Haruki Murakami. Part 1. The contradiction of perceptions
His characters eat steaks and drink Heineken, watch Hitchcock and listen to Rossini, wear jeans and sneakers, and draw topics for discussion from world rock and roll and Western literature. They are not constrained by the framework of the traditional views of a particular country. They listen to what is happening, it is written and sung in the world, and come to their own conclusions.
“Fate is sometimes like a sandstorm that changes direction all the time. If you want to escape from her, she is right there behind you. You are in the other direction - it is there … And all because this storm is not something alien that came from somewhere far away. And you yourself. Something that sits inside you."
H. Murakami
Haruki Murakami is an internationally renowned Japanese prose writer. Some love him dearly and look forward to every new novel or at least a story. Others shrug their shoulders in bewilderment when they see his new book on the bestseller shelf.
Why is someone interested in the parallel worlds of Murakami, and someone on them in parallel? What is the uniqueness of the personality and talent of the writer? We read between the lines together with Yuri Burlan's System-Vector Psychology.
Books decided fate
His father served in an old Buddhist family temple. Both parents taught Japanese language and literature. They often talked about books in the house. The boy was allowed to take any works from the bookstore, including foreign writers.
Reading quality literature is the key to adequate child development. System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan clarifies that it is also an opportunity to get out of the scenario predicted by social realities. By reading, the child communicates with the best minds of humanity of all time and gains the freedom to choose his environment.
And so it happened with Murakami. He chose a creative path for himself, unprecedented for other Japanese writers before. “When I was young, I could think of only one thing - about running as far as possible from 'Japanese destiny,'” the writer says. He was fond of Russian, American, European literature, jazz music, Western cinema. He did not want to follow the foundations of a closed society. Murakami chose to abandon Japanese isolationism, became interested in the whole world and wrote for a global audience.
His characters eat steaks and drink Heineken, watch Hitchcock and listen to Rossini, wear jeans and sneakers, and draw topics for discussion from world rock and roll and Western literature. They are not constrained by the framework of the traditional views of a particular country. They listen to what is happening, it is written and sung in the world, and come to their own conclusions.
According to system-vector psychology, it is this approach to life that is most optimal for the owners of the sound vector, including for the writer himself. Observing, concentrating from the outside in order to generate thought-forms inside - this is the best realization of the properties of the sound vector.
“I really love money! You can buy free time on them to write"
The writer's skin vector works successfully to satisfy his sonic needs. Even before writing, Murakami opened a jazz bar with his wife. And even there, in addition to music and hard daily work, he watched people, absorbed. The writer is convinced that if he had not had that time of observation and reflection, he would not have been able to take place in literature.
Haruki Murakami is involved in triathlon and marathon running. And it's not only about the passion of the owner of the skin vector for sports and a healthy lifestyle. Running for him is also a way of concentration, a way of testing his resources for strength. Guided by this desire, many skin sound specialists go to the tops of the mountains, fly into the stratosphere in a balloon.
“Where is the line to which I need to be aware of the outside world, and how much should I concentrate on my inner world? To what extent can I be confident in my abilities, and when should I start doubting myself?"
“What we have inside, we also value outside” (Yu. Burlan)
“I surrounded myself with a high wall, beyond which I would not let anyone, and I myself tried not to stick my head out,” says 15-year-old hero Murakami Kafka, who left home. And he is echoed by the author himself in a remote interview with a British journalist:
“There is so much material inside me, so many resources in me, and I want to keep them intact by the outside world. Because they are my wealth, I write books from them"
The sound writer protects his main value - the content of his head, feeling that this is the most important source of his work. He hardly appears in public, does not talk about his family, about his life. It is fenced off from prying eyes and ears. And only his books, as an echo of his inner essence, go to those who are hungry for abstract meanings.
Why does Murakami's works resonate in the hearts of a multimillion audience? System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan explains this by the ability of people with a certain bundle of vectors to look into the human soul and express it in a written word. The sound vector allows the writer to observe reality with concentration, listen to words and thoughts, and then produce unique meanings based on what he heard. And the anal vector is to analyze, systematize and patiently write out ideas and intricacies of realities. What Murakami writes about is recognizable by representatives of the sound vector in any corner of the world.
Japanese mentality
Japan is an island country, bounded on all sides by water, isolated from assimilation with other peoples. Geographic conditions naturally influence the formation of the country's mentality. From the point of view of Yuri Burlan's system-vector psychology, Japan, like European countries, has a skin mentality, but with significant differences in the same line of properties.
Each European country, although it has a small territory and clear borders, but nevertheless, due to its proximity to other countries, is connected with them by close contacts. That is, the need for contacts arose naturally, forcing people to look for ways of interaction. This provoked the development of the skin mental superstructure of Western countries outward, towards other people, albeit to a forced, but dialogue.
The geographic isolation of Japan has created a special skin mentality with properties directed inward. Economy, isolation, isolation, isolation are the properties that characterize the mental uniqueness of the Japanese.
“I wanted to change Japanese literature from the inside, not the outside. And he invented his own rules for this"
Murakami was disgusted with such a perception of the world. He wanted to comprehend it in all its breadth, thanks to what he learned in books. He began to study English, and subsequently to translate American classics into Japanese. Apparently, wishing to open their eyes to the world as well for their other compatriots.
However, for this aspiration outward in his native Japan, the writer received the stigma of "stinking oil" (in Japanese - "bata-kusai"). For a nation that does not eat dairy products, this means everything that is pro-Western, foreign, non-Japanese. The older generation of Japanese people perceived the manner of Murakami's narration, which did not obey the usual Japanese templates, as a mockery. Therefore, until now, for someone, Murakami is a master of intercultural communication, but for someone an outsider and an upstart.
But the younger generation of Japanese people are also abandoning traditional views and looking for their own new path. Murakami is becoming very popular with landmark-seeking youth in Japan. His sonic reflections resonate in the inquisitive minds of the whole world.
“October third, seven twenty-five in the morning. Monday. The sky is so deep as if it had been hollowed out with a very sharp knife. Not a bad day to say goodbye to life"
The Japanese skin mentality with an inward orientation has left its mark on the direction of the spiritual search of its inhabitants.
With an empty heart
The sound aspiration of the Japanese to comprehend the meaning of life also becomes hostage to the limitations of his own head. The Japanese resemble capsules, corked up with their sense of duty, manufacturability and focus only on themselves.
When the sound desire to understand one's own “I” and its place in the world comes to a dead end, it leads a person in a way that seems to be salvation from torment - through the window. In Japan every year there is a horrifying number of suicides - more than 27,000. This means that every day about 75 men, women, adolescents end their own lives without finding their place in it. Read more about the special Japanese view of suicide here.
Murakami does not ignore the topic of unnecessary and lost people in the world. In the "Norwegian Forest" young student Watanabe first loses one close friend, who committed suicide at the age of 17, and later a girl who could not bear the loss and flew into the abyss of nothingness. A piece is torn from the soul, something important is lost forever. How to live with this emptiness in your heart?
Murakami's heroes seek answers about life and death through thinking, running, jazz, sex, talking, wandering through the labyrinths of the past in a well, fighting the Sheep, which captures the mind. Are they finding answers? No matter. But the questions themselves resonate so much within the readers, so they respond with the familiar sound-visual categories of the unreality of what is happening, the incomprehensibility of the world, the feeling of aching loneliness, that it is impossible to put aside his book.
Why does everyone have to be so alone? Why is it necessary to be so alone? So many people live in this world, each of us is eagerly looking for something in another person, and still we remain the same infinitely distant, torn from each other. Why should it be so? For what? Maybe our planet revolves, fueled by human loneliness?"
Part 2. "Listen to the song of the wind"
