WEEK THREE: Asian Horror and Murakami

Week Three: Asian Horror and Murakami

This week’s theme hit close to home for me. I am currently a senior illustration student and for my thesis I’m illustrating Murakami’s collection of short stories, The Elephant Vanishes. I have always enjoyed his writing style because of the deep metaphors hidden beneath the layers of text. Murakami’s work is so deeply allegorical that at times the metaphors seem almost nonexistent. He writes to make the reader think. Another common theme in Murakami’s work is that he combines the surreal with the real. I discuss this notion as well while talking about Andy Weir’s The Martian because there are elements of reality intermingling with the unknown. Wherein space opera combines reality with universal mystery, Murakami combines reality with spirituality and the surreal. 

I found a quote from Murakami that I feel appropriately describes the way in which he writes, “my style, my prose, is very easy to read. It contains a sense of humor, it’s dramatic, and it’s a page-turner. There’s a sort of magic balance between those two factors.” For me, this is part of the appeal. His writing strikes a certain chord that other authors tend not to play with. 

A Wild Sheep Chase follows Murakami’s style in a similar way. The characters are all chasing after something that is damn near difficult to capture because the thing they’re trying to capture is a metaphor in and of itself. This sort of intangible thing that resides somewhere deep within themselves and the world around them, and this thing that they are all after varies greatly from individual to individual, is dependent only on that person’s goals and aspirations. As the story progresses, we see a shift from truth to fantasy, not unlike the transitions that take place in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. As we enter into a world we can understand, we begin to lose sight and consciousness of what should be. Murakami uses this segway in order to strengthen the power of his metaphors. 

I found two relevant quotes to Murakami and metaphor that I felt would be appropriate to share here: 

“Metaphors help to eliminate what separates you and me.”

“Everything in life is a metaphor. We accept irony through a device called metaphor and through that we grow and become deeper human beings. Irony deepens a person, helps them mature. It’s the entrance to salvation.”

The reason I include these quotes is because I feel it’s a big part of what separates Western and Asian literature. Western literature tends to spell things out for you, wherein Asian literature forces you to think about what you read and project your own experiences and thoughts onto the story.