Chapter Two. Murakami Haruki And The War Inside

Abstract

Early in his career, Murakami Haruki was dismissed as a lightweight purveyor of pop fiction. But once his novels began to include harrowing reflections on Japans tragic wartime history, it became easier to observe the presence of a concern for the countrys dark legacy even in some of his breeziest early fiction. And when such themes did emerge full-blown in Nejimakidori kuronikuru, Murakamis handling of them differed markedly from more conventional, fact-based war novels written by people who had experienced the Asia Pacific War first-hand. This chapter touches briefly on an early story and examines the meaning and perception of the war in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . Murakami traced his own inward search in a series of articles written after a two-week trip in June 1994 to the site of the Nomonhan Incident on the border between Manchuria and Mongolia. Keywords: Murakami Haruki; Nomonhan; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ; War