After taking this course, I feel like I have a much broader understanding of modern Japanese Literature, and also of Murakami's works and inspirations. Examining his various short stories and novels, and especially going the extra mile and comparing them to his influences in order to search for examples of intertextuality, has made me a better and more enthusiastic reader. Murakami uses intertextuality in an extremely unique way that I've only seen in his works; he uses blatant references to titles and characters in order to clearly convey a certain other text, and then slides more subtle references to style and themes throughout the story. I found this to be the most noticeable in 'Samsa in Love', where the obvious references to Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' led me as a reader to automatically be immersed in the story as both 'Murakami's short story about a bug waking up as a human,' and as 'some sort of continuation of 'Metamorphosis' in which the world that Kafka initially created gets expanded further'. That alone made the experience of reading the short story much more complex and interesting, and in both regards Murakami did not displease. He created a unique and engaging short story, and simultaneously left the vague little hints he always does that gave a peek into the world behind the story that 'Samsa in Love' and 'Metamorphosis' share.
As a final note on this blog, I want to say that this class has given me a new, modern look at Japanese culture that I hadn't been able to enjoy previously, and I'm very thankful for the fun and intellectual experience. In the future, I hope very much to be able to further explore Japanese literature.
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