Murakami's Out of Place Details - Mark

     Something really interesting to me that stuck out about Murakami after reading A Wild Sheep Chase is that he often uses specific, out of place details in his writing. The two core examples that stick out to me here are the parts about the Whale Penis and the Ears of the Narrator's Girlfriend. When I first read these I was baffled as oftentimes Murakami's writing tends to be mundane, incorporating aspects of everyday life and being fairly realistic without being overly descriptive, but here, these details distinctly stand out and showcase the character of Murakami's narrator, and they serve more of a purpose than just to throw the reader off. 

    Starting from the whale penis, I think its definitely something that Murakami intended to surprise the reader with as its such a specific strange thing, but the meaning behind it is more complex than it initially seems. Prior to this the rest of what the Narrator talked about seemed rather ordinary, but an emphasis is placed on this object as something special. The Narrator mentions how sad it was looking at the whale penis and how he thought it once belonged to a huge massive whale but now its just sitting in a poor state in a museum, and this kind of reflects how sometimes people or things have like failed to reach their potential perhaps or not lived up to what they were meant to be. Murakami mentioned he took huge inspiration from Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and this sort of reminds me of Terry Lennox. Even though by the end of the novel he has on paper a good life, he took advantage of his friendship with Marlowe and he kept quiet about the murder of his wife in exchange for secrecy and protection, but in his own way like the whale penis which was just sitting in a museum without any real purpose anymore  he gave up the values he should have valued the most such as ensuring justice is met in the case of a murder and staying loyal to his friends, all so that he could stay in his villa in Mexico living a fake life with a fake appearance. 

    Finally, as for the Ears, once again its something that once mentioned, the narrator obsesses about despite the fact that he acts very grounded at other times. Its clear that the narrow sees that the ears have some sort of power and this kind of connects to common trait in Murakami's work that there is a hidden world or dimension in the sense of it being like magical or supernatural, since his girlfriend was able to help him search for the sheep. 

Murakami's Time - Oscar

Towards the beginning of Chapter 10 in A Wild Sheep Chase, we come across this line:

"As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock."

It's lines like these and other similar ones, all involving clocks or descriptions of time and its fluid relation to the material world, that have prompted comments and discussions about the themes of time and its role in the world of AWSC during our reading. And given their constant presence in Murakami's general style of writing, I've begun thinking that alongside other more lofty and grand themes, Murakami simply wants to portray the human being living through time. 

To me, this is evident in both ends in the spectrum of AWSC's narrative - from the moments of numbing mundanity (the descriptions of housework, or making coffee) to thrilling scenes that hook you in (the journey up the mountain path), everything is described as it is to Boku while the unnoticed world passes on as normal. I also see it in his short stories - a couple is getting beer after seeing a baby kangaroo, and someone else is making obscene amounts of spaghetti and eating it, alone. It brings to mind the idea, or feeling, of 'mono no aware' - time moves on, with or without you.

Murakami and Camus

 Murakami's writing has a very dream-like quality to it. Reading it feels like a surreal experience, and I'm not always able to tell what is actually real and what isn't. I'm not always sure if I am toeing the line to another world, or if the two worlds coexist together and floating between the two is the journey Murakami wants to take us (the readers) on.

When I first read A Wild Sheep Chase, I took many things at face value and simply accepted the absurdity of whatever was happening. However, I feel that as we begun to analyze it more in class, I found that digging deeper into the meaning of certain things made the experience of reading it much richer. Why does his girlfriend have special powers? What is going on with the Rat and the house Boku lives in towards the later parts of the book? What does the sheep with the mark on its back actually represent? Murakami gives no clear answers and sometimes no hints at all, leaving it all up to the reader's personal interpretation.

In A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami touches on themes of loneliness and alienation. The magical realism elements of it, for me, also bring into question the meaning of existence, for Boku and the other characters around him. I feel as though Murakami challenges the notion of reality and questions what it means to exist in this world, all from the perspective of Boku who is somewhat distant, passive, and emotionally detached. 

I'm not sure whether Camus had a direct influence on Murakami, but I personally find both authors to echo similar themes and ideas. Reading about Boku's journey reminded me of Meursault from L'étranger, who also emotionally detached and is seemingly just drifting through life and the world around him — both in universes that offer no clear meaning. Both characters seem to just live within the moments that are happening to them (though Meursault does later go on to truly question existence at length in the second half of the novel). In my opinion, both characters reach some sort of tipping point that acts as a catalyst for a big change in their life, after which they begin changing the way they think or act. I find that while Meursault's inner change is more dramatic, Boku is more similar to how he was at the beginning of the novel, but still retains some transformative elements to his character.

Murakami is known for having existentialist themes throughout his works, and I am curious to see how these are presented in his works we will read in the future.

Ananya Jain

Symbolism in Murakami's Work

The further we delve into the story of A Wild Sheep Chase, the more I’m starting to see the images Murakami selects as being symbolic. Specifically, I find the image of the sheep intriguing. Carrying a “star-shaped birthmark” on its back (Murakami 132), the image of a red dot in the middle of a white canvas reminds me immediately of the national flag of Japan. Although the flag’s final form was not legalized until 1999, the convention of the Japanese flag, with a white background and some form of a red sun in the middle, was established as early as the Meiji era. Connecting this with Murakami’s brief mention of Mishima’s suicide as well as the character of The Boss being a powerful, rightwing politician, it would not be a stretch to say that the sheep could serve as some symbol of Japan or the Japanese “spirit”. Someone in class offered the insight that The Sheep Professor was Mishima. This argument works well with this analysis as The Sheep Professor obsesses over the sheep and wastes away in a somewhat similar fashion to how Mishima was consumed by nationalist ideals before he committed suicide.

Considering the sheep is a breed that never existed in Japan, perhaps it represents the elusive nationalist ideals that traditionalist patriots forever try to chase. They shape their purpose to chase and embody the sheep, but their wild sheep chase just ends up being a franatic pursuit after something that leaves a host once he “outlived his usefulness” (Murakami 224). At the end of the story, Rat hangs himself in the house filled with tokens of the past so that the sheep dies within him. Perhaps Murakami is saying that, just like certain parts of our own memories, ones that we leave in the dark and only face in the dark, certain ideals should also die with the past. 

The occurrences of grape juice also seem to serve a deeper purpose in the story. As offering tea or coffee is usually the convention for the Japanese to greet their guests, it is strange how many times characters in these works are served grape juice. Grape juice in Murakami’s world often appears around developments in the story and/or a change in a character’s psyche. For instance, Boku in A Wild Sheep Chase journeys deeper into his own memories and hidden past as he departs further into the wilderness in search of his lost friend. In “Sydney Green Street”, the Sheep Professor reevaluates his deeprunning hatred for the Sheep Men when Cha-Li invites him to properly weigh the rationality of his loathing. 

Notably, Freud (and Jung) play an essential role in changing the Sheep Professor’s mind in the short story. Mentioning these western psychologists, one might also wonder if the “westerness” of grape juice holds any significance. It could be to signal the transformative impact imported western culture has had on the mind of the Japanese. In Murakami’s transcendental worlds, new, foreign ideas open windows for characters to examine their minds from newfound perspectives, which in turn allows them to gain deeper understanding of themselves. 

 

Cora Ma 

Ideas Infect People: Murakami and Vonnegut

 When reading the excerpt from Breakfast of Champions, I noticed a similarity to what I felt was a central idea of A Wild Sheep Chase. Vonnegut writes about Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout; a car dealer and an author. The car dealer is so mentally vulnerable that Trout’s science fiction writing convinced Dwayne that everyone was a robot except him. Trout then becomes obsessed with the notion that, “Ideas or the lack of them can cause disease!” This is the similarity I see in A Wild Sheep Chase.

 

In Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase, the sheep “spirit” shall we call it, enters into vulnerable people and uses their host to gain power. We can understand Murakami’s existential motivations when we situate him as a post-World War II author, writing with strong reference to the Fifteen Years’ War. He seems to imply that some people are blind to their own indoctrination, and that greed can easily corrupt people.

In both Breakfast of Champions and Cat’s Cradle, the two Vonnegut novels I’m familiar with, there seems to be a theme of ideas infecting people. Dwayne Hoover is infected by a bad idea, a selfish idea, which makes him a dangerous person. In Cat’s Cradle the protagonist discovers that a man has convinced the people of an island of a false religion to give meaning to the meaningless lives of the villagers. One figure convinces others of a harmful or false idea. Vonnegut is strongly influenced by his traumatic experience during World War II, and the similarities in the indoctrination of a people seem to show up a lot in his writing.

Ideas as disease or infection is a similarity between Vonnegut and Murakami, and it might be worth considering if Murakami was influenced solely by his own life experience, or if he borrowed a bit from Vonnegut?

-Ayjia Stanford

Murakami’s Spaghetti & Ballard’s Influence - Anika

    On the surface, Haruki Murakami’s The Year of Spaghetti is just a man cooks pasta, avoids people, and builds a life where noodles consume his days. However, there was a reference that particularly caught my eye, when the narrator remarks that the frozen silence around him felt “as if I were in a J. G. Ballard science-fiction story”

    Ballard, the British writer best known for Crash and Empire of the Sun, was very surrealist in nature. He was obsessed with the concept of isolation in the modern world,  which often haunts Murakami’s story in some ways. Ballard often took everyday landscapes (empty highways, abandoned swimming pools, deserted suburbs) and infused them with a kind of eerie disconnection. Murakami does the same, but with spaghetti. The apartment filled with steam and garlic isn’t warm or social, it’s an environment where time and memory warp into some other world.

    Murakami even used Ballard’s fixation on everyday settings/objects as a psychological vessel of sorts. For Ballard, cars and concrete became mirrors of the psyche. For Murakami, it’s a pot of pasta. The obsessive focus on spaghetti brands, sauces, timers, and rituals is less about taste and more about constructing a landscape that isolates the narrator from the messy lives of others. The woman on the phone threatens to interrupt his world, which is why she must be fended off with the absurd excuse of “I’m making spaghetti.”

Seeing The Year of Spaghetti through Ballard shows how Murakami created this miniature dystopia where spaghetti replaces social connection. 

    Thus, Murakami’s loneliness is not just personal but a part of modern life. As individuals we retreat into, sometimes strange, rituals to survive our hectic lives. If Ballard imagined alien planets in English suburbs, Murakami imagines loneliness at the bottom of a spaghetti pot.

Multifaceted Food in Murakami

Something striking to me about all of Murakami's works is his fixation on food. Considerable time is spent with the narrator – often alone – preparing food. This seems like a very normal and obvious thing to write about, but I don’t think many authors have this tendency quite like Murakami. I looked back at some of the food-writing that stuck with me from past readings of Murakami and wanted to find some purpose for them. Here is what I found and what it made me think about. 

In A Wild Sheep Chase, Murakami describes in detail the different meals that Boku makes while alone in the house: 

With all this free time, I cooked up a storm. I made a roast beef.

I defrosted a salmon and marinated it. I searched the pasture for

edible vegetables and simmered my findings with bonito flakes

and soy sauce. I made simple cabbage pickles. I prepared a

number of snacks in case the Sheep Man showed up for a drink.

(Murakami, 305)

Similarly, he describes Boku alone preparing a meal for himself in Hard-Boiled

Wonderland:

While I waited for her, I fixed supper. I mashed an umeboshi salt

plum with a mortar and pestle to make a sour-sweet dressing; I

fried up a few sardines with abura-agé tofu-puffs in grated yama-imotaro 

batter; I sautéed a celery-beef side dish. Not a bad little meal.

There was time to spare, so I had a beer as I tossed together some

soy-simmered myoga wild ginger and green beans with tofu-sesame

sauce.

(Murakami, 89)

Stylistically, these excerpts are quite similar, and more quotes like these exist within Murakami's works. I think these moments function in multiple ways for Murakami. For the reader, I think this sets a tone of mundanity amidst the surrealism of his writing. In a Wild Sheep Chase, this excerpt and a few more like it occur during the days that Boku spends at the house. Murakami juxtaposes one of the most surreal parts of the novel with the banality of baking bread or eating Campbell's soup. In Hard-Boiled Wonderland, this scene also comes after a surreal episode for Boku. I think Murakami tries to ground the narrator and the reader in reality with moments like this, to distract from the surreal, which is what creates such effective magical realism.   

Additionally, I believe that these descriptions of solitary cookery may offer an indirect glimpse into the minds of our narrators. Having recently read Murakami's short story “Τhe Year of Spaghetti”, I started to think a little deeper about these cooking episodes. The story follows a narrator who cooks spaghetti fervently as if it “were an act of revenge.” (Murakami, 173) At the same time, he seems to be falling deeper into the lonely crevasse of his own mind. The story ends with this quote: “Can you imagine how astonished the Italians would be if they knew that what they were exporting in 1971 was really loneliness?” (Murakami, 173) Murakami uses the cooking of spaghetti as a metaphor for exploring, or falling into, your subconscious. A case can be made to apply this metaphor to both a Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland. Both stories explore a narrator who is forced to explore the inner workings of their own mind. I believe that Murakami uses cooking as an indirect expression of the narrator's lonely search inward. 

There are many other instances in which Murakami describes food and cooking. This post only scratches the surface, and after writing it, I found an article that goes into more depth. Here it is, if anyone is interested: Haruki Murakami’s Metaphysics of Food. There is another interesting food parallel between the two aforementioned books; both involve fancy Western restaurants with eclectic female love interests. I may dedicate my next blog post to exploring that.

Isaac Robillard

Zen Buddhism in AWSC

Having completed A Wild Sheep Chase, the one thing that stood out to me was the parallels between the narrator's usual stoic personality and the principles of Zen Buddhism. Zen has influenced every aspect of Japan's culture, including Japanese literature, but it was surprising to find such elements from Murakami, whose works are known for their many Western influences. 

There were two elements of Zen that I discovered in the novel: non-attachment and compassion. Non-attachment is defined as the act of letting oneself free from holding onto fixed ideas and one's sense of self. This is evident in the characterization of Boku, who is portrayed as having no desires. When a mysterious, powerful figure demanded that he find the sheep shown in the photograph, Boku's decision to find the sheep is an example of non-attachment, as he remains indifferent to losing his job, something that most people would desperately want to keep. Boku's lack of desire is a constant theme in the novel, from him moving on from his ex-wife's departure to his detached acceptance of loss throughout his journey.

Compassion is defined as the act of placing others before one's individual self.At the end of the novel, Boku doesn't judge the Rat for his choices or demand explanations. Instead, he simply listens and accepts his friend's decision to die rather than remain possessed by the sheep's corrupting influence. The Rat's suicide itself is an act of compassion, as he sacrifices himself to prevent the sheep from using him to harm others. Boku's acceptance of this death reflects the Zen understanding that compassion sometimes means allowing others their own path, even when it leads to death.

Anyway, this was how I interpreted the novel. There were probably a couple of other examples that I missed, but those were the ones that stood out to me the most.

Joline Abe

The Beauty In Loneliness

Reading Murakami’s work gives me a very particular feeling, which is the longing for beauty, specifically the beauty found in language and loneliness. His protagonists are not always the most motivated or successful; instead, they are the ones left behind in society. According to Murakami, they do not seek mundane happiness by constantly socializing, or gaining higher social status. They simply exist as they are, accepting what society imposes on them with composure. In this way, indifference itself becomes beautiful, a kind of resistance without resistance. Murakami loves to use simple, unembellished language to portray lonely figures in still spaces, surrounded by silence and motionless objects. There is no liveliness, no background noise, just a secretive, intimate atmosphere that draws readers in. This minimalism creates a quiet dignity around solitude, and it is precisely what gives his writing a unique pull.

Been to Japan numerous times myself, I’ve noticed how strongly conformity and unity shape social life. Alienation is often avoided. Murakami, however, rebels against this framework. His style and themes break away from traditional Japanese literature, as well as how he sees isolation. Instead of treating alienation as a weakness, he reframes it as something strange but beautiful.

In A Wild Sheep Chase, when Boku’s girlfriend leaves the house without a word, he does not panic or chase after her. He simply acknowledges it: “There was almost nothing one could do except let things take their course” (287). That acceptance reflects Murakami’s vision of beauty through indifference. Even if his characters are not living splendid lives, they are living beautifully alone. But this also led to some flaws in the characters, that they are usually selfish and follow their heart too much, and that they are sometimes weak in empathizing with others. 

-Sarah Zhang

The Translucent Protagonists of Murakami

The root of the magical realism genre lies in the odd events that take place in the regular modern world. The very narrow, but definitely existing gap between reality and the fictional world of this genre enthralls those, like me, who sometimes dream of ever so slightly escaping their ordinary routines of life into some extraordinary happenings.

Though one might believe that this genre is merely about the unfolding magical reality, the key is actually in the character of the story. Murakami’s protagonists are all alike one another in ways that are difficult to pinpoint. It is no question that they have different personalities and experience different things. Still, there is an unexplainable similarity to them and that might be their translucent position in the story. 

Relative to other fictional stories, the narrator tends to be almost “bland”. The audience can easily immerse themselves into the story, as the main character is placed to be quite ordinary and his view unbiased. He is reliable, his backstory isn’t particularly a mystery, and we hear all of his thoughts. However, as reality starts to distort itself, the silhouette of the narrator becomes clearer. He starts making unique decisions, and comprehends his world in ways the audience can’t. 

That is when we realize, ultimately, the protagonist is not common or boring, but he is what maintains shape in the changing world of the magical realism genre. In the end, he is not opaque that we can’t see outside of his perspective, or transparent where he is almost nonexistent. He is in between somewhere, being the translucent protagonist of Murakami’s fictions.

Yewon Yun

Magically Mundane

Murakami’s writing style makes magical events feel commonplace, while the ordinary moments feel magical. This struck me as a defining characteristic of his writing and an aspect I admire. Murakami’s characters are linked by their introverted nature and their love for the simple things in their day-to-day lives, such as brewing a pot of coffee in the morning or listening to classical records. Being a simple and introverted person himself, Murakami has a deep appreciation for calming meditative actions, which he writes through the narrator. 

Before long, Boku is thrown into a series of surreal and distorted events, but he himself remains passive and does not seek answers. His reaction to such events is strikingly calm, absorbing the absurdness for what it is. This can be seen when Boku first meets the sheep man in A Wild Sheep Chase, “’Iwannadrink,’ said the Sheep Man. I duly went into the kitchen and got a half-bottle of Four Roses and two glasses with ice”(195). Boku does not see his appearance in the home as a disruption, but another addition to his already drifting life. 

This juxtaposition between the magical and the ordinary is interesting, and I think that it is important to Murakami because these ordinary things make people feel grounded and true to themselves. I am curious to see what others have to say about this. Do you think that Murakami is writing a part of himself in the character of Boku? Is this archetype of a lonely individual in a search for meaning relatable or cliché?

Alex McBrier

From Familiar Notes to Strange Worlds-Sylvia Chen

Following my reading of the notion of intertextuality, I took some time to think things through and started to reevaluate my experience with Haruki Murakami's writings. This concept reminded me that no text exists in complete isolation; they are always interconnected with other works and cultural symbols. This perspective helped me understand why reading Haruki Murakami's works always gives me that experience of feeling both unfamiliar and yet strangely familiar.

In his writings, diverse cultural components often appear, from the ambiance of American hard-boiled fiction to jazz and classical music, and sometimes even traces of traditional Japanese storytelling. These components seem familiar to most of us, but in Murakami's setting, they are put back together to produce a defamiliarization effect. For example, a piece of music transforms from background noise into a mirror of a character's inner life, and a certain literary style creates new tensions when it is incorporated into Tokyo's everyday situations. 

This led me to see that his uniqueness comes from rearranging and recombining materials inside preexisting cultural networks rather than entirely novel breakthroughs. I am reminded by intertextuality that when I read, I don't merely enter the author's world; I simultaneously step into a vast space of dialogue woven from music, literary traditions, and different cultures.

Murakami and the Existential Excursus - Khadeja

According to the Cambridge dictionary, an excursus is defined as a "discussion or explanation of a subject which is separate from the main subject that is being written or talked about." I find that A Wild Sheep Chase is riddled with these, many of these existential and philosophical in nature. In fact, as I am reading the novel I have marked quotes and there have been at least 1 every 2 pages--at least in my version of the book. 

That frequency makes me wonder: maybe these aren’t digressions at all, but part of the novel’s fabric. Still, I lean toward seeing them as departures from the plot. One example is Boku's internal narration regarding taking a long-distance train. He begins by describing it as a "feeling of exhilaration", which quickly descends into a description of being a "dive-bomber caught in a space-time warp" where the reality he resided in not longer felt as it applied to him--as if he is transcending it through his journey (Murakami 76). 

One other example, also regarding travel, caught my eye as well. When taking flight with his girlfriend, a description of their "shadows skimming" quickly became Boku stating "we were imprinted into the Earth"(146). Imprinting oneself indicates an effect that exists in perpetuity, as if their shadows were etched into the land following a mere flight to Hokkaido. 

As amusing as this may seem at times, it becomes a pattern which I do not know what to make of. Its as if Boku, or Murakami, veers off-course into sweeping declarations about existence. These feelings of questioning one's existence are typically passing, but it seems as if it is a constant for Boku to make these evocative declarations.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I'd love to know what you guys think. Did you notice this pattern/trend or was it just me?

Murakami, Haruki. A Wild Sheep Chase. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum, Vintage International, 2002.

Murakami's Protagonists and his Portrayal of Women

Murakami's portrayal of women is definitely a source of debate among critics and readers alike. In doing some research on this topic, I found that Murakami himself has said he does not consciously try and change the way he writes about women. In one interview, Murakami explains: "I just make an effort not to write anything into my stories that would hurt or show contempt for someone because they’re male or female."

Having read only a little Murakami, I can definitely see why readers find his portrayal problematic. At the same time, I also don't really see this as a moral statement. In fact, I'd also argue that his male protagonists aren't especially complex characters either. This effect is obvious, to me, in A Wild Sheep Chase as the narrator seems to just be going through the motions rather than undergoing any meaningful development — and my impression is that this isn't really Murakami's style. Having read Norwegian Wood as well, we see a similar phenomenon in Toru (I won't spoil it since we will be reading it). 

TL;DR it just seems to me that Murakami isn't especially focusing on the psychological development of the characters. Rather, I think he is more trying to craft a mood or some type of feeling— whether it be a sense of alienation or loneliness in the narrator, or a feeling of surreality in his imagery and depictions of society. What do y'all think? Again, my reading of Murakami is far from exhaustive so I am recognizing that my impressions may change as we progress. 

Link to Murakami Interview:  https://lithub.com/haruki-murakami-has-never-thought-about-changing-the-way-he-writes-female-characters

- Max S.