The Male Protagonists in Haruki Murakami’s Nezumi Trilogy and His Attitude Towards Society

Abstract

Haruki Murakami’s early literary works (in the 1970s and 1980s) represent fundamental characteristics of his unique writing style, and significantly differ from other Japanese novels, with the narrative trait of detachment 「デタッチメント」- a lack of interest in the surroundings and interaction with others. Murakami’s sense of social detachment is distinctively connected and reflected by male protagonists
in his early works since the first novel, 『風の歌を聴け』“Hear the Wind Sing” released in 1979. Murakami followed his first book with two sequels, 『1973年のピンボール』 “Pinball, 1973” (1980) and 『羊をめぐる冒険』“A Wild Sheep Chase”  (1982). These three stand-alone novels are all together form “The Nezumi Trilogy（鼠三部）” or “The Trilogy of the Rat”, also known as 初期三部作 among readers and researchers in which commonly referred to Haruki Murakami’s initial three novels. This article aims to examine the male rotagonists in three stories of The Nezumi Trilogy because they are obviously consisted of the same characters, namely “I”「僕 - boku」 and “Nezumi「鼠」” or “Rat”. The three stories are also interconnected by coherent incidents and remain unresolved conflicts till the end. The findings indicate that The Nezumi Trilogy depicts a man who struggles with intrapsychic conflicts and is extremely passive to free himself from the situation. By the end of the three novels, the male protagonists neither attempt to find solutions nor interact socially with other characters. It therefore appears to align with Haruki Murakami’s attitude towards social detachment.