The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature (Nissan InstituteRoutledge Japanese Studies) by Napier Susan J

Author:Napier, Susan J. [Napier, Susan J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2005-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

That won’t do any good, I thought to it. You can look all you want but you can’t say a thing. You can’t do a thing. Your existence is over, finished, done. Soon the eyes dissolved into emptiness, and the room filled with the darkness of night.

(p. 156)

Unlike the “Dream of the Third Night,” the housewife has no trouble getting rid of the monstrous presence. Far from being burdened by guilt or other painful emotions, she is able to turn her thoughts outward into weapons. In this interaction between self and alien the self is barely affected.

Murakami’s ghosts can be more disturbing than his monsters, but they are usually well intentioned. Thus, the ghost of the protagonist’s friend Rat in Hitsuji o meguru bōken (1982) (trans. A Wild Sheep Chase (1989)) helps destroy the real monster, the all too human henchman of a sinister right-wing politician. In Dansu dansu dansu (1988) (trans. Dance, Dance, Dance (1988)) the protagonist’s murdered girlfriend Kiki returns as a sobbing presence, crying for the protagonist who is too frozen in cool emotionlessness to be able to shed tears for himself.

Murakami’s ghosts are internal ones in that they have a strong personal relationship to the protagonists in his works. Thus, in Dance, Dance, Dance, the narrator asks the ghost of Kiki, “But you did call me, didn’t you? It was you who guided me along, wasn’t it?” She answers, “It was you who called yourself, guided yourself, through me. I’m your phantom dance partner. I’m your shadow. I’m not anything more” (p. 371).

These ghosts are thus related to Murakami’s conception of the doppelgänger developed in the “End of the World” side of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a shadow self who takes care of the other self. But the protagonist responds to Kiki’s answer by putting himself in the mind of Kiki’s murderer (another potential doppelgänger of the protagonist). “But I wasn’t strangling her, I was strangling my shadow. If only I could choke off my shadow, I’d get some health” (p. 371) .

Paradoxically, it is the shadows/ghosts who are the “healthiest” entities in Dance, Dance, Dance . It is they who mourn and sob for the protagonist’s emptiness. And it is they who are willing to try and help him.

Murakami’s ghosts are hardly subversive. Indeed, a case might be made that they act as palliatives for the difficulties of reality. At the same time, however, their existence suggests alternatives or at least emendations to that reality.

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