David Robinson / Sept 30, 2020
Despite the popular representation of college as a time of freedom and growth, my college years were miserable. They were marred by family tragedy and encapsulated mostly by lonely nights with a textbook. Within that time I was given my introduction to Haruki Murakami, the now famous (and probably somewhat overrated) Japanese author who has been firmly established in the American mind. His popularity likely speaks to the concerns of many Americans and of course millions of Japanese. My uncle gave me my first story of his, torn from the pages of the New Yorker and handed to me in the nursing home where my grandmother would pass away a few months later. I didn’t like that first story, at least not at first, but it was intriguing nevertheless and resonated with the struggles I was facing in my entry to adulthood.
Japan’s economy has been mired in constant recession and is now closing out the third of its “lost decades.” Murakami’s first books were written in the late 70s, at the peak of Japan’s economic bubble, and they spoke to the darker realities of modern existence. We’re protected from the threats common to humanity for centuries, but in creating safe, guided livelihoods, we’ve removed a lot of the things that make life interesting and worthwhile. We live in a pacified existence upheld by the same dehumanizing capitalist institutions that keep our society in check. It’s within this landscape that Murakami’s stories take place. Murakami’s heroes begin in his stories as passive players who are spurred to change and fight against their stagnating lives. Its conflict follows the awakening of its protagonists who learn to grasp the minor amount of free will they’re allowed and make something worthwhile with it.
Murakami’s first full length novel, A Wild Sheep Chase, focuses on a nameless protagonist who gets caught up in a wacky series of events revolving around…a magic sheep. At the beginning of the story, the unnamed protagonist is living a life imbued with mundanity. Recently divorced, he has re-integrated into society after a prolonged hiatus. He swears that he is the pinnacle of mundanity, going about his day to day. His early struggle is against the dehumanizing nature of modern existence. He’s clearly unhappy (probably clinically depressed) and fills the void of his existence with vapid consumerism. He buys records, drinks whiskey, and chain smokes. His job has him making flyers in a small marketing firm that supports him enough to maintain his non-existence, but socially he is an apparition. That he isn’t even given a name indicates that he could be any one of us, floating through our days waiting for the next thing to occur.
The main plot kicks off when he is contacted by a mysterious figure alerting him that he had inadvertently published a photo of a mysterious sheep. The photo had been sent to him by his old friend named The Rat (who is a regular character in his first two novellas). The mysterious figure represents a right-wing political figure over whom the sheep exerts a strong influence which keeps the man alive. He has a girlfriend who joins him on his adventures. She has magic ears that give her strange seductive powers. The unnamed protagonist leaves Tokyo with his girlfriend and travels to Hokkaido. His search leads him to The Dolphin Hotel, run by a man whose family is connected to the old sheep farmers that used to exist in that area. What he finds is that The Rat and the sheep are fundamentally connected, and that to find one, he must find the other.
Its title and plot revolve around a magic sheep, and though Murakami has denied that the sheep has any meaning inherent to itself, the nature of the protagonist’s quest portrays the sheep as a symbol of the corruption and power that uphold the status quo. The sheep’s existence must be kept secret to protect the livelihood of the rightwing figure who has given the task to begin with. Its discovery represents a danger to their institutions, but it’s not clear specifically what those are. The person running The Dolphin Hotel is from a long line of sheep farmers, indicating a connection with Japan’s agricultural industry. The sheep could be the representative interests supporting the capitalist institutions.
At the plot’s culmination, the protagonist makes his way to The Rat’s cabin in the mountains of Hokkaido. Shortly after arriving there, his girlfriend leaves and he gets snowed in. At first the cabin’s presence is maddening. He has little for recreation and no contact to the outside world. He is visited by a man in a sheep’s costume, whom he befriends and learns that The Rat has died. He had become possessed by the sheep and committed suicide to prevent it from gaining entrance into society because of its evil wills. His death points to a futility of existence. Cause and effect are enacted by so many unseen threads that it’s hard to navigate this world. Free will is a myth in Murakami’s world, but what he designates as such is the sense that everyone is a byproduct of their social order. Collective will overpowers individual will, though Murakami leaves room for the bravery of the few can create a positive shift if it impacts the many.
The deeper implications aren’t clear. The Rat’s suicide is presented as a noble act, indicating a degree of self-sacrifice that shows him taking control of his existing and railing against his perceived lack of free will. This conclusion isn’t exactly satisfying to the reader, but it touches on a truth of reality. Explanations for events are usually unsatisfactory, and we must search inside ourselves—or within the narrative—for closure. the sheep can be read as the wills of bad actors in society, and especially within our current political climate (the world over and not just in America) it seems oddly prescient that the evil force would be rightwing politics. Their machinations represent a protection of the status quo which is ultimately found to be changing.
The lack of clarity in the narrative is itself a point of the novel. For him, the important conflict is essentially internal monologue. The internal changes experienced by his characters are the purpose of his narratives. For the reader, the non-solution presented at the end of the novel forces us to look deeper and make our own conclusions. Murakami creates a surreal world that’s bizarre to our sensibilities, but its effects on the protagonists are no stranger than everyday existence. Reality is a muddled mess of contradictions. Confusion is the norm of our existence and cannot be separated from reality. His protagonists learn to navigate the chaos introduced into their lives, and to do so they need to embrace the chaos they’re encountering. Modern existence is about safety. It is a byproduct of our instinct to preserve and protect ourselves, but in doing so we’ve removed most of the random chance that brings magic into our lives. By adopting a passive existence, the protagonist becomes less than human, but through the course of the narrative, they take charge of their free will and make a difference. The unnamed protagonist learns this lesson, pushes forward, and continues with his existence. In its last scene, the always stoic protagonist returns to Tokyo, then he goes to a beach and cries. Until that point, he displayed little to no emotion, and in doing so, he rejects the passive acceptance of his reality. He shows personal growth within him. We end the novel knowing that a change has occurred, but it’s up to us to determine what specific change has occurred, but regardless his experiences have broken him from his passive mold.
In Murakami’s later novels, he’s become more explicit about the changes his characters go through. With his plot narratives, the colorfulness of the cast and events kind of muddles this point, but in his short stories, it’s far clearer. Surface action is cheap to Murakami; what matters to him is fundamental emotional development. What seem initially like non-resolutions are simply resolutions seen differently. My introduction to Murakami, “Kino,” is about a man who buys a coffee shop after his divorce and lives a quiet, shut away existence. He lives at the shop, in addition to running it, all while shutting himself off emotionally. He gets to know his patrons and steadily improves his business. He befriends a man who later reveals himself as a friend of his aunt’s who sold him the business. After some convincing, Kino decides to go for a trip. He doesn’t like it at first, but the story ends when he senses a shift inside himself while staying in a hotel a few cities over. For once, he doesn’t shut out his emotions and a willingness inside himself grows to live a full life, even if that involves embracing negative emotions.
The story ends abruptly there, and when I first read it, it confused and dismayed me. Revisiting it as an adult, I’m still confused, but I feel it speaks to a higher truth. So much of our livelihood is designed to distract us emotionally, just like Kino was doing. We take up hobbies, go out to dinner, and we hide from the things the really drive us or refuse to face the issues coming to collect. Life is a great, big complicated thing that must be experienced in full and can very easily be ignored. That’s the arc undertaken by every Murakami hero. They begin their narratives living in blissful ignorance, actively hiding from the life they have before them. Through the surrealist events occurring within their stories, they learn to open themselves to it. His conclusions don’t feel like resolutions because they end with one door closing as it opens onto a new road. The point that they reach is the first step on a road to self-improvement. Only by embracing life’s twists and turns can we keep growing.
Sources
Tyers, R. (2019). The Labyrinth and the Non-Solution: Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase and the Metaphysical Detective, Manusya: Journal of Humanities, 22(1), 76-89. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/26659077-02201004
Welch, Patricia. “Haruki Murakami’s Storytelling World.” World Literature Today, vol. 79, no. 1, 2005, pp. 55–59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40158783. Accessed 30 Sept. 2020.
David W. Robinson 