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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115352 |
| Date | 06 June 2023 |
| Creators | Vaughan, Christopher Pearson |
| Contributors | English, Knapp, Shoshana Milgram, Vollmer, James M., Wiscomb, Avery |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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