Murakami and the Subterranean City

I posted this piece by Sam Anderson about Haruki Murakami on Facebook the other day. This bit hit close to home.

I descended into the subway with total confidence, wearing a freshly ironed shirt — and then immediately became terribly lost and could find no English speakers to help me, and eventually (having missed trains and bought lavishly expensive wrong tickets and gestured furiously at terrified commuters) I ended up surfacing somewhere in the middle of the city, already extremely late for my interview, and then proceeded to wander aimlessly, desperately, in every wrong direction at once (there are few street signs, it turns out, in Tokyo) until finally Murakami’s assistant Yuki had to come and find me, sitting on a bench in front of a honeycombed-glass pyramid that looked, in my time of despair, like the sinister temple of some death-cult of total efficiency.

The picture above is of one of the staircases that descend from the raised highways mentioned in the piece and featured in the first chapter of Murakami's book 1Q84 - got my copy yesterday!

I've been a fan of Haruki Murakami for about 7 or 8 years since my sister, who happened to be reading the Wind Up Bird Chronicle at the time, introduced me to him. Looking back that was a fairly ambitious choice for my sister who was like 15 at the time. Following her recommendation I started with Norwegian Wood, moving on to Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - one of my favorites - and the Wind up Bird Chronicle.

For those un-initiated to Murakami's work, I think a good point of comparison may be the film the Big Labowski. The archetypal Murakami character is a bit like the Dude, a tad disaffected and detached from society, but drawn into some strange events by forces outside of his control. Unlike the Big Labowski though there are a lot of surreal and occultist elements. There's this consistent theme that there are many things we don't understand going on beneath the surface of our daily experience.

These supernatural elements are more along the lines of the King's ghost in Hamlet than flying brooms in Harry Potter. My uniformed reading is that these supernatural elements aren't allegory, but kind of augment the personal, and historical events that shape the personal narrative of the main characters by adding a sense of mystery and enigma to peoples actions. What makes Norwegian Wood a good introduction to his work is that it doesn't have any of these elements but you can kind of see how from the right perspective, given ignorance of someone's past, the way their experiences can come back to haunt that person can seem paranormal to an outsider. So good advice sis!

Anderson's piece correctly identifies this subterranean theme running through Murakami's work.

I reread the Wind Up Bird Chronicle after moving to Tokyo and it's amazing how different the book feels now that I have a better understanding of the geography in which it takes places. The landscape of Tokyo both reinforces the sense of mystery in the book and makes the supernatural elements fit in better with the rest of the story.

My assertion is that the defining aspect of the Tokyo Landscape is how subterranean it feels.

Unlike say New York which seems defined by it's skyline and tall buildings. In Tokyo with it's deep labyrinth subways, underground clubs, stores, restaurants, and walk ways, much of the action always seems to be going on below ground. All of the tall buildings in the Skyscraper district in Shinjuku are interconnected by a vast underground mall that sprawls outward from the station.

Even walking around at street level feels in many ways subterranean. Part of this sensation is a result of almost never having a clear view of the horizon. Most of the time you're walking through a narrow maze of densely packed buildings. When you do emerge onto a main multi-lane road it's often capped by one of the raised highways, making the road appear like some giant tunnel carved through the urban landscape - see the pictures above. This, I imagine, is why the description concrete jungle has stuck to Tokyo.

Tokyo is a city alive with energy, the most densely populated city in the world, but most of the activity is hidden from view at street level, millions of people flowing in and out of stations beneath your feet, gathering in buildings tucked deep into back alleys and in clubs below. It's easy to see how someone with an imagination like Murakami's could envision a supernatural element to all the things unseen.

As a westerner here, the effect is probably magnified, all the signposts and guides are labeled not only in another language but in symbols that are totally different from our Roman characters. That living in Tokyo doesn't resemble some kind of dystopian nightmare is really a credit to the Japanese people and culture. People are friendly, the city is safe and clean, and once you know how to get somewhere it's actually fairly easy to do. Tokyo is one of the only cities in the world where you can really experience all the excitement and mystery created by tens of millions of people packed in a tight space in the relative material comfort and safety of a much smaller city.

I'm looking forward to 1Q84