June's Book: 1Q84

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Fantasy (2010/2011* - 1157 pp.)

Zelkova serrata, a tree native to Japan, pictured here in 2006. The zelkova tree plays a key part in the setting near the end of the book. Picture from Wikimedia Commons.

1Q84 is the first Japanese translation in the history of this blog. In Japan in 1984, Aomame, a young assassin and personal trainer, and Tengo, a young novelist and math teacher, trade chapters during a story that brings them together over a mysterious novel called Air Chrysalis, a science-fiction-esque cult called Sakigake, and a cast of characters that rotates in and out of their lives. The book's highlight is the opening scene, when Aomame departs a taxi on the highway to take an emergency stairwell toward her newest kill. For the 1100+ pages afterward, nothing is the same.

One of the earliest questions that arises is when the beautiful 17-year-old Eriko "Fuka-Eri" Fukada writes Air Chrysalis, and Tengo rewrites it but it is published solely under Fuka-Eri's name, whether it is "literary fraud". While ghostwriters' names are generally included on the front covers of published books (see here for an example on this blog), I've never heard of an uncredited ghostwriter being the source of a fraud. If anything, the uncredited ghostwriter is the one being cheated, but Tengo is in on the plan from the start. For as many times as the characters use the "fraud" term, no one ever faces any legal or public relations consequences for it. The highlight of the Air Chrysalis story arc is when Aomame reads extensively from it, (665-679) drawing the reader into what would otherwise be a King in Yellow-style referenced work that only the characters, never the reader, get to see.

Meanwhile, Tengo copes with the illness and eventual death of his father, with whom he was always close geographically but was never close with emotionally. Tengo's father's position as an NHK fee collector, going door to door in the name of the Japanese state television company, leads to NHK fee collection references appearing at eerie times in the latter part of the book. At the home where Tengo's father is staying, where the nurses Kumi Adachi, Tamura and Okura help him, Tengo identifies with the main character in "Town of Cats", a fictitious short story about a man who wanders too much in a town full of cats and is subsequently unable to take the train home. Tengo's constant wonder of whether he will get home, or where home even is, pervades his perspective throughout the book. It is to him as the alternate reality year 1Q84, which looks like 1984 intentionally, is to Aomame.

Absolutely none of these characters are likable; Murakami's great gift is making the reader care so much about what happens to all these people I don't like. Aomame is a wreck; Tengo is going nowhere in life; Komatsu, the publisher, is manipulative; Fuka-Eri doesn't say much; Professor Ebisuno, her legal guardian, barely publishes. When the reader sees the unfulfilling lives these characters lead, largely by their own hands (although Fuka-Eri gets slack, as she was raised by the Sakigake cult), it is readily apparent that the alternate world, 1Q84 and/or the Cat Town, is what these characters need. When life isn't what you want it to be, trade it for a different life, as my short story "I Drank the Toxic Cocktail" posited back in 2012.

For all the chatter of "don't give your characters names that are too similar, it'll confuse the reader", Murakami has expertly named characters incredibly similarly (to an English-speaking eye) yet there is never any confusion. Tamaki, Tamaru, and Tamura are all characters, and although they never meet, they all recur throughout the book. At no point did any of these two characters appear to be the same person, nor was there ever any confusion. In the same way that your phone contacts might contain, say, a Mike B and a Mike S,** similar names in fiction can work plenty well.

One of the great ironies of 1Q84 is when multiple characters call Air Chrysalis a "harmless tale" or "harmless fantasy novel". (958, 987, 997) Fantasy can be anything from misleading childhood education,*** to a Christian apologetic (even if The Guardian wants to gripe about it), to an attack on academic mathematicians, but none of those are harmless. Murakami obviously knows this, so the fact that the characters have effectively entered the world of Air Chrysalis but then write off the book they've entered has a sly feel to it.

Parts of 1Q84 are highly quotable. Here are a few of my favourites:

“Robbing people of their actual history is robbing them of a part of themselves. It’s a crime.” -Tengo, to Fuka-Eri (322)

“[Niagara Falls] was the most boring town in the world.” -Tamaru, to Aomame (403)

“You’re nothing.”^ -Tengo's father, to Tengo (509)

“Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities but are continually trading places.” -the Leader of Sakigake, to Aomame (558)

“There were only a few government offices and companies that managed information by computer. It cost too much and took too much effort. But a religious organization of national scale would have the resources to computerize.” (827)

“It’s not like it’s crammed with hot-off-the-press information or anything.” -Tamaru, to Aomame, discussing Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time (970)

“Once you get your hopes up, your mind starts acting on its own.” (1028)

“There's something about those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that can't be explained, no matter how hard you try. They're what the dead person has to take with him to his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage.” -Kumi Adachi, to Tengo (1075)

Then, of course, there's "Lucky", the faux-Aesop's Fable about the vegetarian cat who decides a rat carcass has a good trade-in value.

At times, 1Q84 feels more like it is coming from Murakami than it is from the characters. Having a main character, Tengo, be a struggling author reads like Write What You Know. Having Air Chrysalis be a literary journal submission that subsequently becomes a bestseller reads like Wish Fulfillment, and is arguably more unrealistic than an actual air chrysalis. The characters all know obscure bits of literary, historical and scientific trivia, even Fuka-Eri, who has spent most of her life in an isolated cult compound; after a while, the reader feels like this is the trivia Murakami knows, not what the characters should be realistically expected to know.

There are a few points in 1Q84 that leave me confused. One is that Murakami goes to pains to describe Aomame's unnaturally large left ear during her first couple chapters, which she sees as a deformation, although it is covered by her long hair. Then, even after she performs various intimate acts with various characters, no one appears to ever notice this large ear, nor does Aomame worry that someone will. Finally, "her small, pink ears" (1134) are mentioned near the end of the book. What happened to this abnormally large ear? On a different but equally confusing note, the term "Indian summer" (1119) is used. In a classic American novel, I could see this term being used. 1Q84 is a translation from Japanese, though. Why would Japanese people use the term "Indian summer"? These points may seem minor, but they belie a litany of perplexing behaviour taken by the characters and wording used by the narrator at various times.

1Q84 is a page-turner, with 200+ pages in a single day melting by. It still comes out feeling about 300-400 pages too long; an 800-page book is long enough, but 1157 is even longer than Pat Rothfuss.^^ Murakami frequently spends two-plus pages on a shaggy dog story, such as when Tamaru discusses his old quasi-friend at the Catholic orphanage, or uses four sentences when two would suffice. Nonetheless, the book still blisters by.

Something I learned: in Japan, cans of hot coffee have been available from vending machines since the 1970s. Being used to cans of cold coffee, and paper cups of hot coffee, I was blissfully unaware it was even possible to dispense a hot metal can from a vending machine without it being too hot to touch. The characters purchase these a few times. I would too.

Ease of Reading: 10

Educational Content: 1

*Original publication dates of the Japanese original and English translation respectively. The Japanese original was published in 2009 (Books 1-2) and 2010 (Book 3) but was not published as a full volume until 2010.

**These were two of my friends during Grade 2. In the 25 years since then, I have never once confused them. Why readers would confuse fictional characters so easily evades me.

***Why is King Arthur ruling France? This may be the greatest mystery in Disney history.

^I have no idea whether any member of Iceage has read 1Q84, but that this is the title of their 2013 album feels fitting.

^^The Wise Man's Fear (unreviewed), which I read in March, is 1107 pages long.