Hard-boiled homemakers: The individual and the dystopian urban in the Japanese anti‑detective novel

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways in which Japanese authors have engaged with the tropes of hard-boiled detective fiction in order to examine post-capitalist Japanese society. With reference to the extant framework on the relationship between hard-boiled fiction and the urban space, discussion will focus on two Japanese novels: Natsuo Kirino’s Out (アウト, 1997), and Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance (ダンス・ダンス・ダンス, 1983). Both texts depict individuals who have been displaced to the spatial and socioeconomic ‘margins’ of a dystopian urban space, and who, through narratives of crime and detection, attempt to escape its mundane oppression. However, both texts also challenge the hard-boiled genre through an integration of detective fiction archetypes with post-modern textual elements. Accordingly, they are emblematic of the emergent ‘anti-detective’ novel, which denies the hermetic and cathartic aspects of the traditional crime novel to discuss irresolvable issues of modern identity. Nonetheless, whilst Dance uses surreal ‘dream spaces’ as a source of relief for its protagonist, Out instead ultimately critiques its own escapist fantasy through stark violence. Regardless, both texts argue personal autonomy can only be achieved by the rejection of the urban space itself for an arguably unattainable imaginary.