Difference in tone from hard boiled wonderland to the city and its uncertain walls

I read HBW a long time ago and haven't revisited it since, but the impression it left was lasting. It struck me as one of Murakami's most "out there" and comedic novels - I remember laughing often at the absurdity of the real-world portions, set against the bland, frank city where people are stripped of their personalities. It wasn't immediately the most compelling of his works to me, but the wild and funny journey it took me on was far from forgettable. The strange city left me with a lot of questions, and the book made a very distinct impression.

Going into TCAIUW on its release date, I was anticipating something as wild as HBW, and that's not what I found. Instead, I was met with a slow-burning, beautifully written story that feels entirely disconnected from HBW's world, outside of the obvious parallels between the two cities. At first, this caught me off guard, and I kept waiting for the book to start feeling like a "Murakami novel" in the way I expected - full of his usual absurdity - but that moment never came. While there are characters who die and linger as spirits, and the town itself is obviously strange and unusual, most of this book feels grounded and calm in a way that sets it apart from much of his other work.

I think this disparity reflects both where Murakami is in his career and the specific context of this story. TCAIUW was written to finally complete a novella from very early in his career, which makes me think he wanted to approach it with as much composure and intention as possible - to put the story to rest the right way. And though I hope it isn't a factor, Murakami is getting older, and a slower, more measured pace might simply be a truer reflection of where his head is at now.

Overall, I'm a huge fan of both books. But I wanted to share my experience with the gap between two stories that, on the surface, seem closely related, and in my opinion, really aren't.

- kevin

Boku and its uncertain walls

 In City and its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, Boku’s journey into and out of the city and the consequences of his journey highlights Murakami’s views on the human psyche. Upon entering the city, Boku loses his shadow. The shadow, described as a profound part of a person, contains their memory, desire, and emotional depth. Boku eventually leaves the city and recombines with his shadow. Yet Boku still does not feel complete and he changes his life in an attempt to fix this emptiness. Boku’s lingering dissonance aligns closely with the concept of the integration of the shadow in Jungian psychology. For Carl Jung, the shadow represents the repressed, unacknowledged parts of the psyche that the conscious self refuses to confront or take responsibility for. Crucially, Jung argued that merely encountering the shadow does not constitute integrating it. Truly integrating your repressed desires with your conscious self requires an ongoing, often uncomfortable process of recognition and acceptance. Boku, though physically reunited with his shadow, has not fully assimilated it within his conscience. The result is a persistent sense of estrangement, where the pieces of Boku’s identity no longer fit together without being detrimental to his way of life. Murakami suggests that wholeness is not achieved in a single moment of reunion. Rather, it remains fragile and uncertain, much like the city and its lack of description. Boku’s unease upon his reunion reflects the deeper belief that confronting one’s inner darkness does not restore simplicity, but rather complicates the self in irreversible ways.

-Bradley

The Strange Library

 Hello Class, 

After Wednesday's class, I was thinking about The Strange Library and its interpretations. When I read the first page I had immediately thought that our protagonist was entering the "Otherworld" as he said the sound of his footsteps didn't sound right. This made me think that he was at some sort of midway point between life and death. This seemed almost right. However, during class it was brought up that the library's labyrinth was actually him entering his own mind, or his subconscious. When I thought about this, it seemed to put all the previous puzzle pieces together. 

This made me think of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The Library where our protagonist confronts his fears/grief about his mother reminded me of the part where Toru enters a deep well to get over his fears and find his wife. In that scene, the stillness and darkness of the well kind of forces Toru to just sit with his thoughts, which feels both uncomfortable and necessary. It’s almost like he has no choice but to confront what he’s been avoiding. These two examples appear to be almost opposite, Toru enters the well to find someone, whereas Boku gets lost in his mind and is rescued by aspects of his own subconscious (the sheepman and starling/girl). 

It also seems like Murakami uses these strange spaces as a way to show how isolating these experiences can be. The characters are physically alone, but they’re often confronting many things/people in their own mind.

Raul Valles

Prison of the Mind - Alexia

Murakami often creates surreal, enclosed spaces that feel separate from reality, but these spaces are rarely just physical settings as they reflect the inner workings of his characters’ minds. In both The Strange Library and The City and Its Uncertain Walls, the environments are shaped less by logic and more by emotion, memory, and psychological tension. As a result, the characters move through these worlds in ways that feel disoriented or detached, almost as if they are navigating their own consciousness rather than an external place. This makes it possible to read both texts as portraying characters who are, in a sense, prisoners of the mind, where the boundaries between physical confinement and internal struggle begin to blur.

In The Strange Library, the underground maze isn’t just a place where the boy is physically trapped. It mirrors the feeling of being stuck inside a confused, overwhelmed state of consciousness. The maze is disorienting, illogical, and difficult to navigate, much like intrusive thoughts or anxiety. The fact that he is forced to read and absorb knowledge, only to have his brain threatened. This suggests that his own mind is being turned against him. The imprisonment feels psychological because there’s no clear logic, no reliable sense of time, and no control.

In The City and Its Uncertain Walls, the city functions in a quieter but equally unsettling way. Instead of chaos, it is structured and calm, but that structure comes at the cost of emotional depth and individuality. The separation of shadows represents a splitting of the self, where essential parts of identity, such as memory, desire, emotional intensity, are suppressed. The city feels like a controlled inner world, almost like a version of the mind that has shut down parts of itself to avoid pain.

What makes these spaces feel like internal landscapes is that they operate according to psychological rules rather than physical ones. The maze reflects a mind in distress,as it is fragmented, confusing, and oppressive; while the city reflects a mind that has become too controlled, detached, and lacking emotional depth. Together, they show two extremes of the same idea: being trapped within yourself, either through overwhelming chaos or through enforced emotional emptiness.

Libraries in Murakami Stories- Carly

I think most people associate the library with being a safe, quiet place to learn or just to be. However, in Murakami's stories, libraries are often strange or even dangerous. In The Strange Library, Boku is trapped in a jail-like cell and is forced to memorize books until he finally escapes through an underground maze. In this story, the library became a place of control over Boku, a reversal of the common belief that knowledge gives you freedom. 

It also made me think of Fahrenheit 451. In Ray Bradbury's novel, books are forbidden due to the government's fear that people will start to critically think about the world around them. The government fears that people won't be able to handle the negative emotions that come from the freedom of thought.  In The Strange Library, books are not burned, but similarly to the government in Fahrenheit 451's ideology, the content of those books poses some sort of threat to your life. Books can take you away from your family, consume you, and hold you hostage. 

In Murakami's stories, I think libraries and books show how looking deeper into yourself can be uncomfortable. Boku going deeper into the library and having to question his reality is similar to the process of entering the hidden parts of the mind. Like bookshelves in libraries, we also store memories, fears, and desires. In Murakami's stories, libraries are used as a pathway to question your unconscious mind, which at times can feel difficult to escape. 

Libarary, memory, and a possible intersect between Strange Libraries and Uncertain Walls

 Uncertain walls by Murakami is probably my favourite novel of his so far. It feels like a return to Norwegian Wood with a maturity to explore the concept of his grief through a world rather than a character. Most interesting to me, is the conception of the inner consciousness/mind being both a neutralizing/safeguarding and decaying system. This reminds me strongly of many of the techniques used in therapy for anxiety and depression, in the sense that we so often percieve our anxious emotions as coming from the heart anf requiring a "rationalization" and or "temperance" from the mind. I feel like Murakami is somewhat challenging this idea by bringing in how the constant challenging, rationalization, and depression of emotions and memories doesnt invariably leads to a loss of humanity, otherwise known as the death of your shadow. This is invariably a story of seclusion, emotional instability, and human emotion.

The strange connection I wanted to make between A Strange Library and Uncertain Walls is in how they can somewhat be put together. We could think of Boku's job as a dreamreader similarly to the bookkeeper in strange library. What I mean by this is, both boku and the bookkeeper use an external form of information holding (egg, and person) and force them to mold the knowledge within them so that they can suppress/experience that knowledge and codify it as useful/tasty. It is this same give and take relationship with knowledge and could be helpful to us in understanding Murakami's conception of knowledge/memories.

Thomas 

Reflection on A City and its Uncertain Walls

I just finished the entirety of A City and its Uncertain Walls and out of all the Murakami books I have read, this one is my favorite. At first glance, it feels very similar Hard Boiled Wonderland and has many elements from Kafka on the Shore. However, this all changes when you find out that Mr. Koyasu is in fact a ghost. From that point on, I couldn't put the book down. At first, my initial interpretation was that in Part 2, the MC wakes up as his full self, even though it was his shadow that left and not his real self. Throughout this part, there are many references to this fact that despite his original wishes, whether it be him saying that he just woke up in this body despite this decision, or him actually having his shadow in the real world, compared to Mr. Koyasu who doesn't have one. This was the line of thinking that I held up until the last line of Chapter 62:

"Did you know that? The two of us are nothing more than someone else's shadows." (Murakami 406).

With this line, it came to me that A City and its Uncertain Walls told the story of someone within a constant state of dissociation. While experiencing dissociative episodes, you feel like you are in the backseat and not in control of your life. However, I have never considered the point of view of who was in the drivers seat, which in this case would be the shadow. In this book, the shadows represent the true selves of the characters while the inhabitants in the walls are only a husk of their past selves. There is no happiness, no sadness, just numbness as you carry out the repetitive tasks of a mundane life. This is where the real you is buried, under layers of depression and isolation, surrounded by an imaginary, high wall in your consciousness that changes shape depending on your internal state. When the MC and his shadow attempt to break out and are stopped by the wall, this is your own mind attempting to keep you from getting better. The world outside, is a scary, fucked up place that you aren't in control of, whereas the depths of your mind feel safe to you, being something that you have control over. Whether it be analyzing old dreams, which could possibly be old hopes and aspirations / old memories of yourself, or guarding the most inner layer of your consciousness and never allowing anything in or out, these seem much easier than presenting yourself to the real world. Similarly, with dissociation, you don't realize you are dissociating until you suddenly snap out of it, just like the shadow did at the end of part 2. So it makes sense why the shadow and the reader would think that the entirely of part 2 is told in the perspective of the real MC. 

One can also take into account that Murakami picked up writing this novel in March of 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic hit Japan. In more ways than one, this can be seen as another source of isolation and depression seen throughout this novel and why it may sound so different than his other works. He writes in a bit more detail about this fact in the afterword of this book, where he believes this fact to be significant in its production and that he "...feel[s] it in [his] bones." For anyone who was really intrigued by part 1, I highly recommend finishing the rest of the book and or at least reading up to page 200 before deciding to quit or not!

- Angus