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

Little Green Monster: Interpretation vs. Intention - Isabella

     I wish I had not read the interview with Murakami before I read his short story “Little Green Monster”. When discussing the female character in “Little Green Monster”, he states, “But the cruelty of women is more ordinary, everyday”. Therefore, I went into this story expecting an ordinary, everyday cruelty. It was not until the end of the story, however, that I began to feel differently and got an impression of the story that I am not sure was intended. To me, the woman in the story did seem cruel at all. Although she does create more and more elaborate ways to harm a little, ostensibly harmless little monster, upon reading the ending and truly sitting with it, I felt this woman was entirely justified in her actions. I felt the entire story became a metaphor for the seemingly inconspicuous ways men harass and bother women. The ways that are seen as benign and in turn, how women are unfairly seen for their reactions. 

    Take the woman in the story, going about a peaceful day until a little monster shows up and walks into her house uninvited, unasked, and unwanted. The monster, who is begging for and expecting love, seems to be true to life as a generalized idea of the expectation men place upon women. I felt angry for her! I felt angry when she said, “I wasn't afraid of the monster anymore.” This monster, for at least a brief amount of time, had scared her. She, like so many other women, have been afraid by the “love” of men and the aggressive way it is portrayed. So then, when she begins mentally attacking this monster, it feels satisfying; she does not feel like a villain at all.  

    With the added context of Murakami's interview, I began to feel confused. It seems that he intended for her to be the cruel one. It seemed to him that she was the perpetrator, causing unnecessary harm to the little monster. Maybe because this monster is, for him, something else? A helplessly in love little creature cruelly killed in different ways? 

This opens up larger questions about intention and interpretation in art and how reader and writer function together to create meaning. Is my interpretation valid if that was not the intended message, or can writers be “wrong” about their own intention if reception is overwhelmingly different? I feel that with Murakami, it is hard to understand his intention most of the time, but with this added context for this particular story, it makes me wonder how his intention might differ from my understanding of his other works as well. 

Extreme Isolation within Murakami's "The Ice Man" - Angus

Loneliness is a common theme found among many Murakami works, but none come as close as the loneliness experienced by the protagonist in "The Ice Man". As an "Ice Man", Watashi's husband is emotionally unavailable and can only hold onto the past, as the past is the only part of time that has already happened. He never even talks about himself, which leaves Watashi with zero idea of who he is, where he comes from, and who his parents are besides the fact that he is just "The Ice Man". This isolation and loneliness continues to develop throughout the short story: her mother and sister have cut off communication with her, and her husband slowly starts to become a different type of Ice Man, one that she did not marry. Upon taking their vacation to the South Pole, she doesn't understand the complex grammar of the its inhabitants, while her husband is easily able to pick it up. Even with her child, she has that same dreadful feeling that he will be born as an "Ice Man". All this repetition is Murakami's way of making the readers well aware of how isolated Watashi has become, geographically, physically, and mentally. Even though her husband comforts her while she cries and tells her that he does in fact love her, he does nothing to help prevent Watashi's descend into complete isolation. All he does is turn her tears to ice, and once they've frozen over he eats them, as if he is sucking out the very essence that makes Watashi herself. Similarly, he could have at least helped her learn the language of the South Pole's inhabitants so that she could feel more at home, and yet he never even offers. 

After reading "The Ice Man", it seemed to me that Watashi in "The Ice Man" is the complete opposite of Watashi in "Sleep". On Wednesday, someone in class was discussing how women are often forced to suppress their emotions and sever their body in mind to conform to society's idealized standards. This idea came to mind immediately after realizing the devastating situation that the Ice Man's Watashi was forced into. In regards to her situation, she tells the reader that, "My heart is just about gone now. The warmth I used to have has retreated somewhere far away. Sometimes I even forget that warmth ever existed. I'm still able to cry, though. I'm completely alone, in the coldest, loneliest place in the world." She has lost all the warmth that she once had within her life, the warmth that made the Ice Man's Watashi her own individual. In contrast, Sleep's Watashi is able to experience a completely new awakening, causing her to start taking the time she has in her life to her advantage and doing things she wants to do. She drinks Brandy and eats chocolate, two things she rarely did after she got married, and even sat down to read a book, something she also stopped doing when she got married. While she is able to completely redefine her life in her own terms, The Ice Man's Watashi is forced to sever her connection to the warmth she once felt in order to survive within the South Pole, one of the most far off and coldest places on earth. 

“Bad ending" vs "Happy ending" of Samsa - Vivian

Kafka's Metamorphosis and Murakami's Samsa in Love share the same last name, but they have two completely opposite experiences and ending. I feel like Murakami's story is like a response to Kafka. He takes Kafka's classic "bad ending" and rewrites it into a kind of "happy ending" using his own unique style. In Metamorphosis, Gregor turns from a human into the vermin, and in the end, his family sees him as a burden and he dies alone. In Samsa in Love, Samsa turns from a bug into a human and slowly learns how to stand, walk, touch, and be human. Comparing these two novels, Murakami seems to give Gregor a second chance that Kafka never allowed him to have.

Also, the a clearest contrast is in how women are described in these two stories. In Kafka's story, Gregor's sister Grete starts with some sympathy, but in the end, she is the first one to say "we have to get rid of it." His mother is weak and the maid is cold. No woman is willing to truly accept him. However, Murakami is completely different. The woman stays and patiently teaches Samsa how human behaves and let him feel warmth and care. She accepts his weirdness by talking to him and let him be safe. This small difference changes everything. Without acceptance, Gregor dies. But with it, Samsa learns to be human again.

Suppressed Anger and Restraint

    One of the very first things that I noticed in the short story “The Little Green Monster” was how the protagonist’s rage stayed mostly inside her mind instead of physically until later on. At first, she does not actually attack the monster right away, instead, violence begins to unfold in her imagination, where she thinks in extreme and cruel detail about hurting the monster. 

    From a woman’s perspective, this felt important. Women are often expected to be polite, calm, gentle and nurturing. And because women are also frequently stereotyped as overly emotional in comparison to men, many feel pressured to keep their emotions tightly controlled so they are not dismissed as irrational or unstable. The story starts off by introducing the narrator as an ordinary woman sitting alone at home, looking out onto the garden. Nothing about her seemed to suggest her as aggressive or cruel, that is, until the green monster entered her space and kept approaching her. Her inner thoughts became a stark contrast to her external appearance, suggesting how female rage can be hidden beneath or even restrained by societal pressure and expectations regarding women. 

    This story doesn’t present her anger as irrational or random. The monster invades her space, ignores her fear and discomfort, and then keeps persisting in pursuing her under the context of “love.” Her rage can thus be understood as a response to intrusion and pressure, which I thought was really interesting. At some point, I also wondered if the green monster could represent other pressures in many women's lives, such as unwanted male attention, romantic entitlement or the constant expectations that women should respond gently even when their boundaries are being violated. I believe Murakami was trying to show that female anger isn’t absent but often just forced into silence, where it then becomes private, intense and psychologically powerful.

- Shurun Li

On Murakami Writing Women - Sloane

 I fully believe Murakami when he says that he sees the women in his writing as "unique individuals" and he sees "them as a human being" before he sees "them as a man or woman." I do get the sense that he cares deeply about his characters on a conscious level, regardless of their gender. However, certain characters of his really do rub me the wrong way -- Midori of Norwegian Wood felt hyper-sexual in a way that felt more like a male fantasy than a real-life woman. I'm not trying to say there aren't women who enjoy sex or speak openly about it, but after the third time or so she brought up something so explicit that even Toru was shocked it began to feel like overkill. Naoko's depiction also bothered me because she had the opposite problem where she fully relied on Toru to open herself up to sexual experiences and was overall a very passive character (though, given the circumstances of her boyfriend's death and her declining mental health this is more understandable). 

That being said, there are times where Murakami's writing of women pleasantly surprised me. I agree with the class consensus that the woman in "Sleep" was quite well-written, though I disagreed with a majority of the class who believe that her husband sexually assaulted her in college (if you read closer the language seems to suggest it was a different boyfriend, and she also claims the moment she stopped seeing her husband as her "protector" was during the incident with her mother-in-law -- if he'd raped her, wouldn't that have been the moment?). However, I think the story is actually more powerful without her husband being the perpetrator because this leaves him otherwise "perfect" and blameless, making her growing resentment towards him all the more conflicting for her. Her loss of agency after becoming a wife and mother is the pain point which seems to trigger her change of attitude after the insomnia kicks in. But if sexual assault were involved, this would give her a more "valid" reason to have anger at her husband in her friend's eyes, one which would overshadow this struggle for personal freedom and render it effectively invisible once again. 

Lastly, I would like to say that "The Little Green Monster" explored something rather interesting to me. In the interview with Mieko Kawakami speaking on this story, he says "I was exploring a kind of cruelty that women seem to possess. I can feel when it's there, but can't claim access to it." At first read I found this kind of offensive and wasn't sure what he was talking about. But after taking a moment to think about it, I actually found myself in acknowledgment of what I believe he's referring to. I agree that men and women are generally different, and this often comes with different aggression styles. Whenever I notice women bullying others, it tends to be in a subtle way leaving room for plausible deniability so that when you try to call them out, they can claim they were just joking or that it's not such a big deal anyway because you're all friends. With men, they seem to be upfront with their harshness and/or more physical and it all seems to blow over quicker even if it's outwardly more aggressive. These are all vast generalizations, of course. I think this female "conflict style" is what Murakami aimed to capture in "The Little Green Monster." The protagonist defeats the monster without ever opening her mouth by imagining all the vicious things she wants to do to him in her head. To the outside world, none of her thoughts are detectable, yet they are real, and the monster is left only able to accept her onslaught: "All that remained, suspended in the air, were its mournful, bloated eyes. That won't do any good, I thought to it. You can look all you want, but you can't say a thing. You can't do a thing. Your existence is over, finished, done."