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

If I Could Float Forever In Space and Breathe A Clump of Hydrogen

Separation.

Boku in A Wild Sheep Chase is separated from the sheep man. Toru in Norwegian Wood is separated from Midori and Naoko. Boku in The City and Its Uncertain Walls is separated from his shadow.  Every Murakami protagonist finds themselves drowning from their own, personal separation.

What is separation to Murakami? Is it a form of alienation? Yes, but that would be oversimplifying things to the extreme.

Separation is the causality of what once was, meaning, the thing existed at one point in one state before being split or broken apart into another. Toru was permanently separated from Kizuki, which then transforms into genuine feelings for Naoko. When Toru's feelings aren't reciprocated by a detached Naoko, his feelings transform into affection for Midori. A dialectical chain of movement; Toru's feelings are repeatedly torn and put back together in an attempt to rekindle his separated feelings.

Boku in A Wild Sheep Chase goes through an opposite development. Instead of embarrassing the chain of causality in his life, he attempts to reclaim his separation through the chase of the black-star sheep and the Rat. He chases after these beings in hopes of reclaiming what never existed, a false-reality in which he was once whole. The sheep promises to make him whole, bringing him into dasein, the being of "there". But alas, Boku never ends up becoming Boku, the complete, but continues to just be "Boku".

The Boku of The City and Its Uncertain Walls faces separation from his shadow. He allows his shadow to live and rot within the surreal, impossible city. As he let's go of it, time passes as Boku forgets feeling and memory. Time moves on without him. In doing so, Boku simply becomes a person with only a capacity for thought. He thinks, thinks, and thinks yet never lives, the primary job of his shadow. 

Like life itself, separation is diverse. Murakami's characters often deal with the consequences of striving for or against it, but it an inevitability. A flower can never bloom into reality if the pollen if it doesn't trust the wind. The same applies to humanity. One can never grow if they choose to break apart. Through the loss of sight does one truly learn to feel.

-DK 

Abandoning the Library: Murakami's Parental Figures & Grief

I quite loved The Strange Library—it might even be my favorite thing we've read so far in class—and from the first mention of her, I found myself very intrigued by the main character's mother as a source of wisdom and of stability. I've been thinking a lot about manifestations of grief and loss in Murakami—the wife's slip (or lack thereof) in A Wild Sheep Chase, the clothes and records in "Tony Takitani," and now the leather shoes in The Strange Library—and most of all, what kept coming back to me was "Abandoning a Cat." (I don't want to speculate extensively about his grief over his actual father or about his experience, so I'll use "Abandoning a Cat" as evidence but avoid making any broader assumptions than what is provided in the nonfiction piece.)

Murakami's relationship with his father is something I thought about a lot after because the image of the two of them as mirror images that could never quite fully reconcile ("We were two of a kind. For better or for worse.") was present in "Tony Takitani" as well. In this novella, however, I was struck by this line in particular that the old man says to the boy after he says he can't stay to read because he has to make it home for dinner: "'When I was your age I felt fortunate just to have the chance to read. And here you are whining about the time and being late for dinner. What nerve!'" This immediately brought to mind the rift between Murakami and his own father, "I’m the type who eagerly pursues things I’m interested in but can’t be bothered with anything else...This disappointed my father, who I’m sure compared me to himself at the same age. You were born in this peaceful time, he must have thought. You can study as much as you like, with nothing to get in the way. So why can’t you make more of an effort? I think he wanted me to follow the path he hadn’t been able to take because of the war."

I found this similarity interesting, paired with the mother's death in The Strange Library and the description in "Abandoning a Cat" of their constantly strained relationship about which he says that, "If at a certain point I’d attempted to rebuild our relationship, things might have gone in another direction, but I was too focussed on what I wanted to do to make the effort." I believe that the experience of the young boy in The Strange Library might be 1) a nightmare (similar to the dreams he has in "Abandoning a Cat,"I still have nightmares in which I have to take a test at school and can’t answer a single question. Time ticks away as I do nothing, though I’m well aware that failing the test will have major consequences—that sort of dream. I usually wake up in a cold sweat.") and 1) a manifestation of his (possible) regret over not having mended the relationship sooner. 

I think the library works very well as a sort of obscured, liminal place (especially in relation to dreams after reading The City and Its Uncertain Walls) as well as a metaphorical space. My theory here is that this represents a world in which he does try to mend the relationship by following orders (since the boy's nature is inherently submissive and Murakami makes it clear that in real life he was "too focused" doing what he wanted to obey his father's wishes). The old man is an augmented manifestation of the expectations his father has for him (NOT the father himself, since I don't think Murakami thinks his father will eat his brain, but rather that his guilt over the expectation might swallow him whole), and the labyrinth of the library could be . I find the constant presence of the mother's worry and the lessons she has passed down very similar to Murakami's father, though the former is taken seriously and the latter was discarded. The mother figure would then represent the truth of what occurred (the state of consciousness after the dream): he, only briefly, was able to achieve reconciliation with his father before he passes when he "barely recognizes him," just like the boy in the novella when his mother seems to be shrouded in shadows. 

This novella still ends vaguely the way "Abandoning a Cat" does and outlines to me the crushing inevitability of grief and guilt even as the feelings are deferred and postponed: "My carelessness had ruined everything—even my pet starling had been sacrificed. I had lost my good shoes, and I would never see my mother again." Overall, I think this is a wonderful rich story and there's much more to say about it such as with the sheep man and what the "girl-who-was-a-starling" represents, and I'm very excited to talk about it in class!

—Alana

What is the shadow

Since I have read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in addition to The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I became very curious about what the shadow, a symbol that carries enormous weight in both novels, actually represents.

In Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the shadow is explicitly linked to human emotion, or more precisely, to the capacity for love. Both novels share a crucial detail: the protagonist never fully loses his shadow. It is taken away, yes, but it continues to exist under the Gatekeeper's custody rather than dying. This incomplete separation is what allows the narrator to fall in love with the library girl. The girl, on the other hand, has no shadow at all, which means she has no access to that emotional register and cannot perceive his feelings for her.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland adds another layer through the forest outside the Town. People who have not been fully stripped of their shadows are driven out to live there, including the girl's mother. When the narrator enters the forest, he finds far fewer residents than he expected. This detail, read alongside the frozen clock on the tower, suggests something important. Inside the Town, time has stopped entirely. But the forest's shrinking population implies that time there continues to move forward. The conclusion seems to be: people who still have their shadows exist within flowing time, while those without shadows are frozen, outside of time altogether.

This leads me to argue that the shadow is not a secondary attachment to the self. It is the self, or at least the core of personhood. The residents of the Town possess people's appearance, voice, habits, and manner of speaking, but they carry none of their interiority. They are physical replicas without a soul. The shadow, meanwhile, desperately wants to escape, while the narrator's physical body is strangely content to remain. That tension, I think, is the clearest evidence of all: if the body wants to stay and the shadow wants to leave, it is the shadow that is doing the wanting.

Boran

The Tangible World and an Illusion

 In class we discussed the concept of the main body and shadow, and the origin of the town. Regardless of whether the narrator is the shadow or the real body, it seems that the protagonist is more interested in meeting the version of the girl in the town, while being attached to her shadow (as she claims)—the part of her outside. Although he frequently exchanges letters with the girl, he is always thinking about the town. I think this dynamic with the girl and the town is like other stories about real life vs. a dream/ideal world. The colorful descriptions at the beginning of the novel and the nuance of their conversations should be better than the cold, ritualistic life in the town, yet he decides to stay in the town. This may be partly due to the girl outside disappearing, which would make him search for a secondary source of happiness. He clings to her 16-year old image. I think it’s also possible that both of them simply believe the town is more important to them than the real world, the girl becoming depressed, and the protagonist constantly searching for the “real” part of her. When reading these chapters I had the idea of a “good ending”—his moving on and searching for meaning in the outside world. However, he continues to hold on to his past, and his shadow comments that there is something unsettling about the town. I think whether intentional or not, the novel brings forth a theme of cherishing reality, which the genre of magical realism or surrealism draws us away from. It’s worth considering this while rooting for the narrator.

River

The City and Its Uncertain Walls -- a kind of Neverland?

 This is just a small observation, and I'm not sure if there's anything to it, but certain details about the other town in The City and Its Uncertain Walls bear some resemblance to Neverland in Peter Pan. For the record, I've never read the book by J.M. Barrie so this is based on my knowledge of the Disney movie. 

In the film, Peter Pan's reason for coming to the ordinary world of London is that his shadow has run away from him, and once he captures it Wendy sews it back onto him. Although its plot involvement goes no further, Peter Pan is the only other story I can think of that involves treating a shadow like an individual separate from the self which has the ability to attach to/detach from the body. Peter's shadow showcases how he -- and Neverland -- operate differently from the ordinary world. The shadows in The City and Its Uncertain Walls serve this purpose as well. Furthermore, as we discussed in class, it's hard to tell which self (shadow or "real") is the actual self, and which is a sidekick of sorts. In Peter Pan, even though Peter is clearly meant to be seen as the "real" self and the shadow just a mute, faceless version of himself, it's interesting that both shadow selves depicted by Murakami and Barrie/Disney are able to survive on their own, at least to some extent.

The other detail that struck me as similar between the two stories is the sense of being hearkened to by the "other" world's dream-like promises but having restrictions placed on the ability to pass between worlds. Wendy and her brothers gladly allow Peter to whisk them away to Neverland, but as time goes on they begin to miss the world they left behind. Peter informs them that they may leave if they like, but if they do so they can never come back. The draw of adventure and being able to stay young forever is appealing to Wendy's brothers John and Michael, but Wendy realizes that she doesn't want to sacrifice everything she has back home to essentially live in a dream. Eventually, she convinces her brothers to return home, and the adventure ends. The City and Its Uncertain Walls' Boku is entranced with the thought of meeting the "real" version of his girlfriend in the other town, giving up his old life entirely, along with his shadow to access it -- with the knowledge that he cannot leave. He becomes so absorbed into the town, however, that even when offered a solid chance at escape from it after realizing the version of his girlfriend within the town isn't the same as outside of it, he is willing to remain there just for the chance of finding a memory in the library from the girl. 

Side note: time also seems to slow down/not really exist in the other town, which is similar to how Neverland keeps its inhabitants from aging.

All things considered, even if inspiration wasn't drawn from Peter Pan,  the other town serves as a sort of personal Neverland for Boku where he has the promise of being able to exist permanently within the happiest memories of his youth... and we see him do this when he finally discovers the dream where he and his girlfriend walk on the beach, having become young again.

 

Sloane 

Reading Murakami

I just finished reading The Strange Library, and it made me reflect on my process of reading Murakami. His stories are so outlandish to me that they sometimes feel inaccessible. Any attempt I make at interpreting what a certain symbol means ends up futile – that’s how I felt reading A Wild Sheep Chase, too. I’m not exactly sure what to make of this…

One thing Murakami does capture very well for me, though, is the whole first love and heartbreak thing. Reading Norwegian Wood and now The City and Its Uncertain Walls (to a lesser extent) makes me think back to high school in a way that is nostalgic but also uncomfortable. For me, reading Murakami tends to stir up more bad memories than good ones when the story really resonates. I find it interesting that others have a sort of therapeutic response to reading Murakami, because it feels the opposite for me. That being said…I did kind of get that feeling for a moment reading “The Ice Man,” which has been my favorite Murakami story by far. It immediately made me think of “ice men” that I had met before; there was something very real about it that I could relate to my life. In this story, Murakami captured a type of loneliness that I could understand, whereas the alienation he portrays in his novels usually feels more distinctly masculine. While Murakami's stories don't all get through to me in a way that feels satisfying, there are sometimes when I'm surprised how well he captures a feeling or idea I can relate to.

Juliet

The Meanings of the Shadows

 I kept thinking about the meaning behind the shadows after class today, and I'm not sure if I'm entirely correct, but here are just my two cents. The shadows are the real selves, because they represent confronting the world with all its suffering, including old age, death, loss, sadness, and pain. The residents of the other world are ghosts, besides the protagonist. The protagonist created the world with his vivid imagination, based on his dead girlfriend's descriptions of the walled city, but the world's powers eventually grew beyond him, attracting the real ghosts of spirits, including that of his girlfriend. In that way, the protagonist is somehow supernaturally gifted, or this is all just in his head.

The ghosts still retain some semblance of memory or personality because it's impossible to be completely rid of those vestiges of emotions. However, they are all trapped in this walled city, which resembles some kind of limbo or purgatory, because they all have things they fear and are avoidant of, such as the old man's experience of seeing the other side of the beautiful ghost's face in the hot spring hotel. The walled city seems to be a conscious entity in and of itself, as it actively prevents the residents from ever leaving and seeks to maintain its equilibrium through the deaths of the beasts. What would happen if one of the residents, supposing they escaped through the whirlpool, reached the outside world? Well, because characters like the dead girlfriend are definitely dead, supposing she was not a completely fictional person created by Boku, I would imagine she would reunite with her shadow and move on to the afterlife. Regarding the transition from when the shadow jumped into the pool to when Boku finds himself working at a library, to me, Boku has never physically left the "real world." Although in Murakami, what happens in the "other" world always shows its signs in the real world, such as when it starts raining fish in Shibuya in Kafka on the Shore, there seems to be a divide between the real and the other world. Likewise, the events of Hardboiled Wonderland occurred while the protagonist's real body stayed in a coma. So I'm guessing we are viewing things from the shadow's perspective when he returns to the library, and the part of the soul of the protagonist that decides to stay in the walled city is still there. Because Boku is now divided and incomplete, missing a part of his soul, he becomes like a semi-ghost, and his presence now goes unnoticed by many others.

The Lost Love of Boku (or Murakami)

After reading so much Murakami back-to-back, I can’t help but start to play detective. I am truly desperate to understand the ultimate story behind the “missing girl” or “lost girl” that plagues so many Murakami stories: Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, The City and its Uncertain Walls, South of the Border, West of the Sun to name a few. In a strangely transparent afterword in The City and its Uncertain Walls, Murakami states, citing Borges, 

 

“there are basically a limited number of stories one writer can seriously relate in his lifetime. All we do– I think it's fair to say– is take that limited palette of motifs, change the approach and methods as we go, and rewrite them in all sorts of ways.” 

 

With that, I find it overwhelmingly interesting that one of these motifs is a lost love or searching for a lost love (in some ways we can see that in 1Q84 as well, though the main female character is not actually lost). I can’t help but wonder what it is about this specific idea/ concept that Murakami feels so drawn to, that it appears in so much of his work. Lots of short stories from, Men Without Women also document, not lost loves in the literal sense, but rather, the emotions and confusion that accompany losing the person that you love. 

 

I want to understand this motif, this role, this girl. What happened to her? In different novels, in different forms, she had either died or disappeared without a trace. Is the basis for Naoko the same for Sumire or Shimamoto? I can’t help but assume the “real” or complete story is buried within these stories (I am positive I am missing some as well since I have not read all of Murakami’s novels). Even in The Strange Library, there is still a mystical, beautiful girl left behind as well. It seems there is really something Murakami is trying to work out, or communicate in bits and pieces, and I would love to put it all together. I am not sure if it’s ethical to speculate about the artist based on the art, but I do find myself wondering how all of these works fit together. 

 

Thinking about how this motif has evolved over time, generally, it feels so interesting that in Murakami’s latest works, The City and its Uncertain Walls, the lost girl is barely mentioned. The entire first part is dedicated to describing their relationship, and how the city itself is integral to the connection between them. In part two and three the relationship is put on the back burner (by design it feels like) and instead we focus on the characters of another town (a real town), and then the journey back to the fictional town with the company of a boy from the real world. But upon finishing the novel, there is little to no resolution on what I thought would be a more central conflict. There is less resolution than the normal resolutions in Murakami novels, where although the ending is not explained, there is some sort of finality/message to take away from the story.  For me, it felt like the reader needed to understand the general mechanics of the “lost love” motif for The City and its Uncertain Walls to make sense. There was a certain intertextuality needed here– once again, like this was a piece in a larger story Murakami wants to convey. Not sure if that’s how anyone else felt. 

 

-Isabella

Thoughts on Recent Readings

 First, about City and Its Uncertain Walls, the symbolism of the shadowless city can be interpreted in many ways. As we discussed in class, I believe the shadow represents the ego and repressed emotions of a human. In Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the shadow symbolizes a similar meaning. When the characters in both story are separated from their shadows, they loses their emotions and become almost robotic. There is the saying that a root cause of depression is being stuck in the past, unable to live in the moment, whether it was a mistake or just painful memories. Thus, emotions and memories are intertwined. This could be an explanation as to why people in inside the walls don't have their memories. For them to be relieved of their pain and negative emotions, it also means giving up their memories. This raises the philosophical question of "can we experiencing happinese without knowing sadness? and vice-versa. 

Regarding Solaris, this story struck me as disturbing. It is already terrifying to be in space with almost no other humans around. Then, the protagonist hears about a friend who just committed suicide and his late wife shows up. This is surreal. In many of Murakami's writing, his characters are stuck in the past and are lost because of some sort of trauma or lost. As a result of this, many commits suicide. The protagonist in Solaris falls into a similar temptation with his late wife showing up, and so there is a similar theme of one's past controlling the person. In particular, this is true for Murakami's character like Toro. 

Eternal Soul Beyond the Wall

In another course, we compared the views on brain death in the West and Japan. In Japan, people are often reluctant to accept that brain death is the end of a person's life because they think the soul might still be there. In the discussion, I regarded this as a cultural habit. But after reading Haruki Murakami's City and Its Uncertain Walls, it gave me another way of understanding it.

In Murakami's novel, there is a small town where many shadows live. You can walk into that small town, but once you do, you might leave a part of yourself behind. The main body in reality is still living, and the tranquility of the small town gives the protagonist a sense of detachment from reality. This seems like another place where the soul can go while the body continues to live. I think this can correspond to the concept of personhood I discussed when I was studying brain death. Japanese culture holds that personhood is located throughout the body rather than solely in the brain. The issue is not whether the brain is still working, but whether that person is still "there" in another way. Western medicine says that without brain activity, there are no human beings. But Haruki Murakami shows that you can live in one world and remain a soul in another. The soul doesn't need a heartbeat but it just needs a wall through which it can pass.

Vivian

Murakami writing

Hi, just some personal opinion.

What’s truly baffling about Haruki Murakami is the bizarre disconnect between the man and the work. He’s built this public persona of the ultimate self-controlled professional: a guy who runs marathons, wakes up at 4 AM, and lives a life of quiet, rhythmic routine. But as soon as you open his books, you’re hit with a psychic landscape that feels utterly unhinged, and not in a way that feels particularly meaningful.

The most exhausting part of reading Murakami is his reliance on gratuitous, often borderline voyeuristic sexual descriptions. Take Norwegian Wood, specifically the backstory involving the young girl and Reiko. There are a million ways to write about trauma, psychological collapse, or the loss of reputation. Yet, Murakami consistently defaults to the most depraved, uncomfortable scenarios possible. It almost feels like he’s indulging in a specific kind of dirty storytelling because he lacks the creative range to destroy a character’s world any other way.

I often wonder: who is the novels actually for? He creates these dreamlike, cool atmospheres, such as libraries, wells, shadows, and urban isolation which lure people in. But once you’re there, you realize the depth is an illusion. He mistakes weirdness for complexity and perversion for profundity. It’s as if he thinks that if he writes something unsettling or abstract enough, the reader will do the heavy lifting and imagine a meaning that isn't actually there.

At the end of the day, his disciplined lifestyle feels like a marketing shield. It allows people to praise his work as high art when, in reality, a lot of it reads like the repetitive fantasies of someone who is deeply disconnected from how real human emotions and consequences work. True literary mastery shouldn't require this much cheap shock value to stay interesting.

However, It must be admitted that Murakami is a genius of atmosphere. He has an uncanny ability to capture the weightless boredom of modern life, turning a summer afternoon, a cold can of beer, or an old jazz record into something rhythmic. This unique Murakami aesthetics has provided a beautifully crafted sanctuary for countless lonely souls looking to escape reality for a moment.

Wendy

How memories change a person

When reading City and Its Uncertain Walls, I kept thinking about Norwegian Wood. What stood out to me most was the writing style, as in both books, the narration feels less like something happening in the present and more like someone carefully reconstructing the past through memory. Because of that, both stories feel emotionally distant and melancholic. That mood seems very common in Murakami's writing, where even strong emotions are expressed in a somewhat restrained and detached way. 

What I found interesting was how this memory-like style of writing affected the portrayal of the girl. Since the narrator tells the story in a dreamlike way, she starts to feel less like a physical person and more like an abstract idea or dream. That feeling becomes even stronger when she says she is a shadow. To me, the shadow idea does not just make the story more surreal, but also makes her seem like someone who exists only partially. I also thought that in some way, Murakami is showing that memory does not keep people exactly the same, but slowly changes them over time. The girl is still very clear in the narrator's mind, but she also feels far away and hard to truly understand. It seems like the narrator is attached not only to the girl herself but also to his memory of her. 

- Shannon Li

Why Japan Feels Real

Hi guys, today I don't want to talk about Murakami's texts or writing style. Instead, I want to talk about Murakami and daily life.

As someone born in China, who frequently visits Japan, and now studies in the US, I personally feel a huge difference between these three places, especially between Japan and the other two. This feeling hits hardest when I visit malls or restaurants in the US and China. I don't know why, but there's always this sense of imitation, or some kind of alienation. In Japan, I never feel that. I just feel... comfortable.

This feeling had been bothering me for a long time, and I couldn't figure out where it came from or why it existed.

Then one day, curiosity got the better of me and I decided to ask Claude about it (it's not an ad lol). Through that conversation, I finally landed on something that made sense.

The details. In Japan, details are treated with a kind of care that has nothing to do with making you spend more money. The onigiri is made well because it should be made well. Not for Instagram. Not for the brand. Just because that's the standard it deserves. In Chinese malls and American malls, every detail exists to serve an external goal: conversion rate, brand image, revenue. The details are instruments.

That's when Claude pointed something out to me: intrinsic value versus instrumental value. In those malls, everything exists to serve something else. Nothing is there because it deserves to be there. 

And that's when it clicked why I love Murakami.

His characters live in exactly this world. Surrounded by the same hollow, instrumentalized spaces, they spend their lives searching for the things that still hold intrinsic value. A specific record. A simple plate of spaghetti cooked carefully. A bartender who wipes the glass like it matters. 

I didn't fall in love with Murakami because I read him and discovered something new. It was the opposite, I already carried this feeling for years without knowing what it was. And then I found out that my favorite author had been writing about exactly this, for decades, across every single book. He'd been naming this feeling long before I could.

Maybe that's what good literature does. It doesn't teach you feelings. It finds the ones you already have, and finally articulates them. 

Anyway, that's the little rabbit hole I fell into, and I thought it worth to share.

Boran

Murakami on Sexuality and Gender

The largest blemish on Murakami's career as a writer (aside from his pretty weird sex scenes) is the criticism he faces for the way he writes female characters. It can also be argued that his portrayals of LGBTQ+ characters are similarly stereotypical and underdeveloped. As a huge fan of his writing, I often find myself defending these portrayals to friends when I recommend his books, even though I do recognize his weaknesses on these fronts.

I find it harder to defend his portrayals of women in particular. Reading through many of his works, the hypersexualized roles that his female characters often occupy come across as somewhat egregious, especially for a first-time reader. While not all of his novels contain women that fit this description, the fact that they exist at all is a fair criticism. Being the optimist I am - and a huge fan - I want to believe that Murakami has good intentions, that he genuinely holds no conscious prejudice or bias against women, and that any such reading of his female characters is coincidental. But even granting him pure intentions, it remains a valid point of criticism, even if it isn't something that directly affects my enjoyment of his storytelling.

I take a similar stance on his portrayal of LGBTQ+ characters, who are often somewhat stereotypical. His gay male characters tend to be defined by neatness, good looks, and a put-together demeanor - with little variation - and his queer female characters frequently treat same-sex attraction as something non-serious or "in the past." These are both fairly reductive characterizations. That said, I want to believe his intentions are good here, too; these stereotypes aren't inherently negative, and portraying queer characters at all was fairly progressive for his era.

Ultimately, I think the general (though not constant) weakness in his female and LGBTQ+ characterizations is a valid criticism, and one I recognize. But it isn't one that truly detracts from my enjoyment of him as an author. His own openness on the matter actually makes me feel a little better about it. The fact that he hasn't even noticed these patterns himself suggests he's writing from a place of genuine openness and falling into them unconsciously (assuming that he isn't feigning his innocence). Both weaknesses are also compounded by Murakami's unsightly sex scenes, which makes me wonder whether the root of the issue lies not in misogyny or homophobia, but in his just generally weird relationship with sex - though I can't say that with any certainty.

The Little Green Me

 Hello Class, 

Today I have been thinking a lot about what the little green monster is. While I am still unsure,
I think I have a pretty good theory, or at least a theory that I like. Lets start at the beginning,
our narrator talks about one of the most important parts of her childhood, the tree she planted
as a young girl. She calls it her 'special favorite' and an 'old friend', this obviously gives an
insight later in the story to the origin of the little green monster. It made me think that the little
green monster has been there, possibly growing, possibly digging up the whole time. Either
way, the little green monster seems to be something from her childhood. The feminist reading
from class says that the monster is freedom, but I think that it is more connected to our narrator
than simply her repressed thoughts of freedom. The little green monster is all of her darkest,
most undesirable traits. These traits are things that she has been repressing and trying to hide
since childhood. Whether it was her malicious thoughts, cruel actions, or even physical
features she didn't like. 

This theory also lends itself to justifying the immense cruelty that our narrator shows to the little
green monster. You might ask why the little green monster would confess its love, but in reality
that is a fairly simple question. The worst part about anyone's worst qualities is that they are so
hard to get rid of. Bad habits are habitual, they help you cope in negative ways, release stress in
a harmful manner, and more. It only makes sense the manifestation of these habits would love 
you and want to stay with you forever.

That completes my theory.

- Raul Valles III

Thoughts on the Article and "Little Green Monster" - Katherine

 I felt like Murakami's response, while not dismissive, was revealing in its defensiveness. It felt like trying to seem open-minded, while still admitting to a lack of understanding, constituted a sort of evasion or an unwillingness to address the issues brought forth, other than saying that he sees there is nothing wrong with his works. He acknowledged the critique, noted that he writes from what he knows, and suggested that his female characters are idealized because that is how his male narrators see them. That explains why the roles that women play differ so drastically when they are told from different points of view in the story. In many of his novels, Murakami's women cluster around certain archetypes. As we discussed in class, that is certainly true of his male characters as well, and from the assigned reading on gay men in Murakami's works, it seems like a pattern for his mind to congregate on certain archetypes for certain genders and sexualities. So to be fair, this quirk of his does not just seem to land on women. Noting down some of the types of women commonly found in the story, we have the unattainable woman from the past, like Naoko, the warm, sexually forthcoming woman of the present, like Midori, and the mysterious, dangerous woman, like the girl who seduced Reiko. These types of characters are all defined by their relation to the male character, as if their existence, emotions, thoughts, and actions fall neatly in place according to their designated roles once he enters their lives. They are not entirely one-dimensional, and many are certainly interesting characters, but I feel like Murakami's works, in which women may have sex but are not romantic or sexual interests, represent their interiority better. 

Unrelated, but what I found interesting is that "The Little Green Monster" becomes two completely different stories depending on your interpretation. If we read it as a story of refusing unwanted advances, it becomes a story of a woman asserting her autonomy, confidence, and standing firm even in the face of a pitiful, grotesque sight. It could even be read as empowering in this way, and her actions could be interpreted as assertive, not cruel. If we read it as a story about a woman extinguishing the part of her that wants to be free from domesticity, then it becomes a tragic, stultifying story of a person trapped by fears and convention. Arguably, cruelty towards oneself is easier to do and has a stronger impact than cruelty towards others. I have still not decided which makes more sense to me.

Sleep and the need for breaks from routine - Bradley

 Haruki Murakami’s story Sleep explores the fragile boundary between routine life and personal awakening. The story follows a woman who finds herself unable to fall asleep for seventeen consecutive days. Instead of suffering, she becomes energized and has a new keen awareness of how she feels about her life. Murakami uses this insomnia as a metaphor for consciousness itself. Without the constraints of nightly rest the protagonist begins to reclaim lost parts of her identity that had been dulled by domestic routine; she reads works such as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, drinks brandy, eats chocolate, and starts to develop an appreciation of her independence. The stillness of nighttime offers her a private space untouched by the expectations of her roles as wife and mother. Yet, beneath this newfound clarity lies a growing feeling of unease and resentment for her current situation. Murakami subtly shifts the tone from introspective to unsettling, leaving readers questioning whether her sleepless state is a gift or a descent into instability. Ultimately, Sleep is a reflection on identity, autonomy, and the hidden dissatisfaction that can exist within ordinary life. Murakami suggests that awakening, whether literal or metaphorical, can be both exhilarating and dangerous, revealing truths that are difficult to confront.

A Lack of Self-Reflection - Thomas Weber

 Reading the stories assigned for today after having read the interview was a very different experience than I expected. I have to say, I was not particularly impressed with Murakami's self-reflection on his representation of women in literature and found his views to be, in my own terms, a big ol "nothing-burger." What I mean by this is that I did not feel that he truly engaged with Kawakami's critiques, instead retiring to a weak idea of "writing human characters." This de-legitimizes his portrayal of women to me as it ignores a dimension of his writing that is so often to his thought process. Whilst one is free to think however they may, I find it almost slightly disingenuous to say that one writes without taking gender into account and then make constant reference to the "role" of men and women and their complementary nature. I do find it interesting that Murakami described the woman as being scary in the story about the green monster entering her home, finding the comment to be somewhat vindictive towards women. To me, whilst what happened in the story is somewhat gruesome, it was less about being scary and more about a woman's agency. Potentially even linking to ideas of rape and consent. In the end, I believe that Murakami may have been a bit dismissive of Kawakami's comments.

Overall, whilst I like Murakami from a literary perspective and find him to be a great writer, I do tend to prefer authors with a bit more gender and theme sensitivity like Banana Yoshimoto and Kawakami.

Intention vs. Execution in Writing a Female Character -Alexia

In the interview between Kawakami and Murakami, I found their brief discussion on "The Little Green Monster" interesting. Murakami is surprised that women enjoy reading it, when he meant to portray the female narrator as scary and cruel. I agree with Kawakami in that she did not come off as particularly scary, but there was a familiar sense to her character. I think "The Little Green Monster" could almost be interpreted as some type of attempted sexual assault. A green monster enters a woman’s home, unexpected and uninvited, and tries to force a marriage proposal on her. The "marriage proposal” could very well be a euphemism for an unwanted sexual advance. While we know that this is not the case after reading the interview, it could still be an interpretation that unfortunately many women relate to. Additionally, it could also be viewed that the woman was standing up for herself, especially when she seemed to be torturing the monster with her mind. This could be another reason that women find this story enjoyable to read, because it is refreshing to see a woman stand up for herself instead of being submissive to a man’s desires. However, learning that Murakami’s intention was for the woman to be scary is particularly unsettling. Despite his intentions, this suggests that when women advocate for themselves, they are seen as cruel, rather than justified. Subsequently, this makes me wonder what this story would have been like if told from a man’s perspective. Would Murakami still view the narrator as scary, or would his interpretation change? And would he be equally surprised if men found the story enjoyable to read?

Similarities Between Gregor Samsa and “Watashi” in Sleep- Carly

After reading The Metamorphosis and Sleep, I found that I interpreted both stories as being about repression rather than typical depression. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa was the breadwinner of his family because of his father’s failed business and his mother's inability to work. It is undeniable that Gregor lived a dull life, with a grueling job, but he accepted his role and played it well. He even planned for the future, hoping to send his sister to the conservatory so she could pursue the violin. This hope seemed to keep him going. It seems that Gregor’s parents placed him in the role of the caretaker for his family, and he was expected to fulfil it without question. This becomes even clearer when the family becomes disgusted with Gregor once he is no longer able to work and perform this role. Their attitude is finally solidified when the parents discuss Grete’s prospects and think about marrying her off,  revealing the strict expectations the parents envisioned for their children. This theme of repression appears again in Samsa in Love. When Gregor asks the locksmith if they can meet again, he allows himself to experience human emotions. Unlike in The Metamorphosis, where Gregor never got to choose the person he wanted to be, this version of himself shows how having the ability to choose makes him more human. 

In Sleep, Watashi wakes up from the dream with the man pouring water on her feet. I feel like Watashi waking up from this dream prematurely prevented her from seeing whatever she had been repressing. Her body’s only way of forcing her to confront what she didn’t want to see was to stop letting her sleep. Up until this point, Watashi also fulfilled her role well. She was a mother and wife; she maintained the house when her husband and son were away, and she took care of her son when he returned. However, throughout the story, it becomes clear that Watashi has changed in ways she never intended since taking on her role, and she had been ignoring this. Watashi briefly mentions how she stopped seeing her husband as her protector, yet even after admitting that, she still jokes with him and stops eating chocolate simply because he is a dentist. These disconnections with her mind and her actions show how she suppressed herself in order to maintain the image of a “good housewife.” 

In both The Metamorphosis and Sleep, Gregor and Watashi live on autopilot, carrying out their roles as the breadwinner and the housewife. Neither expresses their worries to anyone around them; instead, they are both pushed out of their daily routines by forces they cannot control. Gregor had to transform into a bug so he could stop performing the role he never chose. Watashi had to stop sleeping to regain the parts of herself she let slip away as she sank further into her assigned role.  

intimacy feels distant

Murakami’s portrayal of women often feels convincing at first, but as you keep reading, a certain distance begins to show. In Sleep, for example, the narrator speaks in a calm, controlled tone, describing the dull rhythm of daily life and a quiet sense of awakening. The details are sharp and believable, yet it still feels like the voice is being watched from the outside rather than fully lived from within. This sense of distance also appears in the way he writes relationships and marriage. His couples don’t usually fall apart in dramatic ways. They share the same space and routines, but never fully reach each other. Nothing is openly broken, but something is always missing. In The Ice Man, this becomes more obvious. The relationship feels gentle on the surface, but there is an imbalance that never goes away. The woman accepts a kind of emotional coldness that she cannot really touch or change. In The Little Green Monster, the strangeness is more direct. The encounter with the creature feels absurd at first, but gradually it reads more like something internal, tied to desire or fear that has no clear way of being expressed. 

Across these works, Murakami doesn’t treat marriage as a stable or comforting structure. It feels more like a quiet space where loneliness grows, just in a less visible way.

- Wendy

Murakami: 'I don't see gender' - Juliet

I enjoyed reading the Murakami interview…if I were the interviewer, I would definitely push back against one thing he said: In every other respect, I wrote the character to be a human being, without really being conscious of her as a woman.” I doubt the possibility of this—not that I think Murakami is being dishonest, but that the statement shows a lack of awareness of how fundamental gender is to his and everyone’s perception of the world. One of my professors said something the other day about how deep gender runs, and I think it was so smart: Gender is the first thing you notice about someone and the last thing you forget. If you don’t remember someone’s gender, you don’t remember anything about them. How can Murakami claim that he is not conscious of his characters being women, especially since he imagines the particulars of their clothing and body as he creates his characters? 

The interview also gave me more of a feel for Murakami’s personality. He seems like a very passive person. But there also feels to be some stubbornness, maybe willful ignorance coming through. He didn’t seem to take Kawakami’s criticisms seriously, expressing the idea that understanding his characters from the lens of any “ism” [seems a bit reductive when we’re talking about feminism in particular] is unimportant for him. The more I reflect on the interview, the more I actually feel like I don’t like him—especially after reading all the hate comments. I think there’s something to this one: “EVERY writer writes human beings and the world how they see it. That's not a defense for poor characterization of a specific group of people.” I’ll just leave it there.

The Body as Artistic Machinery in "Sleep"

Though I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation on sleep that centered around femininity and womanhood, I also found this part towards the end of the story particularly interesting because I've been reading a bit of Marxist criticism in my literary theory class: "Huge semis roll past, shaking the ground as they head east. Those guys don't sleep at night. They sleep in the daytime and work at night for greater efficiency. What a waste. I could work day and night. I don't have to sleep" (107). I've been required to think a lot about the body as a source of living labor and the process of alienation which occurs in the worker as they become estranged from the ends of their labor. In the broad sense under capitalism, the worker is meant to reach peak performance by using their time efficiently, so I find this comparison to truck drivers (some of the most isolated laborers there are) so well-crafted because the main character of "Sleep" does not use extra hours of the day to work—she uses them to read. 

This idea first came to me because I wanted to write about the thoughts about death put forth in "Sleep," that death is more like everlasting consciousness than it is to a never-ending sleep which is posited just before the excerpt I quoted above. The way this main character discusses her body like a machine to me paints the constant endurance of physical labor to a kind of death because even though she is able to be fulfilled by reading and swimming and indulging herself, she is only able to do those things if she forgoes her biological imperatives and loses her "ground of being." Not only that, she described the sort of automated bodily responses of a laborer in an assembly line (or in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times). Cooking and shopping and laundry and mothering: What were they if not 'tendencies'? I could do them with my eyes closed. Push the button. Pull the levers. Pretty soon, reality just flows off and away. The same physical movements over and over again. Tendencies. They were consuming me, wearing me down on one side like the heel of a shoe" (99). This explanation of the severed connection between body and mind is exactly the sort of alienation that makes complete dedication of humanity to labor possible. Murakami then expands this by portraying the main character's (anti-capitalist, in a Marxist reading) rebellion against this system. She states, "I'm through with sleep! So what if I go mad? So what if I lose my 'ground of being'? I will not be consumed by my 'tendencies'," (99) thus declaring that she will not be consumed by the false impulse towards efficiency. Her lack of sleep, though it does end up destroying her in the end, allows her to use her body as more than just a mechanism for housework and utilize her mind by invigorating her intellect—the more artistic part of her brain that was shut down by the constant drudgery of motherhood.

Overall, I don't mean to assign one specific reading for this really amazing story, nor would I want to try to determine Murakami's intentions for this story either; however, I do find these ideas of automation and the mechanics of the human body compelling in this story about a woman who resists sleep as a social and physical convention. 

—Alana