Haruki Murakami: Challenging Authors (Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genre)

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has achieved incredible popularity in his native country and world-wide as well as rising critical acclaim. Murakami, in addition to receiving most of the major literary awards in Japan, has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize. Yet, his relationship with the Japanese literary community proper (known as the Bundan) has not been a particularly friendly one. One of Murakami’s central and enduring themes is a persistent warning not to suppress our fundamental desires in favor of the demands of society at large. Murakami’s writing over his career reveals numerous recurring motifs, but his message has also evolved, creating a catalogue of works that reveals Murakami to be a challenging author. Many of those challenges lie in Murakami’s blurring of genre as well as his rich blending of Japanese and Western mythologies and styles—all while continuing to offer narratives that attract and captivate a wide range of readers. Murakami is, as Ōe Kenzaburō once contended, not a “Japanese writer” so much as a global one, and as such, he merits a central place in the classroom in order to confront readers and students, but to be challenged as well. Reading, teaching, and studying Murakami serves well the goal of rethinking this world. It will open new lines of inquiry into what constitutes national literatures, and how some authors, in the era of blurred national and cultural boundaries, seek now to transcend those boundaries and pursue a truly global mode of expression. Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has achieved incredible popularity in his native country and world-wide as well as rising critical acclaim. Murakami, in addition to receiving most of the major literary awards in Japan, has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize. Yet, his relationship with the Japanese literary community proper (known as the Bundan) has not been a particularly friendly one. One of Murakami's central and enduring themes is a persistent warning not to suppress our fundamental desires in favor of the demands of society at large. Murakami's writing over his career reveals numerous recurring motifs, but his message has also evolved, creating a catalogue of works that reveals Murakami to be a challenging author. Many of those challenges lie in Murakami's blurring of genre as well as his rich blending of Japanese and Western mythologies and styles--all while continuing to offer narratives that attract and captivate a wide range of readers. Murakami is, as Ōe Kenzaburō once contended, not a zJapanese writery so much as a global one, and as such, he merits a central place in the classroom in order to confront readers and students, but to be challenged as well. Reading, teaching, and studying Murakami serves well the goal of rethinking this world. It will open new lines of inquiry into what constitutes national literatures, and how some authors, in the era of blurred national and cultural boundaries, seek now to transcend those boundaries and pursue a truly global mode of expression Front Matter....Pages i-xii The Haruki Phenomenon and Everyday Cosmopolitanism....Pages 1-16 Our Old Haruki Murakami and the Experience of Teaching his Works in Japan....Pages 17-30 Haruki Murakami and the Chamber of Secrets....Pages 31-46 Magical Murakami Nightmares....Pages 47-57 Critical Engagement through Fantasy in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World....Pages 59-71 What’s Wrong with These People?....Pages 73-86 The Transcreation of Tokyo....Pages 87-100 “You’re Probably Not that Innocent Either, Mr. Murakami”....Pages 101-116 Challenging the Ambiguity of the Te I (Ru) Form....Pages 117-129 Epilogue....Pages 131-134 Coda: Art in Conversation with Art....Pages 135-143 Back Matter....Pages 145-146