Haruki Murakami the Anti Hero

8/19/2019 Haruki Murakami the Anti Hero

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The Anti-hero with a Thousand Frowns Page 2

Ash Hibbert http://acoldandlonelystreet.blogspot.com.au/

The anti-hero with a thousand frowns: Haruki

Murakami and the figure of the lone male modernist

character in fiction

Int roduct ion

I wasn‟t really interested in writing a hard-boiled mystery; I just wanted

to use the hard-boiled mystery structure. I‟m very interested in

structure. I‟ve been using other pop structures in my writing as well –

science fiction structures, for example. I‟m also using love story or

romance structures. But as far as my thinking about the hard-boiled

style, I‟m interested in the fact that they are very individualist in

orientation. The figure of the loner. I‟m very interested in that because

it isn‟t easy to live in Japan as an individualist or as a loner. I‟m always

thinking about this. I‟m a novelist and I‟m a loner, an individualist (Itdon‟t mean a thing, if it ain‟t got that swing: An interview with Haruki

Murakami).

The fiction of Japanese writer Haruki Murakami is a “deliberate imitation of the hard-

boiled detective style” (Fisher 159) however, instead of investigating a crime his

protagonists investigate themselves. They are solipsists who must pull apart emotions

to determine their source and meaning – always without the guarantee of resolution.

To a considerable degree Murakami‟s characters are universal stock

figures of contemporary literature, almost a cliché of the existential

condition. Lonely, fragmented, unable to communicate, they live a

mechanical, purposeless existence. They have become merely their

functions, as Emerson warned. Vaguely they sense that something is


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missing in their lives. Some are shallow with little interior life; others

have a deep need for meaning and self-fulfillment. Mostly they are

simply bewildered by their sense of disconnection and loss.(Loughman 88)

I intend to suggest Murakami‟s location in the tradition of modernist writing by

comparing and contrasting Camus‟ The Outsider , Sartre‟s Nausea, and – to a lesser

extent – Kafka‟s The Trial with Murakami‟s fiction. I understand „Modernism‟ here

to signify “a paradigmatic shift, a major revolt, beginning in the mid- and late

nineteenth century, against the prevalent literary and aesthetic traditions of the

Western world” (Eystensson 2). Sartre, Camus and, as I will demonstrate, Murakami,

are modern writers in general and existentialists specifically on the basis that all three:

Address themselves to two broad alternatives facing man in a world in

which God is dead: (1) the institutionalized and collectivized life on the

analogy of the machinery of technology toward which modern man is

drifting, and (2) the agonizing difficult authentic existence of the

individual who insists upon maintaining his unique consciousness in

the face of the overwhelming pressure to conform – that is, on being a

man-in-the-world (Spanos 2).

I plan to explore two characteristics shared by Sartre‟s Antoine, Camus‟ Meursault,

and many of Murakami‟s protagonists – alienation from culture and alienation from

time. As well as showing parallels between these early and contemporary modernist

texts, I will also show how Murakami has contributed distinctively to this literary

tradition. I will ask what a modern mindset rather than just a modern infrastructure

might mean for Japan. However, I will not attempt an in-depth exploration of the

relationship between Murakami and the country of his birth. Loughman has already


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carried out such an exploration, yet more influential in my choice is my lack of

primary contact with Japan itself. Since my main source of information regarding the

Japanese psyche is Murakami‟s non-fiction work Underground: the Tokyo Gas Attack

and the Japanese Psyche, my findings in regard to what Murakami „means‟ to Japan

will reflect Murakami‟s (perceived) relationship with his culture, and the type of

discourse that he has set out to establish (rather than what he has actually achieved).

One interviewer notes that Murakami “does not plan anything [ – h]e just writes.”

(Patil) Subsequently I intend to be reserved in my speculations on themes intended or

unconsciously explored. I would like to have presented a genealogy of the lone

modernist figure – plotting its evolution from, say, Kafka‟s K in The Trial , to

Murakami‟s K in Sputnik Sweetheart . However, such an undertaking would require

the identification of those texts most influential to each successive wave, or

generation, of writers of modernism in order to create a realistic sense of a literary

„lineage‟, and would be beyond the scope of this project.

Al ienat ion from cul ture

In Nausea, Antoine walks through the city along beaches and boulevards studying

people of the upper class in his native France like an anthropologist in his own land.

In Lost in Space, Barr suggests that Murakami is a science fiction writer – the genre

usually used to explore the notion of the alien (Barr 172). In Underground , Murakami

confesses to approaching his exploration of the Japanese psyche in order to

understand it after his seven-year self-imposed exile (Underground 204-5). It would

appear a prerequisite for the existential figure that they estrange themselves from their


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universe. Murakami and his protagonists conduct a similar exploration, yet rather than

attempting estrangement and distancing, they use the tool of empathy, participation,

and connection. Murakami explains:

To me, a story means to put your feet in someone else‟s shoes. There

are so many kinds of shoes, and when you put your feet in them you

look at the world through other people‟s eyes. You learn something

about the world through good stories, serious stories. (Miller)

Murakami‟s non-fiction work on the Tokyo subway gas attack of 1995 provides

valuable insight to the Japanese and to Murakami‟s psyche. It reveals the similarities

between the author and his protagonists – similarities that Murakami himself observes:

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I

graduated. I haven‟t belonged to any company or any system. It isn‟t

easy to live like this in Japan. You are estimated by which company orwhich system you belong to. That is very important to us. In that sense,

I‟ve been an outsider all the time. (Miller)

The testimonies that make up Underground are divided into the commuters –

survivors of the Tokyo Gas Attack („us‟) – and members of Aum, the perpetrators

(„them‟). Murakami approaches both groups with a typical novelists ‟ empathy, yet it

is clear that though he situates himself, by definition, within the „us‟ he can very

much relate to the cult members – “Talking to them so intimately made me realize

how their religious quests and the process of novel writing, though not identical, are

similar ” (Underground 215). As one of Murakami‟s translators notes:


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The Aum members fascinate him because they have tried to do what

his characters usually give up any hope of doing … Unlike the more

passive victims of the attack, the cult members have dared to probeinto the black box at the core of themselves.” (Rubin 243)

Murakami walks in the space between both camps, leveling criticism at both, while

we the reader “find that the line dividing „us‟ and „them‟ in extremely confrontational

situations begins to disappear, and we are left facing our own inner darkness”

(Matsuoka 305). Rubin further notes that:

Murakami attempts to convey how little separates the sick world of

Aum from the everyday world of ordinary Japan.

The individuality-crushing pressures of Japanese society can lead to

highly educated, ambitious, idealistic young people to abandon the

places that have been promised them in search of worlds of unknown

potential under misguided religious leaders … The greatest distinctionbetween victims and perpetrators is that the latter are desperate

enough to do something about the emptiness that both feel. (239)

Just as the Japanese were aghast at the cult members surrendering of their

individuality, the majority of Japanese possess a similar group mindedness in their

dedication to their families, their employers, and to the status quo. As Murakami

states, Japanese white-collar workers – or salary men – are “used to it”.

They have been doing that life for many years. They don‟t have any

alternative. There‟s a similarity between the cult people and ordinary

people. When I studied those interviews, the similarity was in my mind.

(Miller)


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All of Mur akami‟s protagonists share such unwillingness to commit to any kind of

extremism. In turn, the false coldness of the Court System and the false warmth of

society have caught Meursault; Antoine rejects both the humanist masses and the

adventurers of the exotic; while K. endeavors to be part of both the ridiculous court

system and the equally ridiculous world of the Bank and his residency. This

recognition of the absurdity of any extreme viewpoint, and the entropy of material and

social gains, leads Antoine, Meursault, and Murakami‟s protagonists to possess a

noticeable lack of ambition. Meursault argues, “you could never change your life, that

in any case one life was as good as another ” (Camus 44); Antoine does not write for

fame or money but to connect on a personal level with the individual that he is

profiling; and Murakami‟s protagonists appear to live off good fortune and are strong

believers in the immanent life:

„That‟s how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different

ways to die. But in the end that doesn‟t make a bit of difference. All

that remains is a desert . (South of the Border 81; emphasis in original)

And in after the quake:

„You need to lighten up and learn to enjoy life a little more. I mean,

think about it: tomorrow there could be an earthquake, you could be

kidnapped by aliens, you could be eaten by a bear. Nobody knows

what‟s going to happen‟ (17).

Miller notes, “the heroes in Haruki Murakami‟s dazzling, addictive and rather strange

novels … don‟t fit the stereotype of conformist, work-obsessed Japanese men at all.”

A motif of Murakami‟s fiction is the realization of the protagonists that their lives will


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never reach the heights for which they had hoped, yet when compared to other

characters, such an acceptance of one‟s limitations is a survival trait, for ambition can

all too easily becoming an all-consuming „white whale‟. Several of Murakami‟s texts

feature protagonists that pursue a Kurtz-like figure – a brilliant character that travels

into the „wilderness‟ and ultimately into their own destruction. In Wild Sheep Chase,

for instance the protagonist pursues his old friend Rat up a long alpine road and into a

mountain hideaway much like Marlow in Conrad‟s Heart of Darkness. In Wind-up

Bird Chronicles, the protagonist‟s wife goes to jail for murder, or attempted murder.

In Norwegian Wood , the protagonist‟s girlfriend signs herself into a mental asylum

and eventually commits suicide; in Sputnik Sweetheart , the protagonist‟s love interest

disappears, possibly to a parallel universe; and in Underground Murakami illustrates

that those who were central to the planning and execution of the gas attack were part

of the Japanese elite (Underground 57). The protagonists enjoyment of the simpler

pleasures on the other hand – of cooking food, sitting and watching crowds walk past,

of savoring cocktails, of going out for nights of pleasure – suggests a Taoist mood of

“intense indifference; neither happy nor sad, replete nor empty, lonely nor loved,

[Murakami‟s protagonists] simply exists” (Tamotsu 271). Throughout east Asia,

Murakami‟s “cool, detached, often comical narrator seems to offer an alternative to

life lived in the grim Confucian envelope of State and Family” (Rubin 5). Murakami‟s

protagonists accept the ordinary, and this enables them to be highly adaptable and

receptive to the extraordinary, “keep(ing) in tune with the unpredictable, shifting

music of life” (Rubin 3):


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„We take it for granted that the earth beneath our feet is solid and

stationary. We even talk about people being „down to earth‟ or having

their feet firmly planted on the ground. But suddenly one day we seethat it isn‟t true. The earth, the boulders that are supposed to be solid,

all of a sudden turn as mushy as l iquid‟ (after the quake 68).

Murakami may have a specific interest in advocating the existentialist disregard for

ambition considering the Japanese preoccupation with success, the dangers of which

are highlighted in Underground where both those unaffected by the sarine and those

who had themselves been gassed remained more concerned with their professional

obligations. A victim recounts, “„Hey, what‟s going on here?‟ I thought (while

suffering the effects of sarine poisoning), but I had to get to work. I had a whole list of

things to do.‟ (Underground 49) Murakami‟s fictitious protagonists, on the other hand,

are apathetic to their context within society. In South of the Border, West of the Sun

for instance, Hajime – like Antoine and Meursault – is willing to risk his whole,

carefully constructed life in order to avoid being guilty of „bad faith.‟

One of the devices Antoine and Murakami‟s protagonists use to step „outside‟ of the

court of their peers is semiotic manipulation, for while reality may be socially

constructed, language maintains it socially. For instance Antoine, globetrotter turned

hermit, is detached from the „naming conventions‟ presented to him by his peers – he

“is no longer able to fix, to stabilize, existence by naming things” (Spanos 50).

Antoine realizes that a society that understands the essence of a thing by its utility will

understand an individual‟s worth and identity in terms of the social role that they

fulfill. Antoine is rescued from having to apply this epistemological process to


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himself when he comes to understand that contrary to what he has been socialized to

believe in, existence precedes essence, and that that essence is arbitrary (Sartre 182-9).

In understanding that he exists in his own right – separate from our social function –

Antoine frees himself from the obligation to justify his existence through work.

Murakami also appears to argue that people are not what they do by using adjectives –

how they appear – rather than verbs – what they do. The protagonists and characters

acquire nicknames from their peers such as „Mr. Wind-up Bird‟, „The Rat‟, „The

Sheep Man‟, and „The Boss‟. This emphasizes that Murakami‟s protagonists are in a

constant state of flux – their identity is ethereal, and the identity that their parents

gave them at their birth is irrelevant to the period in their lives that we get to observe

them.

Finally, the sense of cultural alienation that Murakami‟s protagonists appear to „suffer‟

from may not be so much that they belong to no culture, but that they belong – like

Murakami himself – to too many cultures. Murakami is “ parodying [Western] stylistic

conventions, using an American tough-guy style to recount the misadventures of his

bookish, melancholy Japanese protagonists” (Fisher 159). Tamotsu describes him

essentially as a cultural pirate in his style and content (Tamotsu 256), and as Fisher

observes it is necessary to consider Murakami “a writer of the postmodern world, of a

world in which the „West‟ and „Japan‟ are problematic entities.” Murakami‟s work is

an intermediary between the western modernist tradition and Japanese literature.


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Al ienat ion from t ime

As with Sartre‟s Antoine isolation from Anny, Murakami‟s protagonists are isolated

geographically from their loved ones, their pets, and their best friends. It is the

individual‟s relationship with time, however, that is more significant a concern of the

protagonists of Nausea and Murakami‟s fiction. Antoine, for instance, attempts to

bridge the gap between himself and the long-deceased Marquis de Rollebon, while

Murakami‟s protagonists lose their loved ones to death and to the transformative

potential of time. As Hajime observes, “Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some

things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all

that remains is a desert ” (South of the Border 81; emphasis in original). Antoine is

flexible in the face of time, acknowledging the mortality of his individual passion and

even his capacity for passion. He proceeds to say to the wall of portraits of great

figures – “Farewell, you beautiful lilies, elegant in your little painted Sanctuaries,

farewell, you beautiful lilies, our pride and raison d ’ être, farewell, you Bastards.”

(Sartre 138) Antoine recognizes that life is most rewarding when immersed in, when

we reflect only sporadically on our location in time, and when we avoid at all costs

reflecting on our lives and converting experiences into an „adventure‟. Murakami‟s

protagonists also aspire to attain this degree of sublimity: the mundane events of their

lives – drinking beer, cooking, sampling cocktails, walking through Tokyo – gain as

much attention as the magical – such as hiking through sewers while being hunted by

subterranean mutants. Murakami does not go into great sensual depth with these

routine experiences, nor does he de-familiarize them like Sartre in Nausea, yet simply


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presents them. Murakami‟s protagonists recognize, and value, the passing of every

moment as being of equal importance. As Hajime states, “I don‟t consider it my job to

investigate the expanse of memory called the past and judge what is correct and what

isn‟t” (17). When Antoine laments, “„How on earth can I, who haven‟t had the

strength to retain my own past, hope to save the past of somebody else?‟” (Sartre 139),

he seems to be asking whether we can live our lives as more than a succession of

dreams. Murakami‟s protagonists appear to present a case for the affirmative. This is

because they realize that their failure to rescue history is not due to a failure of

strength on their part, but because such an endeavor is impossible. As the ending of

„The Second Bakery Attack ‟ – where the protagonist, “symbolically … has retrieved

his past, changed it, and made possible a different future” (Loughman 87) – the past

can never be resurrected but can only be salvaged and used as inspiration for the

future.

This, however, does not mean that Murakami‟s protagonists are not constantly

struggling to reconcile themselves to the fragility of memories. They frequently mark

the passage of time by the music of time yet such musical references act only as token

nostalgic triggers. In making such musical references, Murakami appears to question

the adequacy of music to encapsulate the spirit of the times.

Norwegian Wood begins with the Beatles song of the same title:

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.

She showed me her room, isn‟t it good, Norwegian wood?

She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,


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So I looked around and I noticed there wasn‟t a chair.

I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine.

We talked until two and then she said, “It‟s time for bed”.She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.

I told her I didn‟t and crawled off to sleep in the bath.

And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown.

So I lit a fire, isn‟t it good, Norwegian wood.

While reading the novel makes it clear why the song triggers the protagonist ‟s

memory of his unrequited romance with Naoko twenty years earlier, it also becomes

clear that the two narratives – the public song and the personal event – are heavily

contrasted in their moods. The song is upbeat and positive. Norwegian Wood is a

melancholic tale of loss. As well as highlighting the discrepancy between the public

and personal experiences, this juxtaposition also demonstrates the fatuousness of pop-

culture in its attempt to act as a form of collective memory. Murakami‟s work are a

critique of kitsch – “one of the central factors of modern civilized life, the kind of art

that normally and inescapably surrounds us … the triumph of the principle of

immediacy” (Calinescu 8; emphasis in original). Kitsch is designed to both „save‟

time – “its enjoyment is effortless and instantaneous” and to „kill‟ time “like a drug, it

frees man temporarily from his disturbed time consciousness” (Calinescu 8-9).

Murakami negotiates this paradox by observing the capacity of pop-music to both

reaffirm the present, and to haunt the future.

Just as the protagonist are capable of navigating through culture using techniques

usually associated with the postmodern, so too are they able to negotiate through time,

through their non-judgmental receptiveness and empathy with other people‟s stories.


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In Underground , Murakami bears witness to the suffering of the victims of the gas

attack even though he was out of Tokyo at the time of the attack. Though Murakami

notes that the gas attack was not “a topic you merely toyed with”, he also

acknowledges that he was “a spider sucking up this mass of words, only to later break

them down inside me and spin them out into „another narrative‟” (Underground 205).

Japan and Modernism

The willingness of Murakami‟s protagonists to strive for a sense of fulfillment in their

lives is an admirable achievement in a nation that while having successively

modernized its technology and infrastructure is only beginning to modernize itself

culturally and psychically (Loughman). The gap of almost half a century between the

works of Sartre and Camus, and the tremendous success of Murakami‟s work at home,

suggest that only now – in light of the bursting of the economic „ bubble‟ – is Japan

ready to question the machination of its success. Japan, suffering from the blight of

Nationalists and Revisionists attempting the dangerous undertaking of “remaking

history” (Miller), sorely needs Murakami‟s portrayals of characters willing to accept

the passage of time. In the tradition of modernism, then, Murakami‟s work is

An attempt to interrupt the modernity that we live and understand as a

social if not „normal,‟ way of life [and that] in refusing to communicate

according to established socio-semiotic contracts [implies] that there

are other modes of communication to be looked for, or even some

other modernity to be created.” (Eystensson 4-5; emphasis in original)


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While I understand modernism as the individualistic response to the dehumanizing

effect of the prevalent rise in collectivism and technology, existentialism is

attributable to the possibly humanizing effect of the disintegration of theology.

Murakami‟s corpus of work is a template for members of a culture in apparent need of

re-evaluating its relationship with technology without resorting to the destructive

forms of religion. “If I give you the right story,” Murakami argues, “that story will

give you a judging system, to tell what is wrong and what is right.” (Miller) It is in

fulfilling his perceived obligations as an author to present a “checking system” that

Murakami is continuing the existential project into the 21st century, showing readers

how to walk the middle ground between technology and theology, extremism and

conservatism, and in doing so giving us some very “good stories” in the process.

Conclus ion

Murakami‟s novels participate in the same discourse as Sartre, Camus and Kafka.

While his relationship with this tradition can be explained as a postmodern

appropriation and repackaging of Western literature, his playful use of cultural

references with sixties music and various literary genres should not blind readers to

his earnest exploration of existence. As well as being modern, by virtue of his

protagonists‟ tendency to step outside of the social machinery, his works explore and

contribute to central themes of the existential condition in the secular age – being in

culture, and being in time. Murakami‟s protagonists actively negotiate their

relationship with society – living as sovereign individuals yet engaging with their

fellow human beings when they wish. In a move that I believe extends Murakami‟s


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work beyond the traditional realms of modernism, however, Murakami‟s protagonists,

like Murakami himself, manage to further empower themselves in their dealings with

society by sliding in and out of both eastern and western culture, between „us‟ and

„them‟, between „sanity‟ and „insanity‟. They are adventurers of the soul whose feet

remain firmly fixed on the ground. They are tempted neither by religion or success,

and their relaxation in both the mundane and the amazing allows them to negotiate

instances that might otherwise baffle their modern predecessors.

While the protagonists of Murakami‟s work are conscious that “the hands of a clock

run in only one direction”, (South of the Border 52) they manage to push their

temporal as well as cultural limits. They find themselves confident in the present, the

past and alternative realities. They resign themselves to the impermanence of material

objects and memories and instead of seeking security in cultural memory – either in

the form of popular culture or historical documents – they find solace in their own and

other people‟s stories.

The success of Murakami‟s protagonists can be attributed to their confidence in

participating in the system of naming – a role usually reserved for institutions and

other authorities – and their seemingly effortless negotiation of their own, other

people‟s, and other nation‟s culture and history.

Murakami‟s Taoist texts are valuable artifacts in a Confucian culture. His work may

prove highly valuable in a modernist and progressive nation in countering the

reactionary forces of nationalism and theology that threaten to revise Japan past, or


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repeat it. On a literary level at least, Murakami provides an inventive contribution to

existentialism, resulting in a brilliant fusion of the Postmodern and the modernist.

With seamless references to Japanese society and geography, and cultural hybridism,

Murakami‟s texts are accessible to a non-Japanese audience. His work is

straightforward, seemingly effortless, and the protagonists‟ voices are consistent

resulting in a strong sense of honesty that encourages a sense of intimacy with

Murakami himself. Murakami‟s iconic, run-of-the-mill protagonists – all of whom

remain existentially natural and authentic despite the supernatural situations that they

find themselves in – suck in his readers, be they from Japan or the West.

Image by Federico Novaro

http://www.flickr.com/photos/federiconovaro/3598272618/http://www.flickr.com/photos/federiconovaro/3598272618/http://www.flickr.com/photos/federiconovaro/3598272618/


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Works r eferenced and sited

Barr, Marleen S. Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond .

Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, c1993

Beatles, „Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)‟. Rubber Soul . Capitol

Records, 1965

Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. Orlando: Harcourt Bruce, 1994

Calinescu, Matei. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde,

Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987

Camus, Albert. The Outsider . London: Penguin, 2000

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. New York: Penguin Books, 1999

Eysteinsson, Astradur. The Concept of Modernism. London: Cornell

University Press, 1990

Fisher, Susan. „An Allegory of Return: Murakami Haruki‟s The Wind-Up Bird

Chronicle‟. Comparative Literature Studies Volume 37, Number 2, 2000

Fowles, John. The Magus. London: Cape, 1977


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Kafka, Franz. The Trial . Trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. London: Everyman‟s

Library, 1992

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed: an Ambiguous Utopia. New York:

Harper & Row, 1974

Loughman, Celeste „ No place I was meant to be: contemporary Japan in the

short fiction of Haruki Murakami‟ World Literature Today, Winter 1997 v71

n1 p87

Matsuoka, Naomi. „Murakami Haruki and Anna Deavere Smith: Truth by

Interview‟. Comparative Literature Studies. Volume 39, Number 4, 2002

Miller, Laura. „The Outsider: Haruki Murakami on the darkness of the

subconscious, the Aum cult subway gas attack and being an individualist in

Japan‟. Salon, 16 December, 1997. URL:

http://www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html

Murakami, Haruki. after the quake. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Random House,

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_________. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: a Novel .

Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. New York: Kodansha International, 1991

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_________. Hear the Wind Sing . Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. Tokyo: Kodansha,

1987

_________. Norwegian Wood . Trans. Jay Rubin, New York: Vintage

International, c2000

_________. Pinball 1973. Trans. Alfred Birnbaum. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1990

_________. South of the Border, West of the Sun. Trans. Philip Gabriel. New

York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1999

_________. The Sputnik Sweetheart . Trans. Philip Gabriel. New York: Alfred

A Knopf, 2001

_________. Underground: the Tokyo gas attack and the Japanese psyche.

Trans. Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. London: Harvill, 2000

_________. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: a Novel. Trans. Jay Rubin New

York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997

Patil, Anita „HM shares his thoughts with students‟ – October 22, 1998.

Observer Editorial Board . URL:

http://www.murakami.ch/rd/books_about_hm/main.html

Rubin, Jay. Haruki Murakami and the World of Music. London: Harvill Press,

2002

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Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Trans. Robert Baldick. Harmondsworth: Penguin,

1965

Sinda Gregory, Toshifumi Miyawaki, Larry McCaffery. „It don‟t mean a thing,

if it ain‟t got that swing: An interview with Haruki Murakami‟. Review of

Contemporary Fiction Summer 2002. Vol. 22, Iss. 2, p. 111-127

Spanos, William V. Casebook on Existentialism 2. Binghampton: Harper and

Row, 1976

Tamotsu, Aoki. „Murakami Haruki and Japan Today‟ in Treat, John Whittier

(Ed). Contemporary Japan and popular culture. Honolulu: University of

Hawaii Press, 1996Taylor, Charles. Sources of the self: the making of the

modern identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989

Wood, James. “Human, All Too Inhuman,” The New Republic, July 24, 2000

Documents

Haruki Murakami the Anti Hero