Murakami and Individualism
One of my favorite writer's obsession with America from afar.
Murakami’s fascination with the West, with American metaphors and references, started early. He grew up as the only child of a high-school teacher in an unremarkable modern suburb near Kobe. There was nothing traditional about his childhood except the conformism of Japanese society, which he hated: the school uniforms, the petty rules, the group-mindedness, the submission of individual desires to collective familial duties. His escape from this social claustrophobia was to dream of America. In his words, he “tried to create a foreign country in my heart."
Listening to Jim Morrison in the United States is not the same as listening to him in Japan. The Western metaphors, having lost their mystery, became redundant. “I no longer needed the props.” He then decided that, as a Japanese writer, he should be more directly involved with Japan—even, in his words, “take political responsibility.” This was an extraordinary statement. I asked him what he meant. “The most important thing,” he answered, “is to face our history, and that means the history of the war.”
