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Beyond Pure Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of MurakamiHarukiAuthor(s): Matthew C. StrecherSource: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 354-378Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2658828 . Accessed: 28/03/2014 06:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. . Association for Asian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Asian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.27.144.144 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:38:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Beyond Pure Literature: Mimesis, Formula, nd the Postmodern n the Fiction of Murakami Haruki MATTHEW C. STRECHER )7ITH THE PUBLICATION OF Kaze no Uta o Kike Hear the Wind Sing; 1979), Murakami Haruki (b. 1949) found himself more or less at odds with well-known members f the Japanese iterary stablishment. f one takes Murakami t his word, this was not the result f conscious ffort n his part, but rather matter f his own individualism, certain ndifference feigned r not) toward the conventions nd opinions of professional ritics n Japan's iterary ommunity. He commented o journalist awamoto Saburo n a 1985 interview hat tilt never ccurred o me to resist he paradigms f existing pure' iterature, r to offer ome kind of antithesis to it. . . I don't think worried bout whether xisting ypes f works would go on existing, o long as I could write what wanted, how I wanted Kawamoto 1985, 39-40). Such a statement might be taken s a reflection f the author's nxiety ot to be labeled anti-bundan, r otherwise tanding gainst the proliferation f so- called pure iterature, r unbungaku. nd yet, given the general rend f Japanese literature rom 980 onward, eginning erhaps with Tanaka Yasuo's plotless novel Nantonaku, urisutaru Somehow, Crystal; 980), Murakami ppears o belong to a growing new set of contemporary uthors who do precisely hat: resist he concepts and definitions f pure literature, edefining he term o suit their wn needs. As Alfred irnbaum writes n the Introduction o Monkey rain Sushi, collection f recent hort tories, Starting rom he arly 980s, new generation f Japanese riters as emerged o capture he electric, clectic pirit f contemporary ife n Japan's mega-cities. Matthew trecher s an Assistant rofessor f Japanese anguage, iterature, nd Culture at the University f Montana. I would ike o thank rofessor ohn Whittier reat, he University f Washington, nd Professor ay Rubin, Harvard, or uidance nd encouragement n my work n Murakami Haruki, nd to Murakami imself or is willingness n more han ne occasion o share ime and deas with me. also wish o remember he ate Professor ndrew arkus, niversity f Washington, or is upport p until his untimely eath. inally, wish o express y rat- itude o the nonymous eaders f he ournal f Asian tudies or heir enetrating omments and suggestions. The ournal f Asian tudies 7, no. 2 (May 1998):354-378. C) 1998 by he Association or Asian tudies, nc. 354 This content downloaded from 188.27.144.144 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:38:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions BEYOND PURE LITERATURE 355 Choosing o speak hrough he medium f popular magazines-rather han iterary journals, s did the preceding enerations-these oung uthors ave hunned uch traditional abels s un bungaku, ure iterature, pting nstead or he Anglicism fuikkushon, iction. (1991, 1) But what kind of lassification, f ny, might be applied to such group? n particular, if Murakami Haruki disassociates imself rom he pure iterature stablishment, intentionally r not, then o what group might he be attached? The question s a complex one, for he distinctions etween pure and mass (jun and taishi7, respectively) o not necessarily orrespond o Western rguments informing he categories serious nd popular. ' The matter s further omplicated by the fact hat, n the West, at least, he opposition f erious nd popular iterature has been called into question for ome time, first y structuralist rguments n the 1960s and 1970s, and finally y the heorists f he postmodern n the 1980s. Whereas in the case of structuralism, owever, uch distinctions re done away with n order to show that ll literature ies on a continuum etween what s conventional nd what is inventive, he postmodern ext resists efinition n these erms recisely ecause t contains mixture f both high nd ow culture. As the present ssay will demonstrate, Murakami Haruki plays a structuralist ame with his readers, reating exts which are obviously nd meticulously ormulaic, ut with results nd purposes distinctly postmodern n character. Murakami's works ive one the mpression f serious rtist who expresses imself in a distinctly n-serious manner. That is to say, he writes maginative, ften unrealistic exts, ut typically ith sturdy message ttached, n the tones f n elder brother, ointing ut the pitfalls f ife to his readers. His books are narrated y a first-person ingular familiar arrator, Boku, whose ntrospection orders n the obsessive, nd whose worldview s pervaded by a strong ense of boredom. Yet few would be tempted o compare he action n Murakami's iction ith that f Natsume Soseki 1867-1916), Mori Ogai (1862-1922), Akutagawa Rytunosuke 1892-1927), or even more recent iterati uch as Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) or Oe Kenzaburo (b. 1935). For all the narrator's elf-interest, is movements re still more obvious and less cerebral han was common n Japanese iterature ntil recent ears. One has not the mpression f reading text written urely s art; ts entertainment alue s too high for hat, ts language too transparent. f one might compare he verbally dense style f Oe to the style f Thomas Pynchon, ne might compare Murakami's style o that f Raymond arver, ot oincidentally ne of Murakami's avorite riters. This is not, however, o suggest hat Murakami's xperiments ith iterary tyle place him into a literary ategory with contemporaries uch as Kataoka Yoshio or Akagawa Jiro, both of whom write prolifically, ut whose works end to be rather unvaried, tilizing refabricated lots. Such authors learly write or olume, uantity rather han quality, nd form he owest ommon denominator n the iterary orld. Mainly because their works how so little variance, oth Akagawa and Kataoka are able to produce with tremendous peed and to sell prodigiously, or they imit themselves or he most part to what has succeeded n the past. Clearly Murakami stands somewhere between the extremely nventive, experimental exts f Oe, and the highly formulaic, ntertaining et monotonously uniform novels of Akagawa Jiro. n part one may attribute his to Murakami's 'See Hirano 972 and Strecher 996. This content downloaded from 188.27.144.144 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:38:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 356 MATTHEW C. STRECHER rejection f iterature s art n the contemporary eriod, reflected n his efforts o develop a literary anguage which is accessible to all. Whereas Oe insists upon a somewhat urgid prose style n order o separate his works high art) from hose which ny Japanese might read, Murakami elies n a language which s simple nd readable, nd if there s an artistic resence n his text, t lies not n the anguage he uses, but in the story e tells. This is not to suggest, however, that Murakami's prose style is without distinction; uite the contrary, t carries with t a strikingly nternational mbience. The frequency f his use of he first-person ronoun I rivals hat f ts use n English, despite the fact hat the Japanese anguage does not require he naming of subjects where ontext makes them lear. The result f this prodigious se of the first-person familiar Boku is to lend the text rather n-Japanese tmosphere, lmost s though it were translated rom nglish. Murakami s also fond of using expressions which are taken from English, translated iterally nto Japanese such as sore jo de mo nai shi, ore ka de mo nai for neither more nor ess ), as well as repeating imself lmost to the point where ne can predict his next use of the most commonly recurring hrase, Boku ni wa wakaranakatta: It wasn't clear to me. His Japanese s easily ranslated nto foreign languages, artly or ts simplicity nd partly or ts reliance n foreign or foreign- sounding) dioms. One finds here none of the fondness or the mysterious, he pedantic, r the obscure, s is so often aid of the prose of Kawabata, Mishima, r Oe, and presumably his is what led Oe to comment to Kazuo Ishiguro once that Murakami writes n Japanese, ut his writing s not really apanese. f you translate it nto American nglish, t can be read very aturally n New York Oe and shiguro 1993, 172). Unfortunately or he ritic ttempting o take him eriously, urakami's eliance on a simplistic anguage, hiding ittle or nothing rom he reader, ften bscures he seriousness f his iterary ontribution. ut he shares his fondness or implicity nd internationality n his language with many of his contemporaries: akahashi Gen'ichiro b. 1951), Shimada Masahiko b. 1961), and Shimizu Yoshinori b. 1947), to name few f the more uccessful. ike these uthors, Murakami xperiments ith language, genre, realism, and fantasy, n order to explore the outer limits of postmodern xpression. Murakami may be unique among his peers, however, or his remarkable bility o bring n insightful nderstanding f the iterary ormula o his experiments ith genre, emonstrating knack or eproducing he tructures f uch texts, while t the ame time maintaining less obvious eriousness hich ies beneath these formulaic tructures. ronically, t is probably his very uccess t reproducing such formulaic tructures hat has contributed o his lack of acceptance by some Western cholars f Japanese iterature. The Formulaic Structure Between 1969 and 1976, John Cawelti critiqued the terms serious and popular, ltimately o do away with both n favor f the ess oaded mimetic nd formulaic. His strategy was to sidestep the traditional alue judgments that accompany he former et of terms, nd to assert nstead hat virtually ll literature falls within continuum etween he two poles of the nventive nd the conventional. Of course, he mimetic nd he ormulaic epresent wo oles hat most iterary orks lie somewhere etween. ew novels, owever edicated o the representation f This content downloaded from 188.27.144.144 on Fri, 28 Mar 2014 06:38:40 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
