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