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I nternational Jour nal of Japanese Sociol ogy2001, Volume 10
I JJS Volum e 10 2001.
In his 1939 essay Some Motifs in Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin elevated the shock
experience to central stage in the theory of
modernity. In this article the focus will be
on the role played by shock in the fiction of
the contemporary Japanese writer Murakami
H aruki (1949). While B enjamin is thetheorist of modernity w ho most explicitly has
based his theory on the experience of shock,
Murakami is the paragon of a writer in whose
fiction contemporary society is precisely not
shocking. By contra sting them w e will see
how crucial the presence or absence of shock
is in shaping the perception of modernity,
how it defines what dilemmas are experi-
enced as central a nd influences the stra tegies
applied to deal with them. This contrast will
help us to re-evaluate Benjamin in a
contemporary context and demonstrate the
usefulness of the concept of shock for
theoretically grasping the experience of
modernity in contemporary fiction. The
juxtaposition is especially apt because of the
many strikingly similar concerns one finds inB enjamin and Murakami. B oth a re centrally
preoccupied by motifs such as language,
memory and mourning, both regard indi-
vidual experience as threatened by the
capitalist system, and both are groping for
means of resistance in the things that this
system excludes, as evinced in Benjamins
wish to mob ilize the rags and refuse (1999:
460) and in Mura kamis sympathy fo r lost
things (Muraka mi and K aw amoto, 1985: 67).
Murakami Haruki and the Naturalizationof Modernity
CARL CASSEGARD
Abstract: Walter Benjamin famously portrayed the shock sensation as the cause of a heightening of consciousness in modernity, a process which in turn causes the disintegration
of the aura and the suffocation of experience under the protective shield of conscious-
ness. W hen applied to the cultural space of M urakami H arukis novels a discrepancy comes
into view that calls for sociological elucidation. H ere modernity is a naturalized space
characterized by tranquillity and stillness, a low consciousness, and a fusion of reifi cationwith re-enchantment. This naturalization is made possible by a process of privatization
whereby libidinal energy becomes transferred from objective human relations to the
interior of the self. M urakami struggles with the dilemma of how to affi rm naturalization
while counteracting privatization. While the prime cultural contradiction according to
Benjamin was the conflict between the aura and the heightening of consciousness, in
the naturalized modernity portrayed by M urakami another contradiction emerges which
revolves around the conflict between painless solitude and the struggle to regain auratic
human relations.
Keywords:shock, M urakami H aruki, W alter Benjamin
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In view of these similarities, the absence of
shock in Murakamithe very sensation
that B enjamin made into the cornerstone for
this theory of modernityis all the more
significant.
Although many parallels can be foundbetween Murakami and o ther contemporary
writers,1 we do not focus on his fiction for
reasons of representativity, but because he
presents us with a clear picture of the phe-
nomenon of naturalization. In other words,
we treat him not as an example, but as a
point of referencethat is useful for develop-
ing the concept of nat uralization.2 In fa ct, it is
in providing sociology with the opportunity
to develop its conceptual apparatus that fi ction
assumes its highest sociological significance.
Although the relevance of literature for
sociology can only be demonstrated through
interpretation and analysis, in general the
specific sociological value of literature resides
in the privileged access it offers to the way
society is experienced. A fi ctional form serves
not only to convey the emotional aspects of
social life but also as a flexible intellectual
medium for exploring possible solutions to
the contradictions underlying them. It offersinsights not only a bout how people feel ab out
dilemmas, but also about how they seek to
overcome them. Literature is therefore not
simply an object for the sociologist to ex-
plain, but also a source of knowledge about
society. As the sociologist Inoue Shun points
out, the insights offered by literature can
only be preserved if we eschew the crude
sociologism which attempts to reduce it to its
social foundations. What is required is a
dialogue , in which sociology learns fromor is enriched by litera ture (Inoue, 1985:
346). An important premise of this study is
that sociological theory has as much to gain
from such a procedure as the understanding
of literature has by being illuminated by
sociology.3
Modernity and shockin Benjamin
First we need to have a look at B enjamins
view of modernity. Since no summary can
do full justice to its richness, I will limit
myself to an idea that is central to it and
which, although it recurs in different forms
in several of his contemporaries, was most
explicitly developed by him, namely the
relation between modernity and shock. This
idea is expressed in his famous formulation
that the price of mod ernity is the disinte-
gration of the aura in the sensation of shock
(B enjamin, 1997: 154). In modernity, people
tend to protect themselves against the rawforce of shock by developing a heightened
degree of consciousness , which serves as
wha t hefollowing Freudcalls a protective
shield aga inst excessive externa l stimuli.
This in turn leads to a shift in the form
of perception from assimilated experience
(Erfahrung) to superficial sensations (Erlebnisse)
of reified and isolated moments. Benjamin
treats this shift as equivalent to the disinte-
gration of the aura defi ned as that which
makes an object or a human relationshipappear unique and embedded in a history o r
tradition of its own. D rained of aura, the
world turns into the world of baudelairean
spleen , which B enjamin describes as a
state where external stimuli have lost their
uniquenessevery sensation seems to be
merely a repetition of previous ones (1997:
111ff). A t this point B enjamins observations
intersect with G eorg Simmels thesis tha t the
intensifica tion of nerve-life in the modern
metropolis brings about a dominance ofthe intellect over the emotions in spiritual
life, something which in turn prod uces a b las
attitude, a state of bored indifference in
which consciousness is fully developed and
nothing is left which might be perceived as
shocking since everything is considered to be
eq ual a nd excha ngeable (Simmel, 1990: 256).
According to B enjamin, then, spleen arises
not through a lack of stimuli but through
an excess of stimuli. Paradoxically, it is
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shockand not its absencethat fuels bore-
dom. Modernity appears as a seamless col-
lusion of incessant shock-sensations and
at tempts by the intellect to ma ster the shock-
ing environment. It is a hell or continuous
catastrophe , chara cterized by a dialectic ofthe new a nd the ever-same , an endless
production of novelty after novelty, yet at
the same time mired down in monotonous
repetition, each new shock collapsing back
into the ever-same (1999: 842f; 1977: 231).
B enjamins theory of the decay of the a ura
can, to a certain point, be read a s a theory of
how reifi cation ma nifests itself on the level of
perception, i.e., as the perception of people
and social products as things in isolation
from their mediation.4 Mediation can only
be grasped through assimilated experience
(Erfahrung), whereas superficial sensations
(Erlebnisse) fragmentizes perception and
makes things appear as if they were inde-
pendent of each o ther. To b e sure, B enjamin
affi rmed the emancipatory potential of shock
and the disintegration of the aura, which he
trea ted a s a libera tion from ritua l (1977: 143ff).
Nevertheless he also endowed the aura with
a uto pian significa nce.5
H is amb ivalent stancereflects what he portrays as a fundamental
dilemma of modernity. The attempt to
escape the modern hell of shock and spleen
by artificially restoring the aura through
heightened consciousnessas in the fascist
attempt to recreate t he aura o f the community
must ultimately fa il since the aura is depend-
ent on t he essentially involuntary w orkings of
memory (1977: 154, 167ff; cf. Caygill, 1998:
93116). Faced w ith this dilemma , B enjamin
himself maintained an attitude of hesitantopenness towards modernity. As opposed
to conscious recreation of aura, which was
bound to be regressive, his strategy w as ra ther
to get used to the dream-world of capitalism
as a fi rst step in order t o dispel it. The ta sks
which confront the human apparatus of
perception a t the turning points of history a re
not to be solved by optical means, that is, by
contemplation, a lone. They a re only ma stered
gradually, by habit, under the guidance of
ta ctile receptio n (1977: 167). This wa s a
strategy, not of subjecting the dream to an
external critique, which was bound to get
caught up in the law tha t effort brings abo ut
its opposite , but of groping ones wa y inside
the dream in search of the dialectics of aw akening at work within it (1999: 13, 388ff).
Just a s for the Jews every second wa s a small
gate through which Messiah might enter
(1977: 261), so for B enjamin every piece of
rags or refuse wa s a potential dialectical
image which might trigger the sudden fla sh
of recognition, the involuntary memory,
which wo uld help dispel the nightma re.
How to interpret Murakami?
Murakamis writings challenge the equation
of modernity with the sensation of shock
which is at the heart of Benjamins frame-
work. Even though the story lines of his
novels do not lack dramatic and unexpected
turns of event, the protagonists are rarely
shocked. I nterestingly, their tra nq uillity does
not depend on what Benjamin calls a highdegree of consciousness. There is no sign of
the nervous attitude of b eing on ones guard.
If anything, they show a low level of aware-
ness of their surroundings. They la ck interest
in much of contemporary rea lity, whose w ork-
ings they la rgely accept without the pretension
of b eing able to loo k through them. The pro-
tagonists embody the intuition, ubiquitous
in late modernity, that the inexplicable has
become commonplace: it is normal that
ab norma l things occur.We will here interpret Murakamis writings
on the basis of his at titude towa rds two social
processes that are conspicuously present in
his work:
(1) Naturalization: in his fi ction the modern
environment has become as self-evident
as na ture once w as. The insecurity and the
predominance of the intellect, needed as
long as one had to adapt oneself to a
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historically new and unfamiliar environ-
ment, recedes as one grow s accustomed
to it.
(2) Privatization. D espite the waning of
shock late modernity is distinguished from
pre-modernity through the process ofprivat izationthe redirection of libidinal
investments from relations between
people. Few things are as striking in
the protagonists of Murakami as their
loneliness, even when they a re w ith other
people. It is self-imposed solitude that
makes it possible for them to avoid the
shocks of social life in modernity. As
I will argue, privatization is one of the
crucial preconditions of nat uralization.
By exploring the interrelation of natural-
ization and privatization we gain a frame-
work for interpreting Murakamis novels.
According to our interpretation, the follow-
ing dilemma is at the heart of his work:
how is one to have naturalization without
privatization? H ow is the fi rst tendency to be
affirmed without the second? In regard to
this question, his novels can be divided into
two groups. Early novelslike Hear theWind Sing (K aze no uta o ki ke, 1979),
Pinball , 1973(1973 nen no pinbru, 1980),
A Wi ld Sheep Chase(H itsuji o meguru bken,
1982) or Hardboiled Wonderland and the End
of the Worl d(Sekai no owari to hdobo irudo
wandrando, 1985)affirm the naturalization
of modernity, and portray protagonists
who accept loneliness as their sad but also
sentimentally sweet fate. Later novels
like Norwegian Wood (Noruei no mori,
1987), D ance dance dance(D ansu dansudansu, 1988), or The Wind-up Bi rd Chronicle
(Nejimakidori kuronik uru, 199495)depict
protagonists who combat the trend towards
privatization by committing themselves to
other huma n beings. B y their struggle, how-
ever, they find themselves having to deny
naturalization as well, at least to a certain
extent. Shock returns to their world, and
even where mutual communication is achieved
it tends to be painful, casting doubt on the
success of their struggle. While the earlier
novels present us with the clearest and most
unblemished picture of a wholly naturalized
and privatized world, the later novels show
us that Murakami is unwilling to affirm this
world wholeheartedly.
Naturalization
It is time to specify the concept of
naturalization, the first of the two processes
that stand in the center of our interpretation.
Naturalization means that one has grown
used to a n environment that w as once shock-
ing. We must be careful not to confuse this
new nature with the notion of second
nature that w as developed in the tradition
of Western Marxism and that was used by
Benjamin.6 It will be instructive to compare
these two notions of nature.
Fundamental to the theory of second
nature is the insight that the domina tion
over nature achieved in modernity not only
liberates man, but also creates new constraints
since economy, technology, and the world ofsocial convention turn against him as the
reifi ed world of second nature .7 Indeed,
great cities resemble nature: no huma n hand
seems to cont rol them, its stream of cars and
tra ins is no less inhuman a nd elemental tha n
wild cataracts and rivers. They usurp the life
that was meant for its inhabitants, who
converselyare reduced to things. These
metaphors, which fuse the images of natural
ecology and of the machine, all suggest the
fragility of the borderline between societyand nature in the city. It has been suggested
that Murakamis novels are rich in this sensi-
bility.8 And to be sure, his characters have
a thing-like quality. In novels such as A
Wil d Sheep Chaseand Hardboiled Wonder-
landthey even lack proper names. Instead
they are usually referred to by objectified
attributes: the wife , the business partner ,
and so on. A world inhabited by such
dehumanized emblems is one in which the
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reification of roles has become natural and
humans submit to system-imperatives as
casually as if the latter were forces of
nature.
Yet the world of Murakamis novels cannot
be dismissed a s a mere reifi ed nightma re. Theproblem with directly a pplying the concept of
second nature here is that it is linked to the
image of modernity as an a rena of shock. As
a corrective we do well to turn to an entirely
different concept of na ture which is free from
all oppressive overtones. We find it in the
writings of Adorno. While Ad orno on the one
hand uses the term nature to designate the
oppressive appearance of contemporary society
as second nature, on the other ha nd he also uses
it to designat e the fi rst nature, which is sub-
jugat ed during the process of moderniza tion:
the external nature ravaged by technology,
and the realm of mute, preconscious inner
impulses repressed by identity thinking. For
Ado rno nature wa s not only the spell of the
inhuman in society, but also the source of
life which might help break this spell. B ut
here the following question arises: what
is the criterion for distinguishing second
nature from its supposed victim, non-reifiednature?
To a rrive at a n answer let us turn to the
notion of natural history (Naturgeschichte),
which Benjamin put forw ard in The Ori gin of
German Tragic D rama(1994: 165ff, 177ff),
and carefully make use of it as far as it takes
us. For B enjamin, the idea of nature meant
the idea of an original state of things, of
whatever appeared to be pregivenas fate.
In this sense, it was opposed to the idea of
history , which was the constantly changingsphere of action, the stream of becoming.
B enjamin points out that the historical
often petrifies into natureinto a frozen
image of timelessness. Whatever appears to
be natural , however, always contains traces
which reveal it to be transient and historical.
This idea profoundly influenced Adorno,
who in his 1932 lecture The Idea of a
Natural H istory framed it as a critique of
the ahistorical appearance of second nature.
Follow ing B enjamin, he undermines the
antithesis of history and nature to the point
where the tw o terms collapse into each other:
history is to be understood as na ture-like and
nat ure as historical. He a rgues that the crude
version of the theory of reification, which
focuses attention on how the historical is
rigidified into second nature merely strenghtens
the spell of reification. Nature too is trans-
itory, and this insight offers the possibility
to see through second natures pretense of
timelessness (Adorno, 1973: 345365).
The idea of natural history offers the
advantage of showing that nature itself is
historical. Nature should not be understood
as a fixed, archaic or primordial state whichhas been lost and replaced by a fake second
nat ure. All nat ure, including fi rst nat ure,
is history which has been made to appear
ahistorical. This idea, however, still presents
second naturesocietys resemblance to
natureas an evil to be done a way with. Bo th
B enjamin a nd A dorno insist on d issolving it
back into history. But there is anotherand
equally possibleway to interpret this idea.
If a ll na ture is also history, then second nature
is not necessarily mo re evil and lifeless thanthe natural environment of archaic societies.
If a rchaic nature was the source both of en-
slavement and of enchantment , there does not
seem to be any rea son why second nature has
to be portray ed merely as a source of the for-
mer. Might it not be possible that second nature
could assume also those gentleand enchant-
ing features which Adorno a ssociated w ith the
victimized inner nature and the vanquished
external nature? If this is true, then the border-
line between t he older, enchanting nature andsecond nature becomes diffuse. Ra ther than
to diagnose modernity simply as the reified
world of second nature, it seems preferable
to speak of a return of nature tout court, albeit
nature returns not in the guise of the spirits
of t he forest or the rivers, but in the guise of
industrial plants and highways. Just as the
conquest of the old nature was an ambivalent
processencompassing both destructive and
emancipato ry aspectsso the return of na ture
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in the city is ambivalentencompassing
not only reification but also the gradual dis-
appearance of shock.
The modernity of Murakamis novels, I
suggest, is one in which the reified structure
of second nature is beginning to take onthe fea tures of non-oppressive archa ic nature.
We will now have a closer look at three
aspects of this phenomenon in his fiction,
each of which in a significant way relativizes
B enjamins framework.
The absence of shock
As the cultural a nthropologist A oki Tamo tsu
remarks, coziness and pleasant sentimental-
ism chara cterize modernity in Murakamis
novels. The mood of a typical Muraka mi hero,
he w rites, suggests an intense indifference;
neither happy nor sad, replete nor empty,
lonely nor loved, he simply exists. This is life
in the 1980s (Aoki, 1996: 271, 274). A s these
words indicate, we are fa r from the hell
depicted by B enjamin. To use theological
metaphors, this world is more akin to Hades ,
the shadow y land o f the dead where there is
neither pa in nor happiness. D espite sinister
external attributesusually the barren citylandscape of Tokyo a nd a wo rld dominated
by huge corporations and foul right-wing
organizationsit very seldom inflicts any
keenly felt pain on the protagonist. That
this environment has a friendly feel to it
and t hus differs from the cold and hostile
modernity in the fiction of, say, Abe Kb
or Kafkadoes not mean that dramatic
and sudden events do no t occur. They do, but
they never seem to produce shock. Two
examples are the sudden disappearance of the girlfriend w ith the beautiful ears in
A Wi ld Sheep Chaseand of the wife in The
Wind-up Bir d. The protagonists equanimity
in both cases is all the more striking, since
love between the sexes is the locus classicus
of shock. In the fiction of older Japanese writers,
like Abe Kb or Kaw aba ta Yasunari, the loss
of a beloved woman never fails to be shock-
ing. In Mura kami, by contra st, the vulnerability
necessary in order to be shocked is replaced
by a masochistically tinged resignation w hich
bord ers on indifference. The absence of shock
even in the fa ce of tota l disaster is well illus-
trated by the nightmarish plot of H ardboiled
Wonderland. D espite the superficial kinship
of this work to the genre of para noid fi ction,it stands out in a revealing aspect. The pro-
tagonists road towards his demise is gentle,
rose-colored, a lmost pa inted in a n idyllic light.
The strange characters which he meets on his
wa y a re likable, keep up his spirits, and try to
comfort him. All overt symptoms of reifica-
tion are gone. This is in stark contrast with
Kafka or A be, where the people encountered
by the protagonist often reveal a cruel,
machine-like quality. The soft, sentimental
atmosphere is further strengthened by t he
protagonists cool resignation to his fate. He
takes all losses with equanimity and grim
humor: Wasnt much of a life anyw ay , as he
remarks.
The lowering of consciousness
In an environment without shock, the
protective shield of the intellect becomes un-
necessary. In fact, Murakamis protagonists
never pretend to understand wha t is going onaround them. In H ardboiled Wonderl andthe
protagonists girlfriend points out that his
favorite expressions seem to be I w ouldnt
know and maybe so . The difference
between this kind of tranq uillity and spleen
is that the former arises from an acceptance
of incomprehensibility, while the latter
designates the state of mind of one who has
intellectually mastered his environment.
While B enjamin depicts modernity a s an a ge
in which the fear of shock spurs the intellecttowards an ever more watertight grip on its
environment, Murakamis protagonists have
already come to feel at home in the new
obscurity (H ab ermas, 1985) tha t is said to
be chara cteristic of late mo dernity.
The clearest idealization o f low consci-
ousness is found in The Wind-up Bi rd, whose
protagonistOkada Trupersonifies the
belief that just as long as you stick with
your gut feeling and do the little things,
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like vacuum cleaning, you contribute to the
harmony of the world and wind up its
springs . That his stance is accompa nied by a
belief in fate is not coincidental. The casual
acceptance of the incomprehensible resembles
fa ta lism. Indeed, the belief in fa te presupposesa chaotic environment. Since the unpredict-
ability of society is indispensable for the
production of the curious coincidences
which are interpreted as fate, the relation
between opaqueness and fatalism is comple-
mentary. The resurgence of the occult is a
telling symptom that modernity has become
just as natural as nature: the unpredictable
event is no longer shocking the moment it
can be interpreted as fate. The popularity of
New Age and what in Japan is known
as the spirit world (seishin sekai) indicate
that the predominance of the intellect is no
inherent feature of modernity.9
The fusion of reification and
enchantment
The third aspect of naturalization is the
fusion of reification with re-enchantment.
As the hard, thing-like world governed by
system-imperatives takes on a gentler appear-ance, the process of disenchantment which
Max Weber saw as an inherent attribute of
modernity loses momentum and shrinks
back. In Mura kamis novels social conditions
no longer enter into friction with the fan-
ta stic. The stories have t he calm of fa iry ta les,
in which fantastic events come forward as
natural. This fusion of reality with the fan-
ta stic in the mode of perception has profound
sociological implications, not least in the
changed chara cter of reification.The changed character of reification is
directly detectable in the way people appear
to the prota gonists in Murakamis fiction. H is
tendency to reduce people to objectified
attributes is notorious. Thus for example the
protagonists girlfriend in A Wi ld Sheep
Chaseis casually reduced to the girlfriend
with the b eautiful ears . The reduction,
however, is drastic enough to be parodical.
Like a small peephole in a wall, the reifying
epithet never pretends to reveal everything.
The reader is never allow ed to forget t he vast
expanse of her subjectivity which is left un-
told behind her epithet, but which never-
theless is felt to be there. Since the reifying
epithet appears as a sign of what is leftuntold, it turns her into a riddle rather than
demy stifying her. When she suddenly d ecides
to leave the protagonist at the end of the
novel, the act keenly brings out how little
either the reader or the protagonist knows
ab out her. U nlike the reifi cato ry labels so
dreaded by Lukcs or Adorno, it cannot be
used as a classificatory device. This is what
makes it a mistake to assert simply, as
Iw amoto does, that the characters ofA Wi ldSheep Chaseare presented as depthless objects
which are deprived of subjectivity (Iwamoto,
1993). Rather, people come forward in a
double-exposure: tra nscending their a ttributes
while being imprisoned in them.
The towering role of the occult in The
Wind-up Bir dshould not surprise us. It is
another example of the fusion of reification
and reenchantment. Occultism has all the
reifying attributes of science and social
engineering. In suggesting that humans areruled by stars or blood types, it shuts out
freedom just as effectively as any reificatory
scheme. On the other hand, the violence
occultism exerts by subsuming people under
pre-established categories and locking them
into causal relationships is tolerated because
of the reenchantment it offers in return.
In contrast to established science, occultism
does not reduce the phenomena of nature to
mute objects without moral or metaphysical
significance. The regular movement of starsor the inescapability of ones blood type
offers a fixity which is not felt to be reifying,
since the natura l phenomena to which one is
subordinated are themselves never objecti-
fi ed as facts . As pointed out by Benjamin
himself, the causality o f fa te is not t he mech-
anistic causality of natural science (1994:
129). The powers which govern the human
world are natural, to be sure, but this nature
is not the dead matter of modern science.
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Rather it is a stream of becoming in which
human history forms part and whichto the
tiniest of its fractalsis shot through by
historical significance.
Privatization
The wa ning of shock does not imply a return
of a uratic human rela tions. We will now t urn
to privatization, the process that makes
naturalization possible. Privatization is the
process whereby individuals become used
to solitude, orto be more precisetheir
instinctual needs and fundamental impulses
become channeled in such a way that their
gratification is made less dependent on
relations to other people. The term d oes not
imply that human interaction decreases, but
stands for the subjective process whereby
such interactions become less important
as sources of gratification for individuals. As
Aoki observes, it is their isolation that
enables Murakamis protagonists to mainta in
their tranquillity even in the midst of the
apparent turbulence of the modern city
(1996: 271f). In other words, their peace ofmind is paid fo r by loneliness.10 This pheno m-
enon was sensed to some extent by Simmel
in its negativeaspectsas what he called
reserve and aversion towards other people.
But he neglected to consider if libidinal
energies were merely suppressed or if they
were displaced to new safe areas where the
risk of shock wa s lower. Instead he took it for
granted that it would be sufficient to focus on
the purely intellectual efforts needed to ada pt
oneself to the metropolitan environment. Asmentioned, however, getting used is q uite
possible without an improved intellectual
grasp of the mechanisms of modernity.
One can feel at home in modernity without
understanding its mechanisms, in just the
same way that is possible to feel accustomed
to nature without grasping its complex
ecology. For us it is exactly these uncon-
scious aspects of getting used which are of
interest. It is these processes that will help
us to understand the solitude of Murakamis
heroes.
In order to gain a clear theoretical picture
of the process of privatization we need to
turn to Freuds theory of the interiorization
of libido. According to Freud, the ego usuallydoes not react to an experience of loss or to a
trauma by extinguishing the libido or affec-
tion felt fo r the lost object. Instead, the libido
is redirected inwardsit is transformed into
narcissistic libido. In this wa y the ego com-
pensates itself by setting up a replacement
for the lost object inside itself (1991: 94,
368f). What we have here is thus a case in
which dependence on an unstable a nd hostile
environment is neutralized. Peace of mind is
restored and made independent of actual
relations to other people o r things. A s Freud
point outs, this development is to some
extent characteristic of the development of
chara cter in any persons life. The end
result of repeated introjections is a state in
which the ego has become independent of its
environment, since all libido is transformed
into narcissistic libido.
This sta te bea rs a rema rkable resemblance
to the dominant mood of Murakamis pro-tagonists.11 The protagonist of A Wi ld Sheep
Chasewas happy with his girlfriend, but
seems just as happy without her. In earlier
writers like Ka wa bata or A be, as mentioned,
one feels the intact presence of painful, vigor-
ous libidinal attachments to women. In both
writers love relationships are mined with
shock and pain. Compared to these writers,
the wea kness of the element of shock as well
as of any libidinal attachment to others in
Muraka mis prota gonists are striking.Freud helps us to conceive of an alter-
native response to shock than tha t which was
predicted by Benjamin or Simmel. Instead of
becoming more conscious a bout the risk of
shock in external relations, the ego may
withdraw libidinal investment from them. In
this way the instances of shock will decrease,
but only at a price of privatization. We will
now turn to ha ve a look at Murakamis deep
amb ivalence towa rds this tendency.
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The resistance toprivatization and the
return of shock
Not only is increasing isolation cha racteristic
of societies today, but also the vigor with
which it is combated, the desperation of the
search for belonging, as evinced in the re-
surgence of nat ionalism and ethnic struggles.
The very same struggles also reveal that the
return of shock is the price for which the
attempt to renew the aura in the realm of
human relations is to be had. As privatiza tion
is denied, a precondition for the waning of
shock is also denied. We thus see that the tw o
processes which we ha ve described so f ar donot mark any irreversible transition away
from the classical modernity of B enjamin.
R ather they open up a corridor awa y from
this modernity, which might be traveled both
ways.
While Murakamis novels consistently
seem to celebrate naturalization, his stance
towards privatization is much more ambiva-
lent. The reversal from the cool subjectivity
in his early works to the determined attempt
to reverse privatization in The Wind-up Bi rdis undeniable. Although Okada Tru is still
a fundamentally solitary hero, his quest to
retrieve his lost wife ma rks a significant shift
in Murakamis output. For the first time a
protagonist appears who resolutely commits
himself to another person. What occupies
Okada Tru in much of the novel is the
restoration of destroyed communication with
his wife. In order to achieve this he has to
remember her name. The volte-face of
Murakamis previous nonchalance towardsproper names is striking. While the reliance
on epithets in the ea rlier novels in a nalbeit
parodicalway made t heir bearers exchange-
able and dispensable, the insistence on
proper names in this work must be seen as an
attempt to combat this exchangeability and
hold fa st her uniqueness, orin other w ords
her aura .12
The Wind-up Bird also brings out the
difficulty of combating privatization. What is
striking with this novel is not only Okada
Trus attempt t o rescue the aura of his wife,
but also the reappearance of shock and pain.
The unpleasant conjugal quarrels and the
violent hatred which he feels towards his
enemy Wataya Noboru are only the reverseside of his new sense of responsibility. As the
attempt to restore community ends up in
the affirmation of violence, this marks the
fa ilure of his att empt to restore t he aura . The
very commitment with which he engages in
the struggle to retrieve his wife ironically
leads him back to the sensation of shock
rather than to the realm of auratic human
rela tions. This much is still true in B enjamin:
that in modernity external relations without
shock are impossible.
Concluding remarks
We have seen that the cat egory of shock is
crucial to understanding the difference between
the perception of mod ernity in Benjamin and
Murakami. The presence of shock is acutely
felt in B enjamin, who portra ys modernity a srevolving aro und the experience of a conflict
between the protective shield of heightened
consciousness and the assimilated experience
that in premodern societies was associated
with the aura . In contrast, Murakamis fiction
gives us access to the experience of a
natura lized modernity in which shock is a
fa r more peripheral phenomenon. This mod-
ernity is characterized by the dilemma of how
to a ffi rm the disappearance of shock without
relinquishing human relations. This is adilemma, since the very attempt to combat
privatizat iondepicted forcefully in The Wind-
up Birdleads to a return of shock, i.e., to
the kind of modernity depicted by B enjamin.
The alternative of stoically submitting to
privatizationas seen in A Wi ld Sheep Chase
and H ardboiled Wonderl andis only to be
had at the price of profo und loneliness.
Murakamis fiction gives us insight not
only into the experience of nat uralization but
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also into the strategies by which it may be
confronted. Just like Benjamin, Murakami
maintains an attitude of hesitant openness
towards the dilemma that is central for his
perception of modernity. His ambivalent
stance towards the pleasant loneliness that isthe precondition for naturalization is akin to
Benjamins ambivalence towards the disinte-
gration of the aura in the sensation of shock.
B oth are equally unwilling to affi rm completely
the modernity o f their day. Just a s Benjamin,
Murakamis protagonists rely on a ta ctile
reception of their environment, in which they
grope for a dialectics of a wa kening that will
solve their dilemma.
Notes
1 Even an author whose writ ings are asseemingly brimming with shock-sensat ions asMurakami Ry testifies to naturalization, butfrom the angle of revolt against boredom a ndthe active pursuit of shock. A comparison ofthese two authors from the point of viewof shock would be extremely interesting. IfMurakami Haruki represents a basic accept-ance of naturalization that still seems to bewaiting for something new, then MurakamiR y represents a ba sic revolt against natura l-ization that acknowledges its own futility.B oth, how ever, share a similar point ofdeparture, the view of society asmore orlessnaturalized.
2 It is far from my intention to suggest that latemodernity as a whole is somehow charac-terized by any absence of shock. Shock exists.Nonet heless, hardly a ny research has yet beenmade a bout the tendency that a n arena of life
loses in shocking quality. This phenomenonneeds to be investigated because it too mani-fests itself in fi ction and o ther cultural artifactsof culture. For the purpose of this theoretiza-tion it is unfortunate t hat previous theoreticalefforts have tended to stress the processwhereby culture supersedes nature, ratherthan the one whereby culture turns into anew nature. Thus Castells claims that the information society replaces nature with culture (1996: 477), while B eck argues tha tthe present reflexive phase of modern-ization has consumed its other and turned
all nature artificial (1992: 19, 80f). Contemp-orary research also contains many helpfulobservat ions (B erger on post-tra uma (1999),Lehan on entropy (1998), Sloterdijk on cynicism (1987), Miyada i on the every-day (1995), Ka wa moto on metropolitansensibility (1999), just to ment ion a few).However, these observations have yet to betheoretically integrated. The tw o concepts thatwill be d iscussed below naturalizationand privatizat ion will, I believe, contributeto such an integration.
3 This approach literature is stressed by Coser,who writes: The creative imagination o f theliterary artist often has achieved insights intosocial processes which have remained unex-plored in social science The sociologistwho ignores literature is bound to be not
merely a much impoverished man, but awo rse social scientist. (1963: 4). One couldadd that such an approach is close to the redemptive criticism (H ab ermas, 1981)practiced by B enjamin himself. For Benjaminthe experience contained in and determiningthe form of a work was never a given, butneeded to be discovered in the course ofcritique (cf. 1977: 108).
4 Lukcs popularized the term reification inhis H istory and Class Consciousness, pub-lished in 1923. In capitalism, he argues, notonly are people treat ed a s things as a result ofcommodification and rationalization. Thoughtitself is reified, meaning that concepts areviewed as rigid and timeless entities inde-pendent of the tota lity of their historicalcontext (1968).
5 B enjamin differs from Simmel in emphasizingthe ritual function of the aura and its affinityto myth. Nevertheless, even in The Work ofA rt i n the Age of M echanical Reproduction,with its tentatively optimistic assessment ofthe disintegration of the aura as the eman-cipation from ritual and a s the precondition
for the emergence of a new kind of senseperception, he acknowledges the possibilityof a regressive or fa scist response to thisdevelopment (1977: 67f, 86f). Later, in SomeM otifs in Baudelaire, its disintegration isequat ed with the destruction of the conditionsof experience itself. Here and in the notes tothe A rcades Project the aura assumes autopian tinge. The decline of the a ura a ndthe waning of the dream of a bet ter nature are one a nd t he same. (1999: 362).
6 This originally Hegelian term was revived byLukcs in his early work The Theory of the
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Novel(1996: 6264) and developed in H istoryand C lass Consciousnesswhere he related itto the concept of reification. The concept iscentral already in Marx, although he neverused the term (e.g., Marx, 1993: 158, 164).
7 This is a central tenet in Horkheimers andAdornos classic D ialectic of Enli ghtenment.It should be noted that the term nat ure isnot just a theoretical metaphor, but is alsooften used as a category of perception. Forexample, Benjamin observes that the surgingocean is the model for the city crowd in VictorHugo (1997: 60ff) and Adorno points to thevisual similarity of industrial mounta insof debris t o alpine moraines and taluses(1997: 68).
8 Kawa moto claims that Murakamis work ispervaded by a metropolitan sensibility , in
which all consciousness of any individual selfor of any countryside apart from the cityis drowned out. As a consequence, the cityassumes many of the aspects previously asso-ciated with nat ure, such as a nimism or alikeness to the forest (Kawamoto, 1999: 40ff;Murakami and Kawamoto, 1985: 78).
9 The role of the supernatural is in Murakamiswork is emphasized by Strecher (1999)and Hatori (1995). For the popularity of the spirit wo rld movement in Japan since thelat e 1960s , see Shima zono (1996).
10 Self-imposed isolation and problems ofcommunication were recurring themes inKawamotos interview with Murakami in1985 (Mura kami and K aw amoto, 1985: 43, 67,70f; also cf. Takeda, 1995: 34). According toNapier the increasing prevalence of thesethemes is a general trait in postWar Japaneseliterature, in whichshe observesthe por-trayal of women has undergone an ominouschange: Women are no longer part of w ish-fulfillment fa ntasies. Instead, they a re part ofthe reality which the male protagonist longsto escape (1996: 54). According to her, the
increasingly felt presence of shock in relationsto women have made male writers turn in-wa rds and search for a refuge inside their ownselves.
11 The post-traumatic mood of Murakamisfiction explains the minimalism of his style:to communicate a trauma is difficult or im-possible. The search for the right wo rd is atheme to which he explicitly refers through-out his writing (Murakami and Kawamoto,1985: 45, 48; also cf. Murakami, 1982: 8).Since, as B erger (1999) points out, post-trauma has become characteristic of much
contemporary literature and film, there is noneed to venture into the particular circum-stances of Murakamis ow n life. To underpinthis interpretation, it is enough to point to thetraumatic experiences depicted in his ownfi ction (e.g., Muraka mi, 1991a) and the impa ctof the defea t of t he radical student movementof the 1960s (cf. K at , 1995: 3641; Mura kamiand K aw amoto, 1985: 37; R ubin, 1999: 184;Strecher, 1998: 371ff; 1999: 264ff, 298ff).
12 See Hioki (1998) for a discussion of TheWind-up Bi rdfrom the point of view of repro-ducibility a nd uniqueness. H ere one ma y a ddthat the turn towa rds an affirmation of com-munity in Murakami is portrayed as anindividual choice tha t d oes not imply a returnto t he groupism which he has explicitlycriticized (for Murakamis comments on indi-
vidualism, history a nd community, cf. Murakamiand Kawamoto, 1985: 43; Murakami, 1997b:710f; 1995: 276, 288).
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CAR L CAS S E GARD
D epartment of Sociology, G raduat e School of Letters, KYOTO U niversity, Yoshida H onmachi,Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan, email: [email protected]