Murakami Haruki's Postmemory of the Asia-Pacific War

Bibliographic Data

ID3656231
AuthorsKodai Abe (corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume82
Issue4
Pages620-638
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00219118-10687337
OpenAlexW4385858014
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited14

This article shows how Murakami Haruki's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-95) constructs a historical narrative to overcome the victim/perpetrator dichotomy and demands ethical response from readers. Drawing on Marianne Hirsch's term postmemory, the author analyzes the novel as a postmemory generation's struggle over the question of how postmemory generations of a former perpetrator country would be able to ethically respond to a temporally distanced, shameful, and traumatic past. Murakami's postmemory protagonist archives scattered pieces of the wartime and postwar pasts narrated by directly traumatized others and constructs a historical narrative to critically overcome the victim/perpetrator dichotomy that regulates the discourse surrounding wartime Japan's violent history. By having his nonviolent protagonist assume a violent aspect and turn into a perpetrator, the author argues, Murakami demands an ethical response from contemporary readers, that is, not simply understanding historical violence as a past to be criticized but imagining it as "our" own, ongoing problem

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · History · Japanese History and Culture · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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