Haruki Murakami is no stranger to criticism in Japan, having been described as 'Westernized' by Japanese critics for much of his career. The heavy use of Western culture in his novels seems to suggest that Murakami writes without attention to his nationality, as his books are devoid of references to Japan's popular and artistic canons, and his writing style and the genres he works within owe much to Western origins. Despite these characteristics, I argue in this thesis that Murakami has been unfairly labeled by scholars and critics and seek to show how the author deals directly with Japanese issues of national identity, middle-class disillusionment, and historical memory through his novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Murakami's importance as a Japanese author lies in his progressive outlook for Japan, in which he challenges loss of individuality under Japanese nationalism and pushes for a nation more in tune with the outside world. / Master of Arts / In this thesis, I address the popular claim that Murakami has ignored his Japanese identity by describing how Murakami works through various issues related to Japan in his novels. In my first chapter, I show how the author returns to the mindset of Japan's Meiji Era---an era in which Western themes and forms were incorporated into Japanese society while retaining 'Eastern spirit'---by his use of what Donald Keene calls Japan's 'virtuoso approach.' In my second chapter, I discuss the similarities between John Updike's Rabbit, Run and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to argue that Murakami uses characteristics of Western suburban literature to better express his thoughts on the tensions those in Japan's middle-class face under the nation's corporate environment. In my final chapter, I analyze Murakami's reception in Korea through a film adaptation of his short story "Barn Burning" and look at the ways he confronts Japanese history in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle to show that Murakami acts to the outside world as a forward-thinking voice for Japan. I suggest that the significance of Murakami to the nation can be found in his attempt to confront and diversify Japan's narrowly-defined national identity and controlling structures.

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In this essay Murakami Haruki’s novel The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was analysed from the perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope. The aim was to explore the concept of time and space as presented in the novel. In particular, the analysis focused on how Bakhtin’s chronotopes can be applied to The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, how the chronotopes can enhance our understanding of the novel, and finally how the chronotope theory can be applied to the concept of ‘magic realism’ that is often used to describe Murakami’s authorship. Four chronotopes, presented by Bachtin, were selected and applied to the novel: every-day life, the road, crisis and the castle. The concept of the chronotope allows analysis of how time and space work together in literature and how they form patterns of correlation in the sujet. Results showed that the four chronotopes were found in the novel, and that they also interacted with each other. The chronotope of everyday-life was apparent throughout the novel, and the narrator was under its control. The narrator also seemed to create every-day life out of the chronotopes of the road and crisis by re-living the crises in the road. These three chronotopes seemed inseparable in The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Finally, the fourth chronotope, the castle, illustrated how a concrete room in the novel, a house, became a part of time and space through a character who, by his presence, gave the impression of slowing down time. When this character disappeared, time made its way through space, making the chronotope of the castle visible. The essay concludes that the chronotope theory was a relevant way to analyse The Wind Up Chronicle as it provided a concept of how time and space appeared together in a novel where time and space is always present. The analysis helped creating a way of understanding the patterns in the novel, which were not always clear, thereby also increasing the understanding of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.