村上春樹における魅惑

Murakami Haruki's“ Charm ” and the“ Empty
Narrative ”
Matthew C. Strecher
１. Introduction
Why does it so often seem as though Murakami Haruki is writing his novels about me, about my life? Why is he read so enthusiastically, all over the world?
These are the two most common questions asked of me as a scholar of Murakami Haruki literature. The former question comes, generally, from undergraduate students encountering these works for the first time, while the latter is usually put by bewildered newspaper reporters and NHK producers, especially in early October as the Nobel Prize for literature is about to be announced. On some reflection, it becomes clear that these two questions are related to one another, and also to the concept of miwaku 魅惑, which is sometimes translated into English as “charm,” but may also be rendered as “fascination.” This essay will attempt to explain this fascination from the perspective of what we shall call the “empty narrative,” a narratological structure
in which an open space is developed within a novel or story into which the reader is not merely encouraged, but virtually required to insert her or his own personal narrative. It is a mode of reading that bears close relation to the reading strategies of reception theory, one in which a dialogic relationship is established between author and reader. Unlike reception theory, however, we will consider this relationship to develop not between author and implied reader （ cf. Iser 1980 ）, but between Murakami and his actual readers, throughout the world. The result, as we shall see, is the development of a new fictional mode capable of crossing all borders—cultural, linguistic, social, generational, religious—to become something like a “universal text.” This, to take but a single step further, will lead us to the beginnings of a theory for a truly “global” literature.

２. All You Need Is Empathy
For some readers—this one included—this ability to develop an intuitive bond with the author is immediately attractive, and contributes to the sense of fascination, but also of participation in the text.
Consider, for instance, one of Murakami’s earliest short stories, “Binbō na obasan no hanashi” （ 1980; Story of a poor aunt ）, in which the protagonist has a momentary flash in his mind of a bedraggled, middleaged woman that no one seems to notice or to want around. Then one day he realizes that there is a pale image of such a person clinging to his back. She is unobtrusive, uncomplaining, and, in her position on his back, not even visible to the narrator. Nor is she a mere hallucination, for others can see her too, though she takes on different forms for them—unique forms that connect intimately with their own personal experiences. What is a “poor aunt” for the narrator is a badly disfigured schoolteacher for another, a dog who died pathetically of cancer for yet another. For one viewer she is his own mother. In Jungian terms she is a sort of visible archetype, one who probably represents a vague sort of guilt toward those who are forgotten or ignored or devalued. Without too much difficulty we recognize this aspect of the “poor aunt,” and （ again, without too much difficulty） project our own vision onto her. Perhaps she will appear to one reader as a classmate in school whom
everyone bullied; or the homeless man on the corner who everyone passes, but no one ever looks at. Readers understand her intuitively, because she can and must become whatever each reader needs her to be.
 The process of reading here is both natural and elegant. We read Murakami’s narrative, and then （ without necessarily realizing it ） superimpose our own reality on top of it, placing ourselves into the shoes of the narrator. In this sense, Murakami really is writing about us, the reader.
This is nothing more or less than a bond of empathy that develops between author and reader through the special gaze of the nameless, nondescript narrator, “Boku.” Empathy—expressed in Japanese as
kyōkan 共感 or kanjō i’nyū 感情移入—is of course one of the most fundamental tools for reading effectively, a process of entering the mind of the protagonist, sometimes of other characters, and in the
best instances, of the author. As such, empathetic reading cannot be called a phenomenon unique to Murakami fiction. Rather, we may describe the degree of empathy that emerges between text and reader, the level of dialogue that develops between ourselves and the author. If, as reception theory suggests, the act of reading is grounded in this dialogic relationship, then a literary structure that facilitates this sort of “give-and-take,” this meeting of the minds, is essential. The question then arises: on what level, and from what position, do author and reader approach one another? To what extent does the author—and the structural framework on which he or she constructs the narrative—permit the intrusion of the reader? Put in slightly simpler terms, how much does a given author or text permit the reader to re-write that text in her or his own image? It is not difficult to see that the higher the degree of latitude given readers, the greater the possibilities for empathetic reading—for reading/writing—will become.