Murakami's Hard Boiled Wonderland and City and Its Uncertain Walls
On April 13, 2023, Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, City and Its Uncertain Walls, was published in Japan. The novel has not only been receiving attention because of the author’s prestige, but because of the story behind its creation.
In 1980, Murakami published a short story that he claims to be the original source of inspiration for City and Its Uncertain Walls. He never developed the piece into a novel-length narrative since he didn’t feel like it was complete. However, he adopted certain themes from the short story and, in 1985, published Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The book won the Tanizaki Prize and put the author on the map globally, preparing him for his forthcoming success after the publication of Norwegian Wood in 1987.
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World shares the same source of inspiration as City and Its Uncertain Walls, and most certainly shares similar themes. The novels, in essence, are couplets, and in reading only one and not the other, the reader will miss critical points of the novels that will only enhance the reading experience. As such, to properly discuss City and Its Uncertain Walls, I must first examine its older sibling, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
“I would alternate between two, separate stories, and those two stories will fuse together at the end. At least that was what I intended. But as I kept writing the stories, I had no idea how they would ever combine into one. It’s because I kept writing without a solid plan or outline on how they would come together. I was just optimistic that it would work out, and it did. When it happened it was immaculate, like two tunnelers who met each other in the middle without prior knowledge of one another’s project.”
-Murakami in the foreword of Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World.
Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is a braided narrative. The odd chapters follow the unnamed narrator who lives in Tokyo and works as a “calcutech,” a human computer that encrypts information through cognitive methods to prevent it from being stolen. These chapters are called “Hard-boiled Wonderland.” The narrator is one of the few calcutechs in the nation who has mastered “shuffling,” a process entailing the calcutech accessing their own unconscious and encrypting the assigned information. The unconscious acts as a perfect “Enigma box.” While Enigma boxes were eventually cracked, the unconscious is far too expansive for it to be cracked in the same way. Shuffling hence guarantees that the information is encrypted in perpetuity with no risk of the contents being leaked.
The narrator is one of twenty-five calcutechs that underwent brain surgery to be able to shuffle. Out of those twenty-five, he’s the only one that survived the treatment. The doctor who invented shuffling explains that the other calcutechs died after the boundaries between the conscious and the unconscious mind collapsed. Their conscious minds were unable to withstand the overload of information. The narrator, on the other hand, had already developed such a strong wall between the conscious and the unconscious mind that his boundaries remained intact. As the sole survivor of the shuffling technique, the narrator is asked by the doctor to conduct yet another experiment. Unfortunately, the experiment backfires and the narrator’s consciousness is trapped in his unconscious.
In contrast to “The Hard Boiled Wonderland,” the even chapters of the novel comprise the story of the narrator’s ventures through his unconscious. He finds himself in a town surrounded by a wall called the End of the World. In order to enter, he must surrender his shadow to the gatekeeper. The shadow contains his past memories and soul. The shadow is left outside the town and will soon die in the upcoming winter. When it dies, the narrator loses his soul, hence losing the ability to feel emotions such as happiness, sadness, and most importantly, love. Until the shadow dies, the narrator is told to read old dreams from the skulls of deceased unicorns. The unicorns collect the remnants of the townsfolk's shadow and convert them into dreams that can be read by the narrator. These fantastic elements alongside sci-fi-esque elements in the Hard-boiled Wonderland sections led some reviewers to categorize the novel as a sci-fi novel. These settings, however, are mere apparatus to deeply examine philosophical questions that have plagued the greatest Western novelists and philosophers alike.
“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
- William Faulkner, Wild Palms
The central conflict of the story is two-fold. In “The Hard-boiled Wonderland,” the narrator contemplates his fate of having his consciousness trapped in the unconscious for eternity. While he cannot claim to have a perfect life, he laments the opportunities he may be missing. Throughout the novel, hee develops multiple romantic interests that he wishes to pursue, but cannot due to his situation. In hopes of consoling him, the doctor tells him, “There is nothing to fear. This is not death. It’s eternal life. And this world would merely look like an illusion once you have arrived at the End of the World.” If this explanation sounds familiar, then it should be clear how influential the narrative in these chapters was in forming the likes of Pleasantville and The Matrix. In essence, these films ask the same dilemma to the reader as Murakami does. Is our world, with all of its imperfections and suffering, truly worth living in? Murakami also places the narrator in a similar position as the one in Kafka’s The Trial. Even if he successfully escapes from his unconscious, he would be a wanted fugitive by the largest corporation in Japan. His journey across subterranean Tokyo further emphasizes the terrors of reality. He’s constantly hunted by the Yamikuro, monsters that prey on humans who wander into the darkness where they live. He traverses through pits full of leeches and almost drowns in a flash flood. These circumstances seem to truly question Faulkner’s quote above. Does Faulkner speak from a point of privilege where he had not experienced the full horrors of pain? After a certain amount of pain, is nothingness actually better? After the journey of the narrator, one can even a Schopenhauerian attitude; perhaps moments of happiness are too fleeting, too short for it to be worth the immeasurable amount of suffering that the world has to offer. Perhaps the doctor is indeed right. Maybe entering into the unconscious utopia is a blessing in disguise.
“So what you’re saying is, since she doesn’t have a soul. She cannot return the love that I give her?”
“Yes. You’ll constantly be on the losing end. Like you said, she doesn’t have a soul. Neither do I. No one does.”
“But you’re so kind to me. You took care of me while I’m sick, even staying up to make sure I’m alright. Wouldn’t that be proof that you have a soul?”
“No, not necessarily. Kindness and having a soul are completely different. They’re independent of one another. It’s a habit that is detached from our soul. Our soul is deeper, stronger, and more paradoxical.”
-Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
This is when, inevitably, the End of the World comes in to complete the central dilemma of this novel. The inhabitants of the town possess no soul. As such, they forfeit emotions that typically make them human. In essence, the End of the World is Dostoyevsky’s crystal palace from Notes from the Underground. It’s a paradise where there can never be any conflict or struggle. Unlike the Underground Man, however, Murakami’s narrator has a far less spiteful approach towards his paradise. In fact, the only thing preventing him from staying in the town is his wish to be with a librarian. The narrator’s shadow continues to convince him that the town is not natural and that they must escape. But he cannot help thinking that the world outside, which he has no memory of, would be far more chaotic and hurtful than the End of the World.
In the end, the narrator ends up making a half-choice. The narrator himself stays behind to find the librarian’s soul while the shadow escapes back to the conscious world. If the narrator succeeds in finding the librarian’s soul and returns it to her, then they could spend eternity together. So in the end, Murakami seems to expand upon Dostoyevsky’s Crystal Palace thought experiment with the addition of love. Unachievable love, as many Murakami readers are aware, is one of the author’s favorite themes, and the narrator, like many other protagonists in Murakami’s works, would do anything to achieve it. Perhaps, to Murakami, love is worth the pain and suffering that accompanies it.
When I read the first of the duo of novels a few years ago, I was quickly overwhelmed by the sci-fi concepts and dramatically different pacings between the chapters. As I read through the novel again in preparation for City and Its Uncertain Walls, it became evident why Murakami thought it was appropriate to reuse certain parts of the original story for the new novel. While the sensual prose definitely creates dramatic and emotional moments full of philosophical inquiries, those sections are sandwiched by exposition that exists for the structural integrity of the narrative. For the new novel, Murakami does not have the shackles of the sci-fi genre and fully dives into the topic of unconscious and estranged love. It’ll be exciting to see what the famed novelist can do without these limitations.