Elephant will return to the veldt: narratives of nostalgia and self-continuity in the work of Murakami Haruki

Abstract

Scholarship on Haruki Murakami’s oeuvre has noted, with some scepticism, the prominent role of nostalgia in his narratives of self-discovery in postmodern Japan. This criticism rests on two assumptions: that nostalgia is a negative psychological state, and that Murakami’s use of it in his work is therefore flawed. This thesis, however, argues for a more constructive evaluation of nostalgia and shows how in the past two decades, Murakami’s use of nostalgia has evolved into a pivotal mechanism for protagonists to reconstruct their self-identity and continuity. In his three most recent full-length novels – Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013), Killing Commendatore (2017), and The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2023) – nostalgic narratives encourage individuals to reflect on their past with appreciation, channelling renewed confidence into the present, and facilitating the rewriting of new self-narratives necessary to address contemporary existential dilemmas and uncertainties. Driven by nostalgia, this narrative process not only enables individual self-reconstruction but may also serve as a reflection on Japan’s postwar tendency to sanitize and obscure war memories while suppressing individual voices in the pursuit of modernization. As such this thesis argues that rather than a critical weakness of Murakami’s work, nostalgia, and the identity narratives it produces could be crucial tools for critically engaging with the legacies of post-war Japan.