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Dances With Sheep: The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki. By MATTHEW CARL STRECHER. Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, no. 37. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2002. xiii, 234 pp. $60.00 (cloth).
Poor aunts, Sheepmen, and INKlings. . . . How does one make sense of the works of Murakami Haruki? In Dances With Sheep: The Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki, Matthew Carl Strecher proposes that we read Murakami's fiction as an attempt to show how the struggle to create an identity "through . . . discursive engagement, . . . the pursuit of goals, and . . . hardship" has been replaced through hyper-commodification with a '"manufactured" subjectivity" (p. 206). Engaged in seemingly futile quests, Murakami's passive and lethargic protagonists struggle to maintain their identity as thinking subjects. Using various methodologies in a way that parallels Murakami's use of literary genres, Strecher views Murakami's literature as an allegory of a Japan where an effective counterculture no longer seems possible. As such, Murakami's fiction is decidedly political, a warning-despite Oe Kenzaburo's belief that Murakami and other young writers have moved "away from literary expression, critical thinking, and intellectual responsibility" (p. 9).
Strecher organizes his book in six chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction, "The Cultural Milieu of Murakami Haruki," discusses Murakami as a serious popular writer, whose worldwide popularity is related to Japan's recent prosperity and the fact that readers continue to connect with the curious identity quest grounding each work. Strecher identifies Murakami as a kind of postmodern writer because he rejects a master narrative for multiple ones...