Alison Post 3

One could look to any of a number of traits of Haruki Murakami's works in order to make the argument that they fit into the theoretical scheme outlined within postmodernism. Our readings gave us a fairly clear understanding of the current theorizing around this way of interpreting the world, and Murakami fits the framework.

One such fitting trait is randomness for the sake of being random. We have seen this in number of Murakami's works so far. There is the sheep man from Wild Sheep Chase, the spontaneous attack on a McDonald's in the short story, as well as many of Midair's outbursts in Norwegian Wood. Murakami does not shy away from the random in his works, and they become all the more interesting for it.

While being random, the works still exist within a canon and are impossible to analyze entirely outside of that history. It is difficult to ignore that Murakami's writings break the mold of what had been the standard way of writing in Japan, and engaged the postmodern by utilizing "new contexts." Indeed, Murakami seems to love finding ways to use things already in the world in new ways, like titles, plot points, or genres. Here Murakami also embraces the postmodern rejection of tradition and traditional values in art. He does not follow the tradition of Japanese literature (as is evidenced by the established literary figures' criticisms of his style), and allows his characters the space to come to terms with the messiness of life, even as they still try to cling onto socially acceptable "order" - perhaps by having a 12-step plan for ironing shirts and turning to this order when life gets messy and difficult.