Lost in the world of double moons and Little People. 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.
At the core of it, Murakami’s 1Q84 is about that moment which takes a great deal of courage which might in the off chance change everything. Moments like these won’t come often and oftentimes they may be wasted. In the quaint world of Haruki Murakami, this brief but courageous action can turn worlds on its head, making you invulnerable, untouchable, even invincible to invisible forces you don’t know exist.
It is also how these brief moments can linger on for better or worse. In the case of Tengo and Aomame, their moment of courage would plant a seed in their minds which affect their decisions past adulthood. After having been separated in their childhood, they would never have a normal partner, convinced that they will reignite their connection at some point in the future and be reconciled.
Silly perhaps, but there is something poetic about this thought. And I wonder if many people are still hung up on the love of their lives back since when they were very young. When I was younger (and much, much, much dumber) I thought that the girl I was in love with when I was sixteen would remain the love of my life, and in our thirties somehow that we’d be reunited in a random roll of a dice. I wallow on the thought that it might be real one day, but in my thirties I really couldn’t care less about my past loves. As harsh as it sounds, it makes no difference whether they’re still living or dead.
But Murakami, whether the story is derived from real experiences of his past loves or not, has written a novel where the concept of transformation and reconciliation might spark a jolt, as it did it for me. Sure, it is a world with two moons, little people exit out of carcasses and women wanting to have sex with ageing, balding men, but the underlying tones are deeply human. For me, Murakami had always been hit or miss. Though the book is still plagued with imperfections typical of his books, 1Q84 is a hit and it hit hard.
How the fuck did we end up in this world of paper moons?
The above question matters not, as if we start to question the mechanics of the plot, it loses the magic. What we do know is after taking an emergency exit off a major highway, Aomame ended up in a world that is just slightly off from what she knows. This is a world where Japanese policemen carried semi-automatic pistols, a religious fanatic group massacred police in the streets and yes, there is a second moon lurking next to the normal, usual conventional moon, inconspicuously.
Aomame, in fact, is a part time assassin, killing domestically abusive men. Sanctioned by the enigmatic dowager, she goes off on her own and quickly puts away men with a pinprick of an icepick at the back of the neck. However, her next job is a fucking nightmare. She was commissioned to kill the leader of a cult who has been having sexual relations with girls as young as ten. One of these girls, in fact, came to the dowager’s shelters with her uterus destroyed and bereft of all her spirit, confirming the sexual relations she was compelled to take with the Leader.
On the other side of the coin, Tengo works part time in a publishing house under the greedy capitalist Komatsu, reading literature which may be the next big thing. When he found a manuscript written by a seventeen year old girl, Komatsu commissioned him to polish it in his own style to make the story more palatable and thus, profitable. Tengo met the author, Fuka-Eri, who gave her blessings to Tengo to do what he likes with her story.
The common denominator between the two parallel stories is the religious cult which is the basis of Fuka-Eri’s novel, Air Chrysalis. She was in fact, not writing a fictional novel but in fact, was writing her life experiences living in the cult. It is a world where she was punished for letting a goat die, thus being confined with the carcass of this goat. At night, Little People come out from the dead goat to do mischief. Yet, these so called Little People seem to have a lot of sway of what happens in everybody’s perceived reality. Fuka-Eri and Tengo made quick enemies with the Little People when they published her story, which became a bestseller.
The third side of the this coin (imagine this as a three-sided coin) is the bobble-headed Uchikawa, a persuasive dirty lawyer who does odd jobs for questionable clients, like the religious cult Sakigake. When Aomame took her heels and gone for a run, forever leaving her old identity, Uchikawa was the german shepherd hot on her heels, sniffing her trail relentlessly with a logical brain which might put some Noble Prize winners to shame. His presence is disturbing, and for a while we don’t know whether he’s in tune with the cult, the Little People or whether he’s got his own nefarious objectives.
In the midst of all this tumult, Aomame still longs for Tengo, and Tengo still longs for Aomame. Their paths are gradually converging, but they need to get through the hurdles of people who are after them first.
A parallel universe, but not as you know it
Murakami is well known for his offbeat, suprarealistic fictional worlds. It is like our reality, but there is something that just ain’t the same about it. Call it magical realism, but it is the type of world that perhaps can only come straight out of the Japanese mind, something understated but at times, extreme. But beneath the surface, there are extractions from reality, from history, especially from the Japanese context.
The religious cult, Sakigake was borne out of the seeds of the communism which ran rampant in Asia back in the 1960s. It is an interesting look in the historical relations between the US and Japan at the time, which triggered dissent from university students opposed to foreign influence. Yet, the separation of the communists into a smaller cell sparked an internal conflict which led to the next logical elevation of a community of radicals: the formation of organised religion.
It is no secret that Murakami was influenced by the Tokyo subway attacks of 1995 by the cult Aum Shinrikyo, just as much as he was inspired to write Underground just two years after the attack. Yet, this tragedy remained in the Japanese psyche. What was worse was that the attack came from an internal enemy, who look Japanese, speak Japanese and to some extent, think Japanese. Sakigake’s crime was the police massacre which also left the alternate reality of the double-moon Japan shook with the realisation of its own vulnerability.
Another big question that had been haranguing me since I read the book was how this book is connected to Orwell’s 1984. Both are fictional worlds, though Orwell was looking ahead and Murakami was looking backwards. Both question the concept of reality and surveillance, and how these two are related. In the world of 1984, the citizens battle the tediousness of their existence lest they deviate from their routines and consequently, caught by the oppressive Thinkpol. In 1Q84, the same heavy presence of surveillance comes from the threat of the Little People, though having limited agency are still able to alter reality.
In this way, surveillance (or perceived surveillance) also shape the way the characters interpret the landscape of their reality. Rebellion against this surveillance is to reinterpret the reality presented by the powers that be, and is a necessary act though perhaps, a battle already lost. Winston and Julia, by playing a couple and indulging in their freedom of domestic bliss rejected their harsher Big Brother sanctioned reality. This did not end well for them. For Tengo and Aomame, to escape the world of the paper moons will bring them back to their own reality and perhaps escape the grasp of the Little People, though at the end whether the two had agency on their own actions is debatable (as the Little People laughed their derisive “hohoho” in the background).
Yet, it is the Little People that make the fibres of the book, similar to how Dust (or dark matter) is the prevalent and underlying presence to the plot of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Both have conscious presence and both are able to influence the actions of the characters. Pullman’s dark matter is a scientific theory which is unlikely to remain solvable. Perhaps the connection is loose, but I can’t help to think of the similarity of their presence. The Little People, though sparsely present in the book, drive the characters thoughts and decisions, a catalyst for the plot.
The seminal moments in our lives which we might have missed
Aomame, Tengo, Fuka-Eri and Uchikawa are characters well thought out and well written in their own rights. Murakami writes about the Japanese psyche well — that disquieting calm which at any moment can be unhinged. But Murakami writes the importance of small moments well, and for me this is the essence of the book.
1Q84 may well be my favourite Murakami book because of the way he addresses these instrumental tiny moments. Tengo and Aomame held hands when they were ten, an action which required great courage which betray their upbringing and therefore the way they understood how the world works. This small but important gesture laid the foundation for Tengo to reject accompanying his father every weekend in his door-knocking debt collecting for the NSK, to assert his own independence and flourish. Aomame soon rejected her family’s religion and shortly after carved her own path.
Yet, I can’t help to think that most people would not have come across these seminal moment, or at the first chance to spurn it. I couldn’t help thinking about that, as I might have rejected these pivotal moments. There are many moments in our lives of what could have been, small moments which we didn’t take, which might require an ounce more courage and could deeply transcend our lives. Think about it: what can you have done differently? Where would you be now?
There is also the thought of that deep love, something which cannot be replaced once gone; Something that we have had when we were young and as we continue to become older, and we become more jaded, we don’t believe in that sort of love anymore. Aomame held out for Tengo, not knowing whether he would ever see him again, yet knowing that she would recognise him the moment she sees him again despite a hiatus of twenty years. The romantic in us wishes we were like that, and are reminded that yes we were like that once, and regrets (perhaps) that we cannot be like that anymore.
There is something between Tengo and Aomame’s relationship that all of us yearned for at some point of our lives, and only a tiny fraction will ever get to experience. I guess this is partly why we read fiction — to be reminded of these passing but intense experiences, maybe to bask in the shadows of it.
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Clocking in at over 1300 pages, 1Q84 breezes by. It took me just a little over two weeks to finish while simultaneously reading other books. It is perhaps the quintessential Murakami novel. We can argue that his previous novels, wonderful or otherwise, are mere practice for creating 1Q84. There is beauty in his prose, especially when he describes the loneliness of urban Tokyo, in a playground where a rather stocky young man climbs up a slide to get a better look of a second, mossy green moon.
Yet, 1Q84 is not a perfect book. Murakami can’t help but write dialogues that feel wooden and unrealistic. I also have an issue in how he sexualised Fuka-Eri as a seventeen year old girl, and how she actually did have sex with Tengo and afterwards, Tengo feeling very little remorse. And when I think of it, neither Tengo and Aomame would pass the beer test — that is, would you go for a beer in your local with a character? They have fascinating back stories, yet for me, they are only just likeable enough.
I’m nitpicking perhaps, but I don’t deny that the book is a significant work. It is a good entry point to Murakami’s world, though it is a pretty sizeable book, and perhaps a good litmus test whether you’d seek out his other books.
