1Q84 - a novel

Stepping out of the otaku realm with this one but still keeping it in Japan.

1Q84 is a drama written by Haruki Murakami.  The English language version, published in 2011, weighs in at just over 900 pages.  The original Japanese version was released in 3 parts between 2009 and 2010.

    1984 in Tokyo two unassuming individuals are about to enter a world and a situation they have little control over, forced to play their predestined roles as the events before them unfold.  Aomame is a woman with a special ability and a highly focused attention to the world around her.  She works for a mysterious benefactor as an assassin, killing men who have committed egregious sexual crimes against women.  On her way to dispatch one such man she is stalled in a traffic-jam on the freeway.  Her taxi driver informs her that she can make her appointment by leaving the taxi and using an emergency stairway to get to street level.  She takes his advice and quickly hurries off of the freeway amid looks of awe from the other vehicle bound commuters.  As she makes it to the ground and heads to her appointment in Shibuya she notices that a police officer is dressed in a slightly different uniform than she is familiar with and is carrying an automatic pistol instead of a revolver.  These are things that she tends to pay attention to, given her job as a murder.  In casual conversation she finds that the changes happened 4 years earlier following a deadly gun battle with a religious sect at their mountain compound.  To Aomame’s shock, she has never heard of such an event happening before.  As she notices other subtle changes she begins to suspect that she has somehow entered into a world parallel from hers.  Now she must figure out what the changes represent, how they will affect her ability to work moving forward all while subtly trying to find anyone else who is experiencing the same thing.

    Tengo Kawana is a cram school teacher and wanna-be author who coasts through life effortlessly.  His publishing editor friend comes to him one night to discuss the selections for an up-coming amateur literature contest.  One manuscript in particular by a high school girl known as Fuka-Eri has gained the attention of both men.  While the story is mesmerizing and engaging the writing style is bad even for a high school student.  The editor is so compelled by the story he enlists Tengo in a plan to rewrite the story and publish it, bringing them and the author fame and fortune.  Tengo, concerned with the legal and social implications of a covert ghost writing venture, tries to not participate.  His friend forces him into it by arranging for him to meet the author.  When she tells him that the manuscript is not a story but real, he begins to doubt her sanity.  Her striking conviction and odd personality though fascinates him and he begins to work on the rewrite in earnest.  When he finishes it mysterious forces begin to move against him and he has to figure out the truth behind the story, the girl and the events that are enveloping him.

    It’s hard to do a synopsis of this long novel and not give too much of the mystery away.  I only lightly touched on the surface of the story though, so don’t worry about knowing all the twists and turns.  I have been a fan of Murakami’s work for a while, but I tend to be at odds with the American mainstream on his work.  His most famous and critically lauded novel in America, Kafka on the Shore, I absolutely despised and regretted picking up and reading.  I thought it was a juvenile pile of garbage.  That said; 1Q84 received a less than warm welcome in America.  I thought it was a fantastic book though.  Murakami writes engaging and detailed real life dramas that discretely toy with ideas of alternate and changing realities.  His sci-fi elements are very subtle and sometimes hard to see in the grand scheme of things, but they are there and he plays with them nicely.  The best part of the story and the depth of detail he pounds into it is when the pieces start to fall into place.  It’s incredibly satisfying to start being able to figure out how everything in the story is connected and why.  I had wondered if many of the critics who gave the book a bad review didn’t like it because when it boils down to it, this is a 900 page love story.  A well crafted love story that just happens to have its background filled with zealot cults, issues of domestic violence, counter culture and the traumas of the post war recovery. 

    Murakami isn’t for everyone though and this is a pretty dense book by most standards.  It does give a pretty clear picture into some aspects of modern reality in Japan and some of the events following World War 2 that have helped shape the modern psyche .  So if you want to spend a long time with a quality story and get a glimpse of life in Japan outside of anime and manga, here is an interesting view.  While you’re at it check out some of his other works to get even more acquainted to a more realistic Japan, filled with tweaks to reality.  My personal favorite of his is A Wild Sheep Chase.