Religion and the sacred in the works of Haruki Murakami

Abstract

This dissertation demonstrates how the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami infuses religious concepts and sacred motifs into his works, generally through surreal events and otherworldly encounters that defy purely realist interpretations. The literary use of these images and themes encourage the author’s unique stylistic mood as well as subsequent magic realist readings, where everyday occurrences are interjected by providential asides and often overt references to the supernatural.

This study of Murakami also helps to demonstrate how his postmodern works might be viewed in light of widely accepted narratives from varying religions. Certain trends are established in Murakami, especially via themes like isolation and loneliness, which help replace the traditional search for God with an internal quest for meaning through investigations of identity. This is especially accomplished using the Japanese I-Novel form. The addition of dreams and alternative realities, another common topic, represent other worlds in his fiction that mask Heaven and Hell. The sacred is also habitually linked with the profane and cultish behaviour, casting traditional religious concepts in a negative light.

Throughout his career, Murakami has often incorporated a range of ideas from all manner of religious systems, specifically Buddhism, Christianity, and folk mythology. This dissertation, then, addresses a range of critical views on Murakami's fiction, especially considering thematic shifts in later works like 1Q84, which feature concepts of religion and the sacred in a more blatant way.