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.