The Haruki Phenomenon: Haruki Murakami as Cosmopolitan Writer

ISBN-13: 9789811575518 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 128 str.

Tomoki Wakatsuki

Spis treści

1. Introduction  A Cosmopolitan Roadmap to the Haruki Phenomenon

1.1 Is Murakami World Literature?

1.2 Everyday Cosmopolitanism and the “other world”

1.3 Introducing the Chapters

2. Chapter One  Everyday Cosmopolitanism and Haruki-mania

2.1 The Haruki Phenomenon

2.2 Identity and Belonging, as a Cosmopolitan

2.3 After the Speeches in Jerusalem and Barcelona

2.4 Murakami’s Cosmopolitan Commitment in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

2.5 Le Mal du Pays - Past Memories and Beyond

2.6 In Search of the “right place” of Belonging

3. Chapter Two  Is Murakami “un-Japanese”? : the Myth of “Japaneseness”

3.1 The Myth of “Japaneseness” and the Nihonjinron Discourse

3.2 The watakushi shōsetu and the Japanese Self

3.3 The Language of the New Meiji Subject

3.4 Novel Subjects for a New Nation-State

3.5 Lost Identity: Westernization and Japanization 

4. Chapter Three  A Friend of the ‘egg’: Murakami Speaks in Jerusalem

4.1 As a Novelist and an Individual

4.2 From Cosmopolitan Exile to Cosmopolitan Commitment

4.3 What is the System?

4.4 Representations of the System in Murakami’s Works

4.5 “The System is being created by us”

4.6 Breaking Through the Wall

5. Chapter Four  An (Extra) Ordinary Cosmopolitan

5.1 The Haruki Phenomenon and the Question of Japaneseness

5.2 A New Cosmopolite Japaneseness?

5.3 The Two Currents of the Haruki Wave

5.4 An Array of Gatekeepers

5.5 To Be Engaged in a Silent Conversation

6. Conclusion  In Search of Belonging

6.1 Investigating the “everyday” and “otherness” in Murakami and Shaun Tan

6.2 The “other world” or “another world” In Between?

O autorze

​Tomoki Wakatsuki is an independent researcher who received her PhD in Sociology at the University of New South Wales.  She has contributed a chapter to Haruki Murakami: Challenging Authors (Sense Publishers, 2016), and her article “Haruki Murakami as a cosmopolitan phenomenon: from ‘ordinary’ to ‘celebrity’” was published in the journal Celebrity Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2018).

Blurb

This book explores the idea of a new cosmopolitan Japanese identity through a socio-cultural analysis of contemporary Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.  It is the first monograph to apply the idea of cosmopolitanism to this writer’s global popularity widely known as the “Haruki phenomenon”.

By pioneering an enquiry into Murakami’s cosmopolitanism, this book aims to overcome the prevailing myth of “Japaneseness”(Nihonjinron) as a form of self-identification for Japanese, and propose an alternative approach for contemplating contemporary Japanese cultural identity.  Socio-cultural analysis of this author and his works shall establish Murakami’s cosmopolitan qualities and how they contribute to the cultural phenomenon of globalization.

 

Furthermore, this book will introduce the idea of “everyday cosmopolitanism” as a relevant concept to address an emergent global cultural sphere. Unlike the traditional model of cosmopolitanism, which is sometimes regarded as idealist and elitist, “everyday cosmopolitanism” encompasses the everyday spheres of ordinary people. Tomoki Wakatsuki argues that the Haruki phenomenon, as a global and local event, echoes this important social trend today.

 

Murakami’s departure from conventional notions of Japanese identity offers an alternative perception of identity and belonging that is useful for situating Japanese identity within a global context.  This text will be of interest to students and scholars of cultural studies, global literature, contemporary Japanese literature, cultural cosmopolitanism and the global cultural sphere.