Book Review: Murakami Haruki's "After Dark" (2004)

According to Haslam, mechanistic dehumanization occurs when human nature, such as cognitive flexibility, emotionality, individuality and warmth, is denied, making people resemble machines or objects (258). The society in Murakami Haruki's After Dark (2004) rejects the features of human nature that are typical of or central to humans, and as a result, creates characters that are emotionless and robotic.

 

Tokyo in After Dark is portrayed as a big creature or entity, "sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old" (Murakami 3). The city runs and survives through a structuralized organization. The old is replaced with the new and more highly-efficient, assuming that people are interchangeable with others of their type. Individuality does not take place in this system. Takahashi also explains about a trial he attended in the past, comparing it to a giant octopus. "[T]his creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers" (Murakami 97-98). The city is represented to be an inhumane place where people are unidentified and nameless. "Each of those under transport is a human being with a different face and mind, and at the same time each is a nameless part of the collective entity. (Murakami 198).

 

This creature that controls Tokyo has the same role of Alpha 60, a computer in Godard's film Alphaville (1965). Alpha 60 is an emotionless and logical system that controls a totalitarian city, Alphaville. Its role is to make judgments and logical answers by computing and collecting data, killing or reforming people with conscience that ask that question, "why." Takahashi says there is nothing that separates the criminals' world from his, and talks about feeling hopeless and upset because a horrible criminal was sentenced to death. He states that "any single human being, no matter what kind of a person he or she may be, is all caught up in the tentacles of this animal like a giant octopus, and is getting sucked into the darkness" (Murakami 99). The creature of the law system that has put his father in prison and is killing the criminal is what stands out to Takahashi, rather than being guilty or innocent. He thinks the system is too powerful, becoming the ultimate law and defending the right and wrong in the society.

 

As Alphaville is controlled by a computer in the film, technology holds power over Tokyo in the novel. The narrator itself is a camera that zooms in and out of the city and characters. "You never know where there's a camera watching you these days," says Kaoru, with Komugi replying that "[t]he walls have ears - and digital cameras" (Murakami 74). The surveillance system in hotel Alphaville helps Kaoru to print a clear picture of Shirakawa. Eri Asai's room is filled with electronics: a new notebook computer, compact stereo, digital clock, and a television set, and her room is described to show none of her tastes or individuality. The digital clock is the only thing that moves in her room, acting like "a cautious nocturnal creature that runs on electricity" (Murakami 28). The unplugged television suddenly comes alive, acting like an intruder. Eri is one of the characters that is continually observed by the camera-like narrator and is taken over by the TV screen in her room. In order to cope with the reality where people are constantly observing and judging behind screens, Eri is physically and emotionally detached from the society, numb and dead asleep.

 

Another character that shows the result of the dehumanized city is Shirakawa, a salary man who works during the night. While working, he is "[u]nconcerned about the time and effort involved" and "can handle all difficulties logically, analytically" (Murakami 81). His robotic characteristic can also be seen when he talks to his wife. He "cut[s] and paste[s]" his words, holding conversations like a computer (Murakami 84). Shirakawa is also a regular member of the love hotel Alphaville. He buys a Chinese prostitute and violently abuses her because he is not pleased with his purchase. When his wife asks him what he had as his midnight snack, he expresses the prostitute as Chinese food, and throws her items away without remorse in front of 7-Eleven, just like how Takahashi threw away his milk carton and apple core at the same place earlier. Shirakawa's machine-like character and objectification of women proves him to be an automaton that lacks emotions.

 

Murakami's view of Tokyo can be seen through a program titled Creatures of the Deep that plays on TV in Shirakawa's kitchen and in the guest room of hotel Alphaville. "The screen is showing pictures of the sea bottom. Weird deep-sea creatures. Ugly ones, beautiful ones. Predators, prey. Miniature research submarine outfitted with high-tech equipment" (Murakami 153). The novel envisages an Orwellian society, where people are developing into emotionless creatures to survive in the dark. The sea bottom is Tokyo, making up a population of various predators, like Shirakawa, and preys like the Chinese prostitute and Eri. The high-tech equipment becomes the technology that follow and does not allow any privacy.

 

 

"Haruki MURAKAMI, After Dark." The Bosa Bosa Review. 2011.

Haslam, Nick. "Dehumanization: An Intergrative Review." Personality and Social Psychology Review 10.3 (2006): 252-64.

Murakami, Haruki. After Dark. Trans. Jay Rubin. London: Harvill Secker, 2007.