Self-seeking In The Mirror Image Of The Other

The novel creation by Haruki Murakami, a vanguard in the Japanese contemporary literature sphere, has exerted substantial bearings on the literary circles in Japan and formed a "Haruki Murakami Phenomenon" all over the world. This paper takes the relationship between the self and the other as the pointcut for the interpretation of his full-length novel creation and offers an in-depth analysis from the three perspectives of the author and his life of the times, his ideological contents and the artistic characteristics displayed.First of all, this paper investigates the profound real-life factors, as the other, on the formation of Haruki Murakami’s outlook on literary creation with the mirror image of external environment, such as the characteristics of the times the author lived in and his growth experience. The particular times has contributed to the author’s conversion from an "outsider present" to an active actor with proactive social participation, which conveys his unsentimental insight into his times and society and unique understanding; four identities that are different from writer, namely, the owner of pub, a translator, a traveler and a long-distance runner are selected from the real life as the intervention of the other in Haruki Murakami’s literary creation so as to investigate the influence of multiple identities on his creation. His view on literary creation is teased out by restoring Haruki Murakami’s identity as a writer and reviewing the three stages in his creation of full-length novels and the characteristics of each stage.Secondly, this paper places the research perspective on text "mirror image" in the full-length novel creation of Haruki Murakami for the purpose of investigating the contradictory relation between the self and the other. Through the characters in the text "mirror image", this paper teases out the connotation and features of the characters mirror image. At the meantime, the three typical subjects, namely, city, history and growth, are used to set forth the process from loss to exploration through the contrast between the self and the other. Meanwhile, the two classic elements, death and time are chosen from the experience of others so as to unscramble the particular status of the two distinctive self-experience in his literary world. The exploration into spiritual home through literary creation aims at displaying the author’s reflection on the future destiny of mankind, humanism attention embodying hope in despair and the value of saving oneself with love and building up the spiritual home.At last, this paper expounds on the diversified artistic style displayed in the creation of novels. Haruki Murakami excels at describing the indifferent and objective contemporary urban life in Japan with the Europeanized perspective and non-Japanese languages, thus imparting a faint sense of sadness the Japanese literature is possessed of. Meantime, the expression technique of European postmodernism is adopted to integrate the illusion in reality with the reality in illusion and the modern technique of intertextuality to weave the complicated works into interconnected reticular system; on the basis of which, the unique literary structural characteristics of Haruki Murakami is established. With the strong metaphorical function and restoration of the prototypes in the primeval myth, this work is radiant with a boundless glamour, refreshing the readers with brand-new aesthetic experience.