Murakami's Use of Japanese History in His Writings

by Joseph Bahen 

         Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kobe, Japan.  Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature despite the fact he grew up in Japan.  Even though his favorite style of writing was westernized he could not help but line his works with hints of his time in Japan.  Japan up until about 1960 was a closed off country from the rest of the world.  This closed off environment consumed much of Murakami’s life until he was about 11.  This is when Japan joined the United Nations and opened up free trade with the rest of the world.  New things from all over the world began flooding into Japan and Murakami was fascinated by the things he read from western cultures.  He began to write in a westernized way but his writings still represented much of that closed off old way of life in Japan.  Baik Jiwoon, in his publication Murakami Haruki and the historical memory of East Asia, proposes the question “Can Haruki’s placeless and timeless novels and stories be explained by their feeling culturally lost and their repressed historical memories?” (Jiwoon 65). This is exactly what Murakami does in his short story “The Ice Man.”

            In “The Ice Man” Murakami has introduced us to a character, that I believe, is figuratively made of Ice.  His icy personality makes him a character that is a figure trapped in its past and is fully concerned with preserving the past.  The Ice man is not only dwelling on the past but is constantly reliving it in his mind.   The other character we are introduced to in this story is a young woman who is filled with warmth and love. She strives for a future, a future that consists of Ice Man and for them to live together happily ever after.  However, despite her love for the Ice Man she realizes how different they are and how she still has that warmth for the future in her.  In the story she is quoted as saying “I am perfectly happy. We get along fine. It’s just that I’m bored.  I’d like to go someplace far away see things I’ve never seen before, experience something new” (Murakami 969).  The woman for the rest of the story struggles with this debate of being with the Ice Man but also yearning for something new.  The story ends on the fact that these two travel to the South Pole together.  Ice Man gave her what she wanted in travel but could not go to someplace warm.  He had to stay with the ice.  The young girl becomes consumed by the low temperatures and is soon trapped in the ice, figuratively trapped in the past with the Ice Man.

            The connections to “The Ice Man” and Murakami’s past are undeniably prevalent.  As a reader I see Murakami himself represented as the young woman in this story and the Ice Man as pre-1960s Japan.  Murakami’s passion for western literature shows us his wanting to leave Japan and see the rest of the world but due to Japan’s closed off nature at the time this would have been difficult.  Japan is the Ice Man because for a country to be as closed off as it was before the ‘60s is an ancient principle for a country to hold.  Japan was simply stuck in the past and did not yearn to move on into a future dealing with all other nations.  Because of all this Murakami must have felt as if he was trapped and slowly being suffocated by Japan’s policies.  As we see the young woman consumed in the ice, we must infer Murakami felt the same way when he yearned to see what lied beyond the horizon.

Work Cited

Jiwoon, BAIK. "Murakami Haruki and the Historical Memory of East Asia." Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Volume 11 (2010):             64-70. Print.

MAROTTI, William. "Political Aesthetics: Activism, Everyday Life, and Art’s Object in 1960s’ Japan." Inter-Asia Cultural             Studies Volume 7 (2006): 606-14. Print.

Murakami, Haruki. ""The Ice Man" by." The Story and Its Writers. 8th ed. Vol. 1. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. 966-73. Print.