An Investigation Of Haruki Murakami’s Way Of Overcoming The Problem Of Nothingness From The Perspective Of Existentialism

Haruki Murakami (1949-) is one of the representative writers of contemporary Japan writers. Since his maiden work Hear the Wind Sing receives the "The Group Image of New Talents Award" he has aroused tremendous attention. Later, he won a series of literary awards such as "the Tanizaki Prize","Noma Hiroshi Arts Award","the Yomiuri Prize for Literature", and become a notable star in the contemporary Japanese literature world. In Japan, the number of circulation of the novels of Haruki Murakami’s has reached15million, which has become a social phenomenon known as the "Haruki Murakami phenomenon".Why Haruki Murakami’s novels can cause such a wide range of concerns? Translator Mr. Lin Shaohua has this judgment:"For many’Murakami fans’, the atmosphere created by Murakami may be the most compelling reason. Murakami conveys in a sensitive, accurate and implicit way the psychological problems of loneliness, emptiness and lost feelings of the1980s youngsters in a world full of materialistic desires. Synchronizing with the economic development, this so-called "Cut-Off Spiritual Disease" of the metropolitan life-style spreads from the American depicted by American writers like Salinger and Thomas Pynchon to Japan, and then to China’s sea-coast cities. Every era has its own unique historical background and problems. The unique sense of loss, emptiness and nothingness conveyed by Haruki Murakami which is particular to this modern society has caused the resonance of the readers. Existing analysis of the Murakami literature has the focus mostly on the postmodern literary techniques, while I want to focus on the true nature of the nothingness and sense of loss in Murakami’s literary works. Where is its roots? Where are the roots from? And why does the works have such a wide receiving audience? They are absolutely not chance.The argument of this thesis is, the nothingness and sense of loss has its existential roots which are universal in the modern cultural background. Examined from the roots, what existentialism studies is the problem that people, in a society where meaning is lost, cannot find their selves and are drowned in problems of emptiness and weakness. The core of this thesis is, by analyzing Haruki Murakami’s novel Dance Dance Dance, examines Murakami’s entification of the existential problems and his own way of solving them.This thesis is mainly composed of four major components. The first part describes the theoretical basis of this thesis, Existentialism, and the concepts of nothingness in Existentialism.,Chapter Two investigates of the writer and his works. In the first section, i shall through the early works of Haruki Murakami and his accounts of his early experience study his early source and tendency of Existentialism. In the next one, I choose the novel Dance Dance Dance as my entry point of analyzing Murakami’s literature from the perspective of Existentialism and state my reasons. An obvious trend can be seen from the early works of Haruki Murakami to later works. Works like Dance Dance Dance reflects the author’s change from concentrating only on a person’s inner world to focusing on the relationship between people and people with social relations. This shows. This reflects the change of Haruki Murakami in the face of the nothingness in an Existentialism viewpoint. As a result, Dance Dance Dance is an excellent entry point for this discussion.The third chapter specifically discusses the existential empty setting as the background of the whole novel Dance Dance Dance. The first section describes the overall atmosphere of existentialistic nothingness problem which is the concern of the literary works of Haruki Murakami. The second section discusses specific issues that "I" faces in Dance Dance Dance. Section III has a brief discussion of the origin of the nothingness problem in Existentialism.The fourth chapter discusses what are Haruki Murakami’s investigation and responses to existential problems reflected in Dance Dance Dance through investigating the experience and behaviors of the two main characters,"I" and "Gotanda". The first section describes Gotanda’s choice when facing the existential emptiness plight, and his final loss and failure. Section two mainly through the hero "I" in the face of the existential emptiness plight, make different choices from Gotanda, undergoes a change from emptiness and loss, to bearing a trauma, and finally to rebirth. By comparing the different choices of these two figures reflects the attitude of Haruki Murakami’s attitude to solving existentialistic problem of nothingness. Murakami is not a complicated writer, just as the failures in life are not. Spinoza has liberated the Jews from the heavy burden of political reality using the inner beliefs, and similarly, Murakami also frees the large number of failed urban people from the weighty reality of life by virtue of the maintenance of spiritual freedom. His hero, no matter how deserting and humble, still can listen to Rossini’s operas while cooking pasta. This handy "heroic" attitude has infected many ordinary people. Of course people can question:to what extent is this liberation true? My answer is, of course, it is not true! As after Spinoza, the Jewish problem did not really get solved. It is the same case. But we should not therefore underestimate the importance of Spinoza. The most glorious place of man as man is that he can always be able to make the position of struggling to move forward when knowing he is in some kind of limitations.As a result, this paper uses the theory of Existentialism to analyze the novel Dance Dance Dance to explore Haruki Murakami’s investigation of the existentialistic problem of nothingness and therefore unveil the charm of his literary creation.