Haruki Murakami

by Chikako Nihei

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  ——— (2008) The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki between Japan and the United States. Cambridge: Harvard East Asia Center.

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  Tsubouchi Yūzō (2007) Amerika: Murakami Haruki to Etō Jun no kikan (America: The Return of Murakami Haruki and Etō Jun). Tokyo: Fusōsha.

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  7 Conclusion

  Monogatari as Antibody, 1Q84, and Stories after “Fukushima”

  As explained in Chapter 2, when Murakami criticises Asahara’s narrative, he also questions the treatment of the issues related to Aum on “this side,” that is, mainstream society’s desire to separate “us” from “them,” to eliminate the insane “others.” Murakami argues for a consideration of “our” involvement in the establishment of Asahara’s kingdom by calling attention to “our” failure to provide young people in particular with a stable narrative that could compete with Asahara’s. Murakami further developed this idea in a speech titled “Walls and Eggs” (“Kabe to tamago”), delivered at the ceremony for the award of the Jerusalem Prize in February 2009.

  In the speech, his criticisms of the “system” and his comparison between individuals and “fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System” (Murakami, 2009a: 169) was interpreted by the media as a straightforward condemnation of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip, although Murakami claims that the meaning of the speech was more complex. In the same speech, he claimed that “We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: we made The System” (ibid.: 169). While criticising the system, Murakami warned members of the audience by stressing “our” possible complicity with the system. His warning can be applied to “our” treatment of the evil other in the face of Aum’s cases, through which “we” ended up creating another system by consenting to the elimination of everything that related to Aum.

  Throughout his career as a novelist, Murakami argues that in order to protect themselves from the forces of the system, individuals have to develop their own monogatari, rather than accepting uncritically the one provided by the system. As Murakami expresses, his long-term deliberation and research on monogatari takes shape more clearly in his 2009 novel 1Q84 (Murakami, 2009b).

  1Q84 takes place in an alternative world that the protagonists have slipped into from the world of 1984. One of the protagonists, Aomame, names the new world “1Q84,” replacing nine with Q as both words are pronounced identically in Japanese. The title of 1Q84 is a clear allusion to George Orwell’s 1984. While Orwell described the near future in 1948, Murakami wrote about the recent past in 2009.

  Described by some as a condensation of the major themes of Murakami Haruki’s literature, 1Q84 covers a number of the regular subjects and features the author has developed since his debut (Fukuda et al., 2010; Uchida et al., 2010). The novel’s protagonists are Aomame and Tengo, both 29 years old and in the same age range as many of Murakami’s other characters since his debut. As with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami published a third volume of 1Q84 a year after the release of the first two volumes, adding a third narrator.

  Intertextuality, another device that Murakami often employs, also adds layers to the narrative voices. While Murakami often refers to Euro-American and Russian novels in his works, since Kafka on the Shore he started to refer to traditional Japanese novels such as The Tale of Genji and Natsume Soseki’s works. In 1Q84, the author devotes several pages to long quotes from different texts, including The Tale of Heike and Anton Chekhov’s A Journey to Sakhalin.

  The zenkyōtō student movement, another common theme of the author’s, is portrayed in the form of its lingering forces in the 1980s. In the novel, the forces of the movement are divided into two communities: a radical, armed commune that pursues a revolutionary ideology and a group of ecological farmers that have become a religious organisation. Murakami admits that the former group is an allusion to rengōsekigun (United Red Army) and the latter group named Sakig
ake to a prototype of Aum.

  Murakami has often created symbolic characters that embodied the darkness of society and the people who make it up such as the yamikuro (translated as “Infra-Nocturnal Kappa” or “INKling” by Alfred Birnbaum) in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Wataya Noboru in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Johnnie Walker in Kafka on the Shore, and Shirakawa in Afterdark. While these characters were described as discernibly evil, lurking underground in society, in 1Q84 the symbol of evil is replaced with Little People (ritoru pīpuru), creatures whose being is not explained clearly. This makes a meaningful contrast with Orwell’s 1984. Unlike “Big Brother,” Little People refuse to receive a clear-cut judgement of whether they are bad or not, although their influential power on society is undeniable. The leader of Sakigake, Fukada Tamotsu says:

  There is no absolute good or absolute evil in this world. […] Good and evil are not fixed or steady but constantly interchanging places. What’s important is to maintain the balance between the good and the evil that always move around. If either of them outgrows, it makes it difficult to maintain actual morals. This means, balance itself is the good.

  (2009c: 244–5, original emphasis)

  The world is constructed by both the good and the evil, and their balance supports the stability of the world. The judgement depends on where “you” stand in the relationship with “them.” This theme will be clarified through a close reading of the novel.

  Aomame is a professional killer, employed by a “dowager” who shelters and supports women victims of domestic violence. Aomame agrees with the dowager’s philosophy and follows her orders to kill the women’s violent husbands, regarding this as righteous behaviour. As a final mission, she is ordered to kill Fukada, for he raped young girls in his religious group. However, in her meeting with Fukada, Aomame comes to suspend her initial belief that he is absolutely evil.

  According to Fukada, he was chosen as a Little People’s agent, or Receiver (reshiva),1 through who Little People send their voice to the world. The Receiver needs a Perceiver (pashiva), who perceives the voice of Little People and passes it on to the Receiver. It is the voice of Little People that assisted the growth of Sakigake to form an enormous system. Although Little People are never clearly defined in the novel, it is gradually disclosed that their purpose is to protect the system of Sakigake, and for this reason they harm those who try to disturb them. They do so through hurting their intimates. In the case of Aomame, in order to prevent her from killing Fukada, Little People cause the death of her friend Ayumi by making her go to a hotel with a violent man. Fukada explains, “[Little People] are not murderers. They wouldn’t harm people in person. What killed your friend was probably what had existed in her. Sooner or later, a similar kind of tragedy would have happened to her” (Murakami, 2009c: 247). Ayumi was attracted to men who were aggressive towards women during sex. Rather than killing Ayumi, Little People arranged a situation where her weakness led her to be killed.

  It is my contention that Little People represent the power exerted by the system rather than the system itself. Little People did not create Sakigake, but they approached the group when it started to develop into a large system. As Fukada says, “once the system is formed, it starts to take on a life of its own” (Murakami, 2009c: 245). In a system, the power itself grows like a living creature. Even though Fukada is the leader of Sakigake, the control is not in his hands. It is the power of the system embodied by Little People that holds the control. In the novel, what is described as problematic is both the force that a closed system creates and the weakness of people who become involved in the system. Little People are not the embodiment of absolute evil; rather, they react to people’s acts of building a system and supporting it, which ultimately has harmful results. Little People’s indirect exertion of power on people represents the mechanisms of individuals’ involvement in the formation of the system. They simply capitalise on people’s weakness, as is remarked by Fukada, “weak existence is always the first to be targeted” (ibid.: 246). Ayumi’s weakness that draws Little People’s interest is akin to Aum followers’ struggle to find their own narrative, which eventually led them to believe in Asahara.

  While Sakigake was first founded as an organic commune, it ended up building up a system that appealed to violence for the maintenance of the system. Similarly, as Murakami says in his interview with Kawai Hayao, it is doubtful that Asahara necessarily schemed to carry out terrorist attacks when he first founded his group and that his followers entered it to commit crimes. However, the problem was that Asahara closed the circle for the purpose of building a “good” system. In response, Kawai explains the need for the visibility of evil in society:

  If the Cold War System had continued, Aum or the like wouldn’t have emerged. If there is a visible object to be blamed as evil, people can easily straighten their thinking and figure out what to fight against. But when such an operation is difficult, this kind of strange thing pops up.

  (Murakami, 1998: 223)

  In this closed system, in order to develop a sense of their own righteous consciousness, people need something evil outside their system. When there is no obvious evil, they create one in their imagination. As Murakami says, “the more [the righteous consciousness] grows, the more the internal pressure builds up, and it has to be expelled before it explodes” (Murakami, 1998: 243). With the increase in membership, Asahara started to struggle to control his own cult. As Murakami says, “Asahara ended up being defeated by the narrative he created” (ibid.: 225). Therefore, Asahara took action to remove external evil to keep justifying his cult. Murakami’s concern lies in the way a community formed based on a “good” purpose came to rely on violence for the purpose of keeping evil outside their community.

  The same is true of people on “this side,” who concluded that those on the side of Asahara were merely insane and wished to have them eliminated from society without attempting to understand why they had ended up committing these crimes. In this sense, the two processes mirror each other. Both sides created a closed system to oppose the other and appeal to aggressive behaviour to justify their own righteousness. This is exemplified by another system in the novel, which is established by the dowager Aomame works for. Although the dowager initially aimed to provide women with a shelter to protect them from their violent husbands, she eventually built an underground organisation to murder those who violate women. This is, again, what Murakami means when he stresses the interdependency between individuals and the system; “this side” and “that side” mirror each other, and the examination of one side is necessary to understand the other.

  Aomame, meeting Fukada and understanding that he is one of those who are utilised by the Little People, hesitates to conduct her mission because she is not sure whether he is as evil as she expected and deserves her “punishment.” Fukada, wishing to be killed to be liberated from his long-term physical pains, offers to save Tengo, who Aomame is in love with and who is under threat from the Little People. She eventually kills Fukuda, yet she does so for the purpose of protecting Tengo rather than of eliminating evil. Her decision to kill Fukada was made based on her subjective purpose rather than a sense of justice.

  Little People first approached Fukada’s daughter, nicknamed Fuka-Eri, before reaching the father. She was chosen as a Perceiver to pass their voice to the Receiver. Without knowing what they were doing, she helped them make the Air Chrysalis (kūki sanagi), through which another Perceiver could be created. Fuka-Eri eventually ran away from the Sakigake because she came to be afraid of Little People’s scheming, thinking, “there was something wrong, something not right. Something greatly distorted. Something against nature” (Murakami, 2009c: 413).

  Fuka-Eri tries to stand against Little People by spreading the story about them in public. Her story is sent to a publisher under the title of Air Chrysalis and eventually wins the Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in Japan. The novel acquires a large number of readers, whic
h constructs “antibodies” against the “virus” of Little People. The antibodies prevent Little People from sending their voice to Sakigake. In this way, the balance between evil and good is maintained.

  1Q84 demonstrates not only the power of monogatari, but also the complicated background of the creation of a novel. Suffering from dyslexia, Fuka-Eri is unable to write or read. While staying at the house of Fukada’s old friend, Ebisuno, she tells her story to Ebisuno’s daughter Azami, and Azami writes it down for her. The text is eventually sent by Ebisuno to a publisher. Editor Komatsu is intrigued by the novel but, noticing the unprofessional writing, asks Tengo privately to revise it, something that is not allowed in publishing industries. Based on Tengo’s revisions, the novel wins the prize and is released as a work of Fuka-Eri’s own. The complicated process of the construction of Air Chrysalis questions the very notion of authorship. Narrated by Fuka-Eri, reported by Azami, sent by Ebisuno, picked up by Komatsu, and revised by Tengo, the original author of the novel is not easily identifiable. The novel is also created for different purposes. Fuka-Eri narrates her story to build up the antibodies against the Little People; Ebisuno sends it to a publisher, intending to bring the media’s attention to Sakigake; Komatsu aims at winning the Akutagawa Prize through an illegitimately revised novel in order to mock the Japanese literary circles; and Tengo revises it, under Komatsu’s supervision, as a way of honing his own writing skills.

  While in Underground Murakami argues for monogatari as a defence against the system, in 1Q84 the characters try to face the power of the system through the monogatari of Air Chrysalis. In Sakigake, on the other hand, the “voice” of the Little People filtered by Receiver Fukada supports the base of the commune. Without him, the commune cannot keep receiving the narrative of Little People. When she kills Fukuda, Aomame becomes pregnant with a new Receiver. The cult members are therefore desperate to find Aomame’s child, to replace the Receiver so that they can continue to communicate with the Little People. Similarly, in the case of Aum, the followers looked for Asahara’s narrative to fill in the empty vessel of their egos. The relationship between the Perceiver and the Receiver is similar to the function of narrative: an author creates a narrative and passes it on to readers, and the function of the narrative relies on the readers. When it is passed to Fukada, it is employed to develop the closed system. When it is passed to Tengo, it helps create antibodies against the power of the system.