Urban claustrophobia : searching for space in Haruki Murakami’s dance, dance, dance.

Abstract

Haruki Murakami writes “The world is a huge space, but the space that will take you in - and it doesn't have to be very big - is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what do you get? Silence. You look for silence, but guess what? All you hear over and over and over is the voice of this omen. And sometimes this prophetic voice pushes a secret switch hidden deep inside your brain.” This essay will examine the narration of space in Murakami’s fiction and attempt to show how it is essential to understanding the repercussions of the highly urbanized post-war era in Japan. By considering the spatial conditions of late-capitalist Japan through Murakami’s Dance, Dance, Dance, we will see how excess consumerism as well as the presence of sterile and stark environments has heightened the need to search for identity as well as genuine human connections. By using the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theories, I will also make a case for how urban space correlates with human experiences, and thus its lack thereof can be inherently geared towards both physical and psychological claustrophobia, further endangering meaningful relationships, as explored in this novel.