Magical realism in murakami haruki

The Society for Japanese Studies

Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki Author(s): Matthew C. Strecher Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 263-298 Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/133313 . Accessed: 21/11/2011 12:19
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MATTHEW C. STRECHER

MagicalRealismandthe Searchfor Identity in the Fictionof Murakami Haruki

Abstract: This articleis concerned with how Murakami Haruki usedthehas of realism" challenge explore concept indito and the of techniques "magical vidual in It that raison d'etreas a writer to is identity Japan. argues Murakami's in of born exposethesteady decayof individual identity members thegeneration after War,andin each succeeding immediately the SecondWorld generation thereafter. doingso, the articlesuggestsa plausible In for explanation the factthatwhileMurakami's workswereinitiallyaimedat his own generation-the to in youngest participate the Zenkyoto movement-they remain consistently with between agesof 20 and30. the popular readers When MurakamiHaruki(b. 1949) first appearedon the Japaneseliterary scene some 20 years ago with his Gunzo Prize-winningnovel, Kaze no uta o kike (1979; Hearthe wind sing), few would have predictedthathe would, in lessthan two decades, establish himself as the majorvoice for the disaffected youth of Japan'scontemporaryera. His style and his message were cool, detached,disillusioned.There was little in that firstbook thatreached out and "grabbed"the reader in the way that, say, MurakamiRyu had reached out and grabbed readers three years earlier with his own Gunzo Prize-winningdebut,Kagirinakutomei ni chikaiburu (1976; Almost transparent blue). In sharp contrast with that work, filled with the rage of an determinedto persistwith its experimentswith sex, impotentcounterculture drugs,and violence, Kaze no uta o kike was almost poetic in its understatement. Yet its quiet melancholyand abstractreferencesto the failureof Zenkyoto, chiefly throughthe rebellious characterknown as "Rat," seem to have suitedaudiences and critics alike in 1979. One is strucknot so much by the underlyingangerof Rat as by the sheer impotenceof the protagonist to quell his disillusionmentwith the end of the 1960s. This seems betterto have capturedthe mood of Murakami's contemporariesthan the raw, livid of Ryu. anger
Journalof JapaneseStudies, 25:2 ? 1999 Society for JapaneseStudies

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JournalofJapaneseStudies

25:2 (1999)

Few readersin 1979 needed remindingthat, less than ten years before, Japan's greatestpolitical strugglein the postwarera-Zenkyoto, the popular studentuprisingagainstthe U.S.-JapanSecurityTreaty(Anzen Hosho Yoyaku, "AMPO"for short)-collapsed in utterdefeat. Indeed,fromthe time AMPOwas automaticallyrenewedin 1970, the unifying causes of the Zenky6ot movementwere eliminatedone byone. RichardNixon'speace initiative with the People's Republicof Chinain 1971 began to thaw the dangerously confrontationalsituation on both sides, between which Japan had precariously been positioned; Okinawa was returnedto Japanese sovereignty in 1972; U.S. troop withdrawalsfrom Vietnam began aroundthe same time, and the warended in 1975. At home, the Japaneseeconomy was aboutto embarkon its...