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So I wanna talk about Haruki Murakami

📖A disclaimer: This text is based upon my reading of the Polish edition of Dance Dance Dance, hence why I don’t include any quotes from the book. The Polish translation can vary hugely from the original, and I have no way of verifying that at present. So the following are merely my feelings and observations after reading the book in translation.

❤️I used to love Haruki Murakami. He was one of my favorite authors, and I even used his name as my password on a work computer (don’t worry, I don’t work there anymore). Anyway, my point is, I really loved the atmosphere of his novels, the heavy smoke of magical realism that makes you feel like your life, too, could be extraordinary. Hell, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki was basically my personality at one point. So why can’t I stand him anymore?

✨Murakami's style is unique, blending surrealism with the mundane, creating a world where the lines between reality and fantasy blur. His themes often revolve around loneliness, existential musings, and the quest for identity. This signature blend has earned him a dedicated following, but it also makes his flaws more glaring when they appear.

🔍The notion that Haruki Murakami’s prose is sexist is not new. A quick Google search comes up with countless articles on the topic. Not everybody agrees, however—some say his female characters are two-dimensional, while others argue they’re more complex than their male counterparts. Well, first of all, there is a scarcity of male secondary characters to compare them to, and the main character is usually very uninterested in his fellow males, hence why the female characters end up being more complex and interesting. In the end, whether the women characters are written as two-dimensional or not is unimportant, because they only serve as a tool to the main character.

😏I couldn’t put Dance Dance Dance down because I was wondering, "How bad can he make it? In what vaguely sexualized way can he describe the female character this time?" How deep will he dive into the psyche of an almost-middle-aged man who’s cracking self-deprecating jokes while actually being very arrogant? And it’s the same main character every time. At this point, Murakami is just publishing diaries or fanfiction with himself as the main character.

👀The way to describe the main character’s opinion about his female counterpart is, "I could sleep with her if I wanted." Is there ever a moment where he doesn’t see women as potential sexual partners? Well, sometimes he sees them as something akin to a piece of furniture: this one pretty and in good taste, the other charming and spicy. When the main character and his actor friend, Gotanda, invite over call-girls, the names are irrelevant—the girls are simply referred to as “the one in glasses” and “the amazing one.”

🤔An interesting observation arises as we keep reading—the main character goes on a spontaneous vacation to Hawaii (accompanied by a 13-year-old girl, but that is, of course, just a detail) and meets a one-handed American poet, Dick North. He goes for a walk on a beach with Dick and is left very embarrassed by the conversation that unfolds. Dick shares with him some private details of his life and reflects on some decisions he made, ending by asking the main character for his opinion or if he can relate in any way. The main character is perplexed and ends up thinking to himself that people really shouldn’t ask strangers such difficult, personal questions. A riveting thought, when you consider how brazen the main character was to the hotel receptionist he met a few weeks prior, coming up to her and trying to make private conversation after she explicitly stated she doesn’t wish to be interrupted like that while at work. He gets a taste of his own medicine, but there is no reflection at all.

🙄The main character is incredibly selfish and so absorbed in his own world that he ends up being completely self-unaware. He does not consider how his actions may influence others, but when the same is done to him, he recoils. All the other characters are simply means for him to achieve some sort of enlightenment and forward his doubtful self-development. He doesn’t really care about them as people. He seems to care about the 13-year-old Yuki, but her existence is also just an ingredient in his own cocktail.

😞In the end, Dance Dance Dance provides an anticlimactic ending with the weeks-long search for the meaning of everything that is happening unfolding in the very last chapter. And maybe the point isn’t “what did it all mean?” but that it actually doesn’t mean anything? That the point is really to just keep dancing, just keep on living, without trying to influence… destiny?

🔄This theme of searching for meaning only to find an anticlimax is prevalent in other Murakami novels as well. For instance, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84 also feature protagonists on seemingly profound quests that ultimately lead to ambiguous or unresolved conclusions. This recurring motif can be both frustrating and captivating, depending on the reader's perspective.

📚Will I keep reading Murakami? Probably. And that is the clue to the writer’s popularity: you cannot get enough of this so-called magic realism, which is really just realism. Despite the problematic aspects of his writing, there’s something undeniably compelling about the worlds he creates. They invite readers to lose themselves in the blend of the surreal and the real, and even when they disappoint, they do so in a way that feels strangely true to life.

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Unveiling Shadows: A Review of 'The Premonition' by Banana Yoshimoto

📚'The Premonition' by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda, explores the haunting journey of Yayoi, a 19-year-old girl with a happy nuclear family, as she confronts forgotten childhood memories, delves into her mysterious aunt Yukino's unusual lifestyle, and grapples with the inescapable bitterness of truth.

✨The premonition that comes up in the very title of the novel can be interpreted as the empty feeling of something being “out there” - yet the main character cannot reach it, whatever it is. The beautiful picture of a happy family is slightly crooked, something’s not right, but Yayoi doesn’t yet know what it is exactly. The main character is somewhat like the princess and the pea, she doesn’t know what but there is something disturbing her peace of mind.

🔍There is an interesting “be careful what you wish for” moment in the novel. Yayoi was longing for years to find what was that one thing she couldn’t remember, what was the pea under her mattress. As soon as she has a revelation and confirms it, she immediately starts to regret looking for the answer. She felt trapped by not knowing before and now she feels trapped by the newly gained knowledge. Ultimately she makes peace with it, but understandably, at first she just wants for things to go back to how they were, even though her biggest wish has just been granted.

🌟In a sense, the buildup in the first half of the novel suggests that something significant is brewing beneath the facade of a happy family's ordinary life. And while it is true - Yayoi discovers that her family isn’t in fact her biological family and her real parents died in a car crash years ago - there seems to be little consequence to this. The main character’s focus shifts from her worries and clairvoyance to the feelings she’s been harboring for her adoptive brother and she doesn’t further question her own identity or what the revelation means to her. There is a climax in the scene where Yayoi, along with her aunt-sister visits the place where her parents died. The closure however seems very insignificant at this point. In the end, she goes back to live with her adoptive family. No deeper thought is dedicated to pondering the question of chosen families and growing up without knowing your true identity.

🌌The novel seems like the author lost momentum midway. The simple ending stands in opposition to the first, fairy tale-like narrative. The first half of the book feels like looking up at a night sky in a dark forest, but in the end the reader comes out to a bright, mid-day meadow, where everything seems bleak in the harsh daylight. The beginning of the novel is filled with excitement and anticipation as the reader is swept into Yayoi’s cold, empty soul filled with longing. Sometime midway through the book the feeling dissipates completely.

👁️‍🗨️So in that sense, the first half of the book definitely seems more ethereal. Yayoi recalls a dream she had in which she killed a baby. I Googled the meaning of killing someone in your dream and here is what came up: “So if you are murdering someone in your dream, you are probably actively working to change or end something negative in your real life”. I found it very interesting how this has a lot to do with the teenager’s situation, I guess that sheds some light on the titular premonition that Yayoi had. Another interesting symbol is a rubber duck that the girl saw shortly before the dream as well as in it, right after she had killed the baby. And apparently, thanks to Sesame Street, rubber ducks can be associated with youth and happiness. This string of events and symbols paints an interesting picture regarding Yayoi’s road to self-discovery. However, such symbolism is scarce in the second half of the book

🎭While possibly intentional, this turn in vibe seems anticlimactic compared to the potential of the first half of the book. Overall it is a good coming-of-age story. I feel like it would be a valuable read for someone who feels lost in their life, someone who cannot reach happiness no matter what they do - that’s how Yayoi’s feelings of something being slightly out of reach resonated with me. The book is filled with beautiful and thought-provoking imagery, but one of my favorite sentences is, 'I looked up at the sky, trying to get a grip on my own existence before it vanished into the darkness'.