After the Quake: Stories

At the end of my first semester as a graduate student I was faced with the task of writing two fifteen to twenty page papers on the works of Ihara Saikaku. Having already finished reading Five Women who Loved Love and The Life of an Amorous Man, I was then faced with the task of reading his longest work The Great Mirror of Male Love which, after a long and dense introduction by the translator goes into minute detail about the male loves of the samurai and kabuki actors. Faced with the task of reading all forty short stories contained in the book, I turned to Murakami Haruki's after the quake to give my mind a break from the massive tome of Edo period homo-erotica. Since that time after the quake has been a story collection that I have turned to a number of times when I needed something quick and enjoyable to read when faced with a large number of books for graduate school. This, of course, does not mean that after the quake is fluff reading, because that is far from the case. The time period this collection of short stories takes place is during February 1995, the month sandwiched between the Kobe Earthquake which occurred on January 17th and the Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attacks that occurred on March 20th of the same year. Although none of the six short stories' protagonists were directly harmed by the earthquake, each one is affected by its "aftershocks." UFO in Kushiro: the collection opens with the story of Komura a handsome, successful sales representative whose wife leaves him after the Kobe Earthquake. Leaving a note that states that living with Komura is like living with a "chunk of air" Komura's wife heads back north to her home and sends her husband the divorce papers. Needing a break from work in order to think, Komura goes to Hokkaido to deliver a package for a coworker and there he meets two young women who try to put his life into perspective. Landscape with Flatiron: This short story tells the tale of Junko a young woman who ran away to Ibaraki to escape the stifling atmosphere of her home and school. Seemingly content with her surfer boyfriend Keisuke, Junko also enjoys the company of Miyake a small, balding man who likes to make bonfires on the beach. This short story describes what may be the final meeting between Junko and Miyake. In my opinion, this might be the saddest story within the book. All God's Children can Dance: Yoshiya seems like a decent enough fellow. He might enjoy drinking too much, but he gets along with his coworkers and he has a string of girlfriends who like the way he dances. He is also the son of God. Or at least this is what he is told by his mother who was "saved" by a member of new religion group when she was going to commit suicide after becoming pregnant with Yoshiya after following her doctor/lover's contraceptive methods perfectly. Not believing that he is the son of God, Yoshiya eventually spots a man who looks like an older version of the man his mother slept with almost three decades before.

All of Murakami's novels are best sellers, and he is perhaps the most recognized and noted Japanese author in the U.S. and around the world. Murakami is one of my favorite authors. I have enjoyed all of his previous novels, and now this little book of short stories kept me turning the pages past the midnight hour. Murakami drew me in with his simple language and the powerful dialogue of his intriguing characters. These six stories are all related to the devastating Kobe earthquake of 1995. The stories are set in the months between the natural disaster and the poison gas attacks that occurred in Tokyo's subways. Both of these events dramatically changed the physical and social landscape of Japan. For each of the characters in these stories, the earthquake's emotional aftershock set off an unreal chain of events.I enjoyed all of these stories, but a few were my favorites. In "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo", a loan-collector teams up with a man-sized frog to fight an enormous worm that threatens to destroy Tokyo. In "Landscape With Flatiron", we learn about Miyake's passion in building bonfires with his companion Junko, and what it all symbolizes. And last but not least, in "Honey Pie", we are presented with a complex, passionate story about a love triangle that takes place over many years. We are exposed to a lot of human suffering in these stories. Murakami, however, sheds light and hope in all of these stories by showing us the courage, strength, and compassion these devastated people possess in overcoming any tragedy that they may have to face. I always look forward to Murakami's new novels. Now, I can, hopefully, look forward to more short stories by this talented author. This is a beautifully written collection of stories. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Joe Hanssen

This is for the reader who posted a note about the title story mentioned by the inside cover: the original Japanese title of this collection is "Kamisama no kodomo ha minna odoru," or "All God's Children Can Dance." My guess is, they wrote the inside cover and then decided later on to change the title to "After the Quake." I guess the editor missed that :-)I'm a die-hard Murakami fan, so nothing I can say about this collection would be fair or subjective. The ellusive "title story" left me shaken, and I ended up reading it three more times to figure out what it was that haunted me. Wow...Murakami's new novel just came out here in Japan! "Kafka on the Shore," a big fat monster of a book that's been published in two volumes. I'm about halfway into the first part, and structually, it's turning out to be a lot like "Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of World" in that there are two stories going on simultaneously and seem, in some way, to be connected. And like "Wind-up Bird Chronicle," war-history makes up a lot o the plot. Oh, when will the English translation come out!!

I am never able to say exactly why it is I became hooked on Murakami's writing. The best explanation I can give is that his writing has such an innate vitality and originality that by just reading and reflecting on what he writes, as cliche as it might seem, I feel extraordinary happy to be alive. Murakami's gift for writing is rivaled by few, and his works leave a unique impression on every person who reads them.However, as a writer, Murakami appears to be going through an obvious transition, which seems to have started after Japan experienced "the Quake" and the Tokyo subway gas attacks. Murakami's last few books (Sputnik Sweetheart in particular) have been extremely reflective, almost brooding. The stories might be better technically than his earlier works, but they lacked something, that ironic humor, warmth, and spunk that his earlier stories, like Dance, Dance, Dance (my personal favorite) and Wind-Up Bird overflowed with.On top of that, when I discovered that this book is not one story but a series of short stories, I was intrigued to see which Haruki would show up. I was not disappointed. The stories in this book combine the emotion, humor, and excitement of his earlier works with the reflection and beauty of his most recent books to result in great stories, and in a couple cases, awesome ones.By far, my favorites in this collection were All of God's Children Can Dance and Honey Pie, but the other stories are excellent as well. "Landscape with Flatiron" is the only story that didn't do a whole lot for me, but the other stories shine so brightly that that was only a minor detail for me at least.I really hope that Murakami continues on in the direction he has started with in this collection of stories. His next novel, Umibe no Kafuka (Kafka on the Shore) is due out in a week in Japan, and at 800+ pages (in the Japanese version) it's certainly his longest work in a while. I can't wait to read it.

In a simple, unpretentious, and totally accessible style, Murakami tells six tales, each with a message about life and death and love and loss. Simple, straightforward stories, haunting and hypnotic in tone, belie a complexity of themes and thought-provoking observations about the importance of creating your own identity, building relationships, sharing, and avoiding the emptiness of the bogeyman's box, "ready for everybody...[and] waiting with the lid open." All the main characters are single or separated, and all feel isolated and empty, naïve in matters of love and life. In "UFO in Kashiro," an abandoned husband agrees to help a friend by delivering a box to Hokkaido, only to discover that the box "contains the something that was inside you. You'll never get it back." In "Landscape in Flatiron," a 40-ish artist and a young girl meet and build a bonfire. "The fire itself has to be free," he remarks, while the young girl comments on the emptiness of her life, and they make plans for the rest of the evening. In "All God's Children Can Dance," a young man pursues the man he believes to be his father to an abandoned baseball field, "chasing the tail of the darkness inside [him]." "Thailand" features a doctor in her 40's who is told that she must get rid of the stone inside her and that "living and dying are, in a sense, of equal value." In the last two stories, "Superfrog Saves Tokyo," and "Honey Pie," Murakami begins to offer more hope and direction to his characters. Superfrog, a 6' tall frog who needs a plodding banker to help him fight the Worm and save Tokyo from an earthquake, due to strike soon, teaches that "the ultimate value of our lives is decided not by how we win but by how we lose." And in "Honey Pie," which brings all these themes together, a young man has an opportunity to find happiness with the only woman he's ever loved and her young daughter, and determines that he will "never let anyone...try to put them into that crazy box, not even if the sky should fall or the earth crack open with a roar." Despite the fact that Murakami states his themes overtly, the stories themselves are enigmatic and the action unpredictable, and the reader will ponder his meanings and his images long after the stories are finished. Wonderful descriptions, small details which reflect the characters' class and educational level, sympathetic and well drawn characters, and a sense that the world is absurd and illogical make this short collection unforgettable. Mary Whipple