Contemporary Literary Criticism


Murakami, Haruki | Matthew C. Strecher (essay date May 1998)

Matthew C. Strecher (essay date May 1998)

SOURCE: “Beyond ‘Pure’ Literature: Mimesis, Formula, and the Postmodern in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki,” in Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 57, No. 2, May, 1998, pp. 354–78.

[Strecher is an assistant professor of Japanese Language, Literature, and Culture at the University of Montana. In the following essay, he discusses Murakami's narrative strategies and styles in A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Norwegian Wood, speculating on the novelist's achievement in relation to both the traditions of jun-bungaku and postmodernism.]

With the publication of Kaze no uta o kike (Hear the Wind Sing; 1979), Murakami Haruki (b. 1949) found himself more or less at odds with well-known members of the Japanese literary establishment. If one takes Murakami at his word, this was not the result of conscious effort on his...

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