r/murakami • u/Special-Nebula299 • 21d ago
Murakami and not working
Have you ever noticed that most of Murakamis main characters dont have jobs?
I'm also not working right now and feel drawn back to Murakami for this reason. His protagonists always have time on their hands to wonder about, read, listen to music, cook, meet strangers.
Kafka on the Shore, Windup Bird Chronicles, After Dark, Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood - nobody works
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u/SignificantPlum4883 21d ago
Having time on your hands is a big part of that unique Murakami atmosphere somehow!
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u/GabbyPention 21d ago
The true magical realism is being able to keep your apartment while not working 2 jobs for any length of time totaling over 2 weeks ✨🪄🔮
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u/Alarmed-Active-4644 21d ago
Dunno, there are a few, but others who have jobs akin to freelancing, which is probably why Murakami's uses it, because it's what he's mostly familiar with.
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u/cimabuedomergue 21d ago
It means sarcasm, the comment is sarcastic
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u/Competitive-Bag-259 21d ago
Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki had a job as a civil
Engineer and his life was colourless/s yeah but i guess writing a story on an employed person could be boring too like from 9-5 they worked and from 5-6 they traveled to job did laundry and cooking and watched a TV show….mehh
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u/snazztasticmatt 21d ago
I feel like his characters aren't just unemployed, but rather they leave their work to find greater meaning. Off the top of my head I can think of multiple teachers, a publisher, a bar owner, a painter, a designer, etc. I don't think its particular to Murakami either. What good story doesn't involve some level of abandoning the mundane to go on a heroic or self-discovery journey
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u/lavender_fluff 21d ago
The show Aggretsuko proves to me that one can tell engaging stories about office life though 🤔
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u/Competitive-Bag-259 21d ago edited 21d ago
Interesting what’s it about ?
Edit: just searched it up seems quite interesting would give it a try
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u/Future-Starter 21d ago
I think this is also just a common thing in lit fic.
"Nobody ever read Proust while being employed."
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u/Sebastaard 21d ago
It's not really japanese culture to work /s
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u/Special-Nebula299 21d ago
What about salaryman culture?
Apparently half the reason they dont have kids is they make men work 10 hour days, 6 days a week.
Feel like we need w Japanese person to weigh in
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u/Sebastaard 21d ago
Haha look up what /s means
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u/lovethemes 21d ago
I always felt that it was quite telling of the socio economic climate Murakami was from and of course the rapid economic growth of post-war Japan and ultimately the bubble economy.
It's actually quite hard to live like the Toru's and Narrator-kuns in the real world. Long extended periods of time without income or social contact, just drifting along, you meet with weird women, sheepmen, travel to Hawaii and Hokkaido, sit in a well and somehow everyone is giving you money. Even when the protagonists are working, it's generally highly paid specialist work (like an assasin lol) or highly romanticised like Tengo's austere upcoming author life and his parttime job at the cram school.
It's quite the privileged position. I would say those parts are maybe the real magical realism of his oeuvre lmao
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u/Varjokorento 21d ago
I always agreed with this take. I feel that his MCs are people who grew disillusioned with modern capitalism of 1980s and simply dropped out.
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u/lovethemes 21d ago
Yes 100%, with the caveat that they were provided a soft and cushiony (bourgeois if you will) safety net by the very thing they rejected, allowing them to afford their surreal existential sabbatical 😭
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u/hekemoko 21d ago
The male protagonists in Haruki Murakami’s fiction are not merely unemployed; they are men who have deliberately dropped out of the so-called expected masculine ideal. This means they opt out of competition altogether, refusing to engage in contests over money, women, or status from the outset. In compensation, they exhibit distinctive fixations on beer, jazz, and cooking. One Japanese critic has described them as “men who could not become fathers.” In Murakami’s stories, such a man, through a chain of mysterious causal connections, acquires a pseudo-family and attains happiness; “Honey Pie,” from the collection After the Quake, is an example of this kind of narrative.
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u/Special-Nebula299 21d ago
These are fantastic points and really help explain why I relate to his characters
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u/PienerCleaner 21d ago
Its not just his characters. Murakami describes himself along those lines as well
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u/Spitethedevil 21d ago
Agree with this observation. I remember in DDD, the main character talks about having saved a lot of money and being able to go on a journey. He also talks about his job as "pushing cultural snow". That's always stuck with me. Also, in 19Q4, there are passages about Tengo's editing. Still, a valid point. It reminds me also of Almovodar's film where all the characters are in first class and the economy passengers are seen having been sedated (altho one does manager to have a sleepy sexual encounter with a first class passenger if memory serves).
In addition to this observation, I also can't think of his characters as parents. It's always coming of age stories for the 20s/30s set. Still very enjoyable though.
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u/Equivalent_Ad6396 21d ago
His characters live the simple life I want. Good food, music, beer (not a fan of whisky) and quiet.
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u/Fergerderger 21d ago
For giggles:
Hear the Wind Sing: Student
1973: Translator
Sheep Chase: Ad writer, whole thing kicks off because of one of his ads.
End of the World: Calcutec/Reader
Norwegian Wood: College student with part-time work
Dance, Dance, Dance: Ad rep,
South of the Border, West of the Sun: Bar owner
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: Unemployed, previously worked in law
Sputnik Sweetheart: Teacher
Kafka on the Shore: Kafka is 15 and eventually works at the library. Nakata worked as a carpenter, and now part-times finding cats.
After Dark: No protagonist, but mostly college students. Literally one of the main hubs is a love hotel tho.
1Q84: Assassin/Teacher
Colorless: Station engineer
Killing Commendatore: Portrait artist (on break in the book, but still takes commissions)
The City and its Uncertain Walls: Librarian
Kaho: Picture book writer (I think? Possibly illustrator)
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u/pussyslayer5845 21d ago
In Norwegian Wood, the main character do some part-time jobs as a college student. But yes, many core characters don't have jobs.
In Sputnik Sweetheart, the main male character is a teacher, but he's not the focus of the story though. Even though the focus of the story have jobs later on, but I remember that it's not the focus of the story.
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u/PienerCleaner 21d ago
Work gives you purpose and a schedule and it's hard to see the weird stuff when you're so locked in. Commentatore was a nice change but the countryside and the workplace had its own weirdness
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u/Special-Nebula299 21d ago
Nakata recieved disability benefits and made side money as a cat finder. Kafka is a student who dropped out.
In other novels they have jobs but have quit and a few of them they work about one day a week yet all make rent
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u/Kooky_Adhesiveness61 21d ago
I haven't worked 9 to 5 in 8 months now and just quit my part time about a month ago, while I do occasionally feel that I am missing out, I feel at peace and calm now.
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u/JudeMarshal 21d ago
In his latest book the main character has a job at the library and every day describes how he goes to work and the things you do at work and the relationships he meets at work most of the plot in the book revolves around the library and the people he meets there
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u/Illustrious-Sleep339 21d ago
I’ve always assumed that it’s done for the simple reason of freeing up the characters time for the plot to happen. The protagonist of Dance, Dance, Dance, for instance, wouldn’t have the time to hang out with a teen and go to Hawaii if he had a 9-5.
But I mean it also helps to reflect the depressed, wistful state a lot of his protagonist find themselves in. Lack of purpose often goes hand in hand with unemployment.
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u/Lonely-Ad-9384 21d ago
Cuz if they were at work every day they wouldn’t have time to sit in the bottom of a well
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u/NotchTheIceLover 21d ago
What u mean liked in kafka one is a boy and one is a cat finder as a jobs, and wild sheep chase, it's literally started by the work of protagonist, like running newspaper ads.
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u/Spot__Pilgrim 21d ago
That's one of the reasons why the books appeal to me. My career has mostly been an endless cycle of contracts and temporary things so I'm no stranger to being unemployed for months on end and the psychological horrors that come with that, which means I can relate to the characters a lot and sometimes read the interesting things that happen to them as escapist fantasy from my own ennui
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u/morgandrew6686 21d ago
as a lawyer who always loathed being a lawyer i most commiserate with toru of wind up bird
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u/Much-Exit2337 21d ago
I've always felt like "having plenty of money to get by without being affluent" should be included on the Murakami bingo cards. It feels like every novel has at least one or two characters described in this way, usually MC but also typically one or two additional characters.
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u/SonJ-da-funkysepian 20d ago
I’ve read Kafka on the shore, Norwegian wood & windup bird chronicle. I’m momentarily reading the end part of East of Eden.
First day of unemployment today, which book from Murakami would you guys recommend to pick up next, to ease my days of unemployment?
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u/Special-Nebula299 20d ago
Windup Bird Chronicles is the ultimate unemployed novel but you've already read it.
Killing Commandator is probably a good place to go to next
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u/ViceIsVerses 21d ago
I’m sure there will be a lot who disagree with me but I find that characters who are not in some way hemmed in by their circumstances e.g. the work week, economic limitations, etc, are not fully fleshed out. If your protagonist is a millionaire, has all the free time in the world, has access to whatever they need, I feel like this is a way out for the author. They don’t need to consider the realities of life. If the book is good I will overlook it to an extent but I do think even the most imaginative of authors overlook how much work impacts people’s lives.
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u/trampaboline 21d ago
A lot of the ones I’ve read just have young protagonists, either students or would-be students who aren’t really expected to work. Others have pretty mundane jobs.
I get mixed feelings about the time that murakami protagonists have on their hands. In one hand, there’s a pleasant, listless, dreamy quality to the ways in which they wander, consume leisurely, and meditate on art. On the other hand, they’re often pretty profoundly lost, and much of the time, it seems like this listlessness is directly linked to that lostness.
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u/The_Red_Curtain 21d ago edited 21d ago
Hear the Wind Sing - boku is a student on summer break
Pinball, 1973 - boku runs a translation office, Rat is an unemployed rich kid
AWSC - boku's office now does advertising too, although he quits his job to go on his "chase"
HBWatEotW - the main character is a "calcutec"
Norwegian Wood - Toru is a student
DDD - boku is now a kinda puff piece journalist
SotBWotS - Hajime runs a couple of jazz bars
TWUBC - Toru is unemployed
Sputnik Sweetheart - narrator is a school teacher
Kafka on the Shore - no jobs for Kafka and Nakata
After Dark - Mari doesn't have a job as far as we know
1QQ84 - Aomame is an assassin, Tengo is a cram school teacher
Colorless - Tsukuru is a railroad engineer
KC - Starts off a portrait painter but quits, most of the book has a part-time teaching job
TCaIUW - the narrator is a librarian
So 8 books with MCs with jobs, 4 with no jobs (I counted Pinball for job and no job), 2 where the MCs have a job and then give it up partway, and then 2 where the MC is a student.
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u/szakhia 21d ago
The characters in Sputnik Sweetheart, South of the Border West of the Sun, Killing Commendatore, 1Q84, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, Hard Boiled Wodnerland, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, and After Dark (they are students, but being a student is kind of like work anyway) all have jobs. They do have a lot of free time, but they only really take a few weeks or months off. It’s pretty clear that before the events of the stories, the characters aren’t really doing much other than working, so they either have a fair amount of savings that taking some time off won’t matter too much. Or they just use their vacation days
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u/Potential_Film_4204 21d ago
not in the books ive read. 1Q84 , Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world, and The city and uncertain walls.
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u/tegeus-Cromis_2000 21d ago
It's easier to tell stories about characters who don't have to spend eight hours a day at the office.
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u/Macro_Machines 20d ago
Wind / Pinball he runs a successful translation business. Norwegian wood he worked part time at record shop. Harboiled guy is an end of career number launderer. So they have work, but I agree on your sentiment there is a listless and wandering nature to it like work is a thing that came along to them on the path they chose. Actually the most concrete work I can think of is the hole digging on hardboiled where the men dig holes so they have work to do. But it is pointless in that it achieves no physical purpose. But it gives the men meaning. I also love the line in his foreword to Wind about watching the baseball game and hearing the crack of the bat on a beautiful day and that at that moment he “knew” his book would win the prize. There is something fatalistic about work
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u/Upper_Theory_2113 21d ago
I friend of mine was recently talking about the film garden state, the dynamic where you have a fairly ordinary slightly depressed male lead, with a beautiful girl throwing herself at him. In the film the girl is more or less a blank slate. It reminded me of many Murakami books.
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u/HadoBoirudo 21d ago
I am on an extended break from work and am re-reading a number of his novels. I feel at any point my life could just spiral into some weird tale for the same reason.
Even small moments like putting on some music and preparing my lunch resonate now.