Essay on Haruki Murakami

Exposというクラスで村上春樹の本についてのエッセイを書くことになった。僕が最近好きになった文句を始めに乗せてみます。

　太陽はなぜ今も輝きつづけるのか
　鳥たちはなぜ唄いつづけるのか
　彼らはしらないのだろうか
　世界がもう終わってしまったことを　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　"The End of The World"

（世界の終わりとハードボイルドワンダーランド、村上春樹、より）

　Lost “Reality” in Haruki World
Language is a means to communicate. We human beings depend exclusively on language to output what we have in our minds into the outer world and to input what is in the outer world into our minds. The actions of input and output are not simple. Consider what we do when we read a book. We do not input language in our minds as it is expressed in the outer world, such as words or sounds. This is evident from the fact that we cannot usually remember an exact sentence in a book after reading it. There is a process of interpretation after reading sentences in the physical sense and before understanding them. This interpretation is closely related to a reader’s experiences, so the interpretation is unique to each reader. This speculation implies that the same story can be understood differently by different people. This is nothing surprising. In fact, it is generally accepted that people have different opinions of what a book is about.
One might argue that it is wrong to emphasize our different understanding of language because we agree a lot on interpretation of language. But how do we know we share the understanding of language? We talk about what a certain sentence or a story is about and agree that we have the same opinion. But there is a problem with concluding from this that we share the same understanding of language. The problem is that we use language to talk about what the language is about. Even if two people say the same thing about a sentence, they still can understand it differently. This argument is not to refute that we share some understanding of language but to cast doubt over a na〓ve belief: the belief that we interpret language in the same way for the most part and have different opinions only on occasion. My claim is the opposite. We share little understanding of language and can maintain a shared understanding of language only through constant efforts to communicate.
Nonetheless, language is a means to communicate, so people often assume that they understand language in more or less the same way. This assumption is reasonable because, after all, we can communicate with each other. However, the possibility of communication in everyday life depends not only on language but also on other ways of communication. Imagine a situation where a man wants his friend to pick up a pen on the floor. The man would say “Could you please pick up the pen for me?” while pointing at a pen on the floor. However, think what would happen if the man did not say anything but silently pointed at the pen, staring at his friend. His friend still would pick up the pen, thinking that the man was pretty rude. Therefore, in real life, where consequences of communication immediately follow actions, it does not matter much whether or not we have the same understanding of language. This is because a person can use other means of communication if a desired result is not attained. Generally speaking, people use many communication tools simultaneously. Thus, experiences in every day life do not provide us with a good medium for analyzing the question of whether people understand language in the same way. So in order to test the question, we should analyze a medium in which language is the only means of communication. This is why I want to analyze a novel, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami.
Murakami’s novels create such mysterious and unique worlds that readers refer to the worlds collectively as “Murakami Haruki World.” A characteristic of Haruki world is a detailed description of each object or notion. The novel Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is no exception. The following is the scene where a protagonist muses on a novel that he has read before:
[I also felt sympathy toward Julien Sorel as I read The Red and the Black.] Sorel’s basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom. (Murakami 163)

Stories in Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are embedded in these detailed descriptions of thoughts. The novel consists of two worlds and the story switches from one to the other alternately. One is a more realistic world than the other. A protagonist lives near a big city, presumably Tokyo, and works as a Calcutec, a living “encrypter” who ciphers important information. The other world is more like a fantasy, in which unicorns and some human beings live. A protagonist enters this world as a newcomer at the beginning of the novel. The connection between these two worlds is implied but not asserted in the book. The story starts with the Calcutec protagonist going to work. It turns out that the work he does in the novel turns on the switch in his brain. The change of switch in his brain will eventually confine the Calcutec to his mind. That is, the protagonist will start living in a world created by his mind if he cannot resolve the problem soon. In his mind, according to a scientist, the Calcutec protagonist lives forever, as one second in the real world could be 20 minutes or 3000 years in his mind. This world in his mind is, for the protagonist, the End of the World. At last, we can infer that the other part of the novel, the fantasy world, is actually this End of the World. By analyzing Murakami’s novel, we will see that this Haruki world reveals that the assumption that we share understanding of language has little basis.
How do we interpret language in a novel? We connect language with notions and then connect notions with a big picture of the novel. But how do we know how to connect language with a certain notion? We learn it through every day life at home, a workplace, or a school. Our experience in life suggests a natural link between language and a physical object, a scene, or an idea. Therefore, this link is culturally as well as personally conditioned. When one says that people share the understanding of language, one means that this natural link is shared by everybody within a certain culture or group of people. Next, how do we connect notions with a big picture? We look for a trace of meanings. That is, we try to figure out why a certain scene is inserted or what the author tries to tell us in a certain scene. A novel might be an allegory or a satire. We suppose that scenes in a novel are ordered in a certain way for reasons. By connecting each scene with a bigger picture, we can be sure that we appropriately understand language in the novel. However, when meaning cannot be “naturally” given to a scene through these processes, an assignment of meaning to a scene depends on individual readers. Readers have choices and the assignment of meaning becomes arbitrary. Haruki Murakami’s novel is constituted by such scenes. The following is a scene from the End of the World, where the protagonist reads “old dreams.” This is the job he does in this world:
[I gently cover the skull,] waiting for a warm glow to emanate [as it reacts to my body temperature]. When it reaches a certain temperature―[it’s not that hot, it’s] like a patch of sun in winter―the white-polished skull offers up its old dreams. I strain my eyes and breathe deeply, using my fingertips to trace the intricate lines of the talk it commences to tell. The voice of the light remains ever so faint; images quiet as ancient constellations float across the dome of my dawning mind. They are indistinct fragments that [I can] never merge into a sensate picture. […] In my mind, however, these simple scenes [fill my mind with] a sadness that I can find no words for. (Murakami 184)

First, it is difficult to “naturally” assign a certain notion to language in this scene. All we know is what the protagonist sees in the old dreams and what he feels―nothing more, nothing less. This difficulty arises from the fact that the scene is so unfamiliar and mysterious. It is rare that we encounter the same situation in real life, so our experience in the real world does not provide us with a “natural” link to an idea. At least the association between language and a notion in this scene is not as concrete and strong as the one that the word “pencils” has with its real entity. The language is elusive. In addition, when this scene is described in Japanese, as was originally done, another difficulty arises. Japanese represents, unlike English and like Chinese, not only sound but also meaning. The same word with the same sound and similar meaning can be written in different characters that have subtle differences in meaning. Because the Japanese characters look like pictures, there is more room for interpretation of a character than in an English word. So, it is possible that two Japanese people disagree what a character means or implies.
Secondly, Haruki Murakami’s novel does not allow us to place this scene in the whole picture of the novel easily. In general, the detailed descriptions of notions or objects make it difficult for readers to judge what each scene means. Since the book goes astray for any small thing that the protagonists come across, readers cannot decide if one notion is more important than another in the novel. Even after one has read the novel to the end, one cannot be sure why a certain scene has to be depicted. The point is not that one cannot assign a meaning to a scene, but that if one does so, people do not generally agree on the assignment. If readers can’t be sure what each scene means, how do they interpret language in Murakami’s novel?
Since there is no way of knowing what each scene is supposed to mean or how each scene is linked to the rest of the book, each scene described by language becomes, in a sense, independent of meaning. This independence makes the scene dependent on readers. In other words, the independence gives readers the freedom to judge scenes for themselves. For example, when one is told to imagine “golden in the purest sense of the word” (Murakami 12), one might picture a yellowish gold, a transparent gold, or a shining gold. Since there is no one choice that is particularly preferred, any picture of gold is correct. Therefore, we readers are allowed to make up our own unique images in our minds. These images are induced by language in the novel and connected with our own memories and experiences. In other words, the images are bundles of the personal feelings one has toward, for example, sofas, sandwiches, or a fat beautiful woman.
For example, take the description of sandwiches in the novel. In the book, Murakami describes a sandwich with fresh tomato, lettuce, and cucumbers, which is cut by a clean, sharp knife (Murakami, J 81). The image of a sandwich might lead you to nostalgia because sandwich lunches are connected with your memory of middle school. Or you might just feel weird about having cucumbers in your sandwich. My impression of Murakami’s sandwich is this. Cucumbers sold in Japan look and taste different from those in U.S., and it is natural for Japanese to put cucumbers in sandwiches. I really like fresh Japanese cucumbers with a little bit of salt. I used to eat slices of cucumbers with my father. My mother used to make sandwiches only for events such as picnics, so I still can feel the excitement of special occasions when I picture a sandwich. Also, the word “sandwich” is written in the Katakana form of Japanese, which is often used to describe foreign objects. So, sandwiches have never been a familiar type of food to me, but rather something that gives me an unusual excitement. This kind of memory, just a tip of the iceberg of my memory, appears and then disappears in my mind when I read the passage. In addition, Murakami describes his sandwich for two pages in his book, which allows me to draw on my memory for a length of time that is great enough to enable me to subconsciously reflect on all of these strands. This image is the result of my interpretation of language in the novel.
It is true that we make such images whenever we read books, even if a book is not written by Murakami. However, the books by Murakami are different in that the images we create from them are more personal and less general. This is because each object in the novel is described in detail, and the descriptions force us to ponder the objects. Each description makes us think and leads us to personal memories and thoughts. It should also be mentioned that the subtleties of the Japanese language enhance such effects when the novel is read in Japanese. This implies that the images readers have when they read Murakami’s novel can differ radically.
This does not mean that no understanding is shared among readers and that language loses its meaning entirely. I have to admit that we still, in general, share the meaning of each word. That is, there is agreement, more or less, as to what “fat” or “young” or “beautiful” means. However, images are made up of those words as much as they are made up of connections of those words with personal experiences. So, as long as there is a shared logic to connect words with notions, it is possible to have language that leaves no ambiguity as to what language means. Mathematics is a good example of such language. In particular, we can see mathematical logic as an example of the attempt to detach mathematical language from that of everyday life so that its logic can stay clear. However, language used in books or conversation is not of this kind.
Haruki Murakami’s novel reveals that the assumption that we understand language in the same way has only a fragile base. I want to ask the following question again: why do we believe the assumption in the first place? One reason is that people believe they have a lot in common. For example, people believe they have the same visual perception . Not many people seriously think that when two people see the same object, one person sees something completely different from what the other person sees. This is the fundamental reason that people often think photography represents “reality” in an accurate way. Alternatively, we can define “reality” as something we share. Then, since we share language through communication with others, language is “reality” between two people. However, the “reality” is language itself, not the understanding of language. The difference between sharing language and sharing the understanding of language―that is, images―is so subtle that people often do not pay much attention to it. When two people decide that they are not very different, they assume that they have the same understanding of language. Another reason for people’s belief in a shared understanding of language is that people have the desire to share “reality.” Human beings cannot bear loneliness and seek companionship. This psychological desire is so strong that it deludes us into believing that we share the interpretation of language.
The consequence of what Murakami’s novel reveals is profound. It’s a realization that people do not share “reality” deep inside, that people live in the world alone. The “reality” people believe they share is sight, but even this “reality” can easily be lost by hallucinogens. We can share “reality” with others only through constant effort, that is, by talking with others and staying sober. Unless we try at every second, “reality” can be lost and we become separated from others. Once we realize how much people do not share, we can realize, in turn, how amazing it is that we can actually share “reality” through communication. Maybe Haruki Murakami’s novel is an attempt to create “reality.” He describes objects and notions in details. This is the only way he can tell us what he thinks and what the world he sees looks like. Murakami cannot hope that all readers understand his novel as he understands it; however, he does his best to share “reality.” Haruki Murakami is just another human being who has lost “reality” in the ocean of people.
The protagonist in the novel is confined inside his own world at the end. The End of the World is, ironically, the world he himself creates. As a result, the protagonist has no “reality” in the End of the World. These plots of the novel quietly suggest to us that we think about the mind and the significance of losing “reality.” In this essay I simply extract what Murakami tries to say in his novel―but you may see it differently, once you have read the novel for yourself.

Works Cited
Mitchell, W. J. Thomas, Picture Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994
Murakami, Haruki, translated by Alfred Birnbaum Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of The World. New York: Vintage books, 1991.
Murakami, Haruki, Sekai no Owari to ha-doboirudo wanda-lando (jou). Japan: Sinchosha, 2001.