続・村上論—Murakami and the Nobel

Read 村上論 parts 1 and 2: here then here

So Murakami Haruki didn't win t he Nobel Prize in Literature this year. Raise your hand if you are surprised.

this may be hard for you to tell but I am not raising my hand

It seems that every year around this time, there's buzz on the "blogosphere" about Murakami winning the prize, that this year might be his year, and afterwards there are always articles and posts and what have you about how Murakami was passed over for the Nobel. Again. Every year there seems to be an implicit assumption that he's been shortlisted and genuine dismay and confusion when, come the day of the announcement, he isn't the one who'll be flying to Stockholm.

That's not me. It seems to me to be pretty clear that, at least with his body of work now, Murakami won't get winning the prize in the near future. And I have reasons! Listen to my reasons.

First, let's dispense of the whole "he is/isn't important enough" line of argument. Inherent in it are two big fallacies: first, plenty of authors who are now considered relatively minor or transitional have won the prize, so "importance," by whatever metric you want to judge it, isn't necessarily the best way to assess candidates. Of course, there are also quite a few (as in a lot) of authors widely regarded as "important" that never won the prize. 

There is also the assumption that "importance" is what the Swedish Academy is looking for, but "importance" is such a vague and slippery term that it would be almost impossible to use as a criterion. Important to who? In what way? To me, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is Important. With a capital 'I'. But it's a qualitatively different kind of important. They usually cite the recipient has contributed to literature but stop short of declaring them to be universally Important.

The Swedish Academy has an article here about the history of the thought behind the prize, and it's an interesting if dry read. At it's inception, as per the thoughts of Alfred Nobel, the prize was to be awarded to those who had produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction." 'Ideal' is another tricky word, and it was shortly interpreted to mean "a lofty and sound idealism," with the added caveat of having provided "the greatest benefit to mankind." A recent New Yorker article also points out that the literature prize was almost named not after Nobel himself but after his bro Victor Hugo who, as the article states, "was the big moral writer of his time."

None of this sounds very Murakami, does it? Of course, you might be sitting there thinking that it doesn't sound very much like any of the other prize winners either. Beckett a lofty idealist? Really? It's obvious that the prize has moved on in terms of criteria. Maybe invoking the original principles behind the prize doesn't makes sense?

But in a way, it actually does makes sense. Even if they aren't lofty idealists, they have ideals. Even looking just at the Japanese authors who have won the prize, Kawabata Yasunari and Ōe Kenzaburō, particularly Ōe, you get the sense that they think that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and by the state of Denmark I mean everywhere. There is a keen feeling that the world is not as it should be. This sense exists in Murakami as well, at least in my reading, but the key difference lies in the reaction to this sense. Ōe writes things like Seventeen セブンティーン and A Personal Matter 個人的な体験 that seem to be honestly panic stricken over the state of things, and Kawabata sees something in love and sexuality (I'm thinking particuarly of "A Dancing Girl of Izu" 伊豆の踊子) in a way that actually reminds me a bit of Nagai Kafū. 

As I've argued before, however, Murakami reacts into apathy.  In much of Murakami, rebellion comes in the form in inaction. Though this inaction may have a philosophical or ideological backing, in the end it offers nothing beyond a personal solution, no particular wish that the world should be put in a different way.

You may be thinking, what about things like Kafka on the Shore?, which I usually describe to people as: Johnnie Walker, the whiskey icon, is building a flute out of the souls of cats which when played will end the world. A fifteen year old boy reenacts Oedipus (though Murakami denies it) and Colonel Sanders comes out of the woods and says to a mentally handicapped man who can talk to cats, "Come on. We're going to save Japan." Sounds like something's going on! He's trying to save the world.

But is that really what it's about? I haven't read the book since high school, but it seems to me that at its core its actually quite nihilistic. Doesn't it have a lot to do with getting beyond morality, in a Nietzschean sense? Maybe I'm remembering that wrong, but either way, hardly a lofty idealism.