(R)evolution in the Land of the Lonely: Murakami Ryū and the Project to Overcome Modernity

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Using a form of fictional reportage he terms the ‘document novel’ Murakami Ryū has spent the past ten years probing the underlying causes of many of Japan's most critical social problems, from domestic violence and the rising school drop-out rate to phenomena such as ‘compensated dating’ and the hikikomori problem. At the root of these issues stands one seemingly insurmountable culprit: the recent completion of Japan's ‘project of modernization’. The present essay offers a close reading of three recent Murakami novels, two dealing with mass killers (In za miso sūpu, 1997, and Kyōseichū, 2000), the third with a ten year-long popular uprising of middle school students (Kibō no kuni no ekusodasu, 2000). Its purpose is to show how two radically different works express essentially the same message: that Japan has reached a point where its current social and political structures, grounded in modernization (kindaika), must give way to a new evolutionary stage of social development. Within the slightly futuristic setting that has become a Murakami trademark, the author shows us an apocalyptic vision of Japan that may well be realized before long unless Japanese politicians, the mass media, and the general public start thinking more seriously about the root causes of the many social and economic crises that beset Japan.