55 pages • 1 hour read
Haruki MurakamiAfter Dark
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Voyeurism and the Narrative Camera
Murakami has described his writing in terms of film making: He sees writing as a way to create films for his own pleasure. Consequently, his writing style is very conscious of aspects of filmmaking, including setting, background music, and point of view. After Dark takes this to the next level with the imaginary camera that serves as the novel’s narrator. The camera moves through the night guided by what appear to be stage directions, akin to film treatments. The novel’s very first passage sets the tone: “Eyes mark the shape of the city. Through the eyes of a high-flying night bird, we take in the scene from midair” (3). The last scenes loop back around to this: Back in a bird’s eye view, Murakami describes Tokyo waking up, pointing out small details and referencing events that occurred over the course of the night to show that change has occurred.
From the start, the narrator implicates the reader in an act of voyeurism, akin to viewers of a film. “We” spy on private moments between characters who are unaware of “our” intrusion. The narrator behaves as a close approximation of a sentient camera: Its first-person limited point of view allows the narrator to describe scenes in minute detail but largely prevents it from accessing characters’ thoughts. The narrator expresses personality through “our” reactions, as though “we” were the ones gazing at the scene through the camera’s lens.
A direct reference to this theme occurs at the Alphaville. Takahashi tells Mari that he helped install a security camera at the hotel as one of the odd jobs he’s done for Kaoru. The camera comes into play during the subplot about Guo’s assault; Kaoru reviews the footage and identifies Shirakawa as her assailant. She passes the photo off to the Chinese gangster who picked Guo up from the hotel earlier in the night; this leads to the man’s appearances in other scenes as he searches the city for Shirakawa.
The theme of voyeurism is most apparent in Eri Asai’s chapters. As a model and minor actress, Eri is already the subject of spectacle; it was a great source of conflict in her waking life, which she escaped from by entering a deep sleep. It is in the presence of her unnaturally sleeping body that the “personality” of the narrator and the purpose of its voyeurism are best depicted. The narrator pulls the reader in and describes how “[w]e allow ourselves to become a single point of view, and we observe her for a time. Perhaps it should be said that we are peeping in on her” (30). The narrative perspective takes on “the form of a midair camera that can move freely about the room. Our angle changes at intervals as regular as the blinking of an eye” (30). The narrative camera attempts to avoid judgment as a “single point of view,” yet acknowledges the voyeuristic aspect of its observations. The way “we” watch Eri in her sleep is reminiscent of her fans or viewers—the very sort of scrutiny she intended to escape.
Despite the narrator’s commitment to neutrality, it does attempt to judge the Man with No Face, who sits and watches Eri sleeping. The narrator, still using “we” and “our,” speculates at great length about his motives and coming up empty-handed: “Is the man’s presence a good thing? A bad thing? Are his thoughts straight? Twisted? Is the mask meant to hide him? Protect him? We have no clue” (63). What is clear is that the Man with No Face can see into the room from the other side of the screen, just as the camera can see him from “this side.”
The Man with No Face symbolizes various things, one of which is voyeurism. The man is an embodiment of voyeurism itself, linked more intrinsically with the narrative camera than the narrator lets on. “We,” the camera, and the Man with No Face are all intruding on a space where “we” have no business. Additionally, the man’s threatening aura implies an inherently malevolent element to voyeurism. Significantly, Eri is able to escape from the room on the other side of the television only after “we” stop watching her momentarily—indicating that it is being subject of voyeurism that caused Eri to retreat from the public eye in the first place.
Lastly, there are instances of the narrator—the “camera”—lingering in spaces after the characters have left. This is seen with both Mari and Shirakawa, when they each leave their respective building’s bathrooms only for the camera to stay behind, showing that their reflections, too, have remained in the mirrors. This shows the narrator’s omniscience, while also adding to the surrealism that is characteristic of a Murakami novel.
The Individual and the Collective
Murakami’s novels often focus on individualism, particularly in contrast to the traditional Japanese value of community. After Dark showcases the relationship between the individual and the collective, demonstrating how the group is valued over the part and emphasizing how small the individual life is in the grand scheme of things.
Throughout After Dark, there are hints at an underpinning force in society that links everyone, even as it renders each individual anonymous. This is first described in the narrator’s bird’s-eye description of Tokyo at night:
In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature—or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organisms. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm (3).
Viewed from this distance, Tokyo appears to be one unified organism, its constituent parts (buildings, trains, cars, people) working in concert to produce the hum of urban life that persists even as the sun goes down. The interplay between the individual lives that make up the collective life of the metropolis is demonstrated by the various instances of Synchronicity throughout After Dark.
Takahashi is the character best attuned to the idea of the interconnectedness of everyone in society. He describes to Mari the terror he feels at the helplessness of the individual life in the face of collective existence. He describes “the appearance of some special, weird creature,” which “takes on all kinds of different shapes—sometimes it’s ‘the nation,’ and sometimes it’s ‘the law,’ and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that’” (118). These represent human institutions, the collective constructions that people build for society to function, or which arise naturally due to human interaction. This includes both the justice system and organized crime, such as the Yakuza and the Chinese gangs. The terror that Takahashi feels is the cosmic horror of the insignificance of the individual: people are no more than tiny parts of the whole of society, subject to the vagaries of systems much larger than themselves. In this way, all people are intrinsically linked, even if they view themselves as completely separate from certain groups—such as law-abiding citizens and criminals.
The characters who inhabit or traverse nighttime Tokyo typically represent the individual over the collective. Kaoru, Takahashi, Mari, and others all have traits that make it difficult for them to mesh with the collective. Kaoru’s personality and appearance naturally make her stand out, and her career as a wrestler was unconventional; Takahashi is a jazz musician who never felt comfortable at home; Mari has trouble connecting with others and developed a phobia of school when she was younger. Even Eri struggles to exist under the pressure of greater society. Her beauty and popularity help her fit in in a way Mari never could; however, the cost is her individuality. Takahashi points out that Mari’s sense of self must be stronger than Eri’s, as it was impossible to connect with Eri on a personal level.
Lastly, Murakami shows the interconnectedness of others through Mari’s developing bonds. The clearest examples of this are her relationships with Guo and her childhood memory of Eri. Although Mari only briefly interacts with Guo, she feels a deep bond with her. She describes it as Guo “living inside of” and becoming a part of her (158). She uses similar language when she recalls the last time she felt close to Eri, when they got stuck in the elevator: “She squeezed me so hard our two bodies felt as if they were melting into one. She never loosened her grip for a second. It felt as though if we separated the slightest bit, we would never see each other in this world again” (231). This, of course, came true, both literally and metaphorically—but Mari’s recollection of this moment is tied directly to Eri’s escape from the television realm. Murakami thus implies that although all people form a collective from which they cannot escape, it is important to prevent the eradication of individuality and to value human connections with others.
Synchronicity
Synchronicity is a concept described by psychologist Carl Jung as events that are related in some significant way, but which are not linked by cause, meaning that they arise independent from each other. Synchronicity differs from mere coincidence in that synchronistic events have a deeper impact on one’s life. After Dark is rife with synchronicity: it is a driving force underlying the novel’s three intersecting plots and gives credence to Takahashi’s idea of some massive, irresistible force underpinning society, linking everyone whether they know it or not.
The first significant instance of synchronicity reunites Mari and Takahashi at Denny’s. They are already vague acquaintances, but their chance meeting sets off the events of the novel: introducing Mari to Kaoru and the women at the Alphaville, opening the possibility of a romantic relationship between Mari and Takahashi, and ultimately healing the rift that has grown between Mari and Eri since they were children. Synchronicity links Shirakawa’s plotline with Eri’s, Takahashi’s, and Mari’s, though their paths never actually intersect beyond Mari’s short involvement with Guo. Takahashi happens to be looking at Takanashi-brand milk at 7-Eleven around the same time Shirakawa’s wife requests that Shirakawa buy some on the way home. Shirakawa later leaves Guo’s stolen cell phone in the dairy section at the same 7-Eleven, where Takahashi picks it up and receives the Chinese gangster’s threat that was meant for Shirakawa. While Takahashi is safe from the gang because the gangster has Shirakawa’s picture, it reinforces Takahashi’s sense of a dark force underlying society.
Other small instances of synchronicity pop up here and there throughout the novel, connecting characters who never directly interact. The gangster drives past Mari and Takahashi, who do not notice him; he also waits at a traffic light next to Shirakawa, but does not look over and notice his quarry. Shirakawa and Mari, who are connected via their encounters with Guo, share multiple synchronistic moments: their reflections linger in the mirror after they leave their bathrooms, and they are shown watching the same late-night documentary in separate places. Again, however, they do not ever interact directly.
The synchronicities that link Shirakawa with Eri are more sinister, yet more nebulous than the other instances. As she sleeps, Eri is watched by the Man with No Face, who is reminiscent of Shirakawa, and who sits in what appears to be Shirakawa’s office at Veritech. When she regains consciousness in the room where the Man with No Face had been, Eri discovers a pencil emblazoned with the word “VERITECH” on the floor of the otherwise empty room. The narrator confirms that this is not just the same type of pencil Shirakawa keeps on his desk; it is the same pencil Shirakawa toys with at his desk. It is a mystery how it ended up in the alternate realm, but the appearance of the pencil underscores the implication of violence that links Eri’s plotline thematically with Shirakawa.
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