drawn to it for reasons they can’t understand. This is all stuff that appeals to us on a sub-intellectual level. Yoshimoto, I think, does this even more purely than Murakami; she’s a poet, and poetry doesn’t have to explain itself. But Murakami’s work has intellectual content, which, yet again, I look at in two ways.

Above: Kenzaburo Oe

I think that the two main themes running through Murakami are, first, a critique of modern culture and its fetishim; and also a rejection of any notion of absolute truth in favor of a subtle and alchemical process of self-transformation. The former is presented I think brilliantly South Of The Border, West Of The Sun, and also in Wild Sheep Chase with the “ear model:” Murakami’s male characters love women because of moe charactersitics, and it’s ironic, therefore, that I find many people fetishize Murakami in exactly the same way. The rejection of absolute truth is Rat’s rejection of The Sheep: and this is involved, of course, with absolute truth as a fundamentally Western notion, and with the memory of Japan’s disastrous claim to absolute truth during the war.

All of this is valuable, but if I can extend to it a final, real criticism: I think that Murakami is essentially a negative writer. He himself always criticizes and never builds; his characters can’t escape from the dream world into any kind of reality. And perhaps he knows this. Certainly if an author could do nothing more, they would still be great. But it seems to me that very few critics actually think this through, and in the end subtly dismiss Murakami as a curiosity.

Of course, I love anime, manga, moe and everything else that seems open to criticism in Murakami’s worldview. But what I love about anime culture is that, while is uses moe to draw us in, it often presents frank and straightforward stories about everyday life. The central object in Murakami is the vulvic image of the well in Wind-Up Bird chronicle, the pit of introspection; perhaps the same well from which the demonic Sadako crawls out to doom humankind. Murakami’s characters can’t escape from it, and perhaps, in the end, Murakami himself can’t.

Edit: I just realized this makes it sound like I think Murakami (and not Koji Suzuki) wrote Ringu. I don’t; I just like the coincidence that the well, which is a place of psychological healing for Murakami, becomes a gateway to hell in a different book. And perhaps there’s something in this coincidence; there may be a danger in excessive introspection. The sleep of reason, as Goya says, produces monsters.