Reading Haruki Murakami’s Novels. Experiencing the Depths of the Mind through Storytelling
Haruki Murakami’s novels are esoteric, because unlike entertainment fiction, his works involve a lot of ambiguity.
As a depth psychology counselor, I hear clients’ stories about their psyche, that are their worries, their personal experiences, and the dreams in their sleep, in my counseling sessions. The stories are a series of ambiguous events, and the consistency of the stories is often disorganized. There is no entertainment in it, and it is not easy to understand the meaning of the stories.
Haruki Murakami’s novels resemble the kind of storytelling that comes from the depths of the psyche, as narrated by clients in counseling sessions. Unrealistic events occur suddenly and inexplicable characters appear. It is a story that differs from the logic of everyday life and is difficult to understand the meaning of the story. Some readers ask, “Why does this happen?” “Why do the characters act the way they do?” will be perplexed. This discourages the reader from continuing to read the narrative.
However, storytelling is essentially by its very nature dependent on the reader. As in oral literature inherited by a particular group of people, storytelling was to listened only by those who could understand the storytelling. The storytelling would originally convey the narrative to those who could share the experience with the storyteller, there is no need to read the story unless synchronize with it.
It may be unfortunate that Haruki Murakami’s novels have sold well and become “popular” as a narrative. The “popularization” of his novels that makes increased the people who “don’t understand” his works.
Haruki Murakami’s novels “choose the readers,” don’t they?
While there are many core fans of Haruki Murakami, there are also many who have a negative opinion of his work.
Novels are open to all. Novels are open to all. However, it is dependent on the reader’s compatibility with the novel to experience its worldview. Haruki Murakami’s novels require immersion in the story, not interpretation. His works need the reader to have a storytelling experience, like a person listening to an old man’s tale told around a campfire at night. The reader can read Haruki Murakami’s work when they can experience it through their own body and mind.
Work to read old dreams
Haruki Murakami has a novel titled “The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland. The main character, “I,” has the mysterious job of reading “old dreams” from skulls in a library located in a walled city.
In this novel, it is described just as “the process of reading what an old dream telling about,” but the content of the dream is not revealed. The job can only be accomplished by a person with the special power of “dream reading.
This new Haruki’s novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” also features this “dream reading. That is, it is a sequence of “The End of the World and ~”. The work of “dream-reading” continued 30 years after the preceding work. Images that have remained in his mind for a long time rise to the surface of the consciousness again, transcending time. It is a similar phenomenon I come across in my counseling practice. Images of the past that have remained inside appear on the surface in the form of mental symptoms. And my work, as a depth psychology therapist, reads the deeper meanings of the mind expressed in the symptoms, symbolized unconscious images. This is similar to the work of dream readers.
Dream Reading Counseling
In depth psychology counseling, clients report their dreams. They record the dreams while sleeping and discuss them in the sessions. The meaning of the dream is carefully read through, drawing on the dreamer’s associations to the story that the dream tells. This is depth psychology counseling.
※I hear that this kind of old-fashioned counseling is becoming less and less common these days. But I think it will survive in Japan, just as Buddhist esotericism and Zen survived.
Depth psychology counseling does not involve guesswork about meaning. Instead of saying, “This is what it means,” the hypothesis suggests, “This is what it might mean. Rather, in most cases, the therapist does not interpret any meaning, and the therapist concentrates on simply listening to the story the dream is telling.
Interpretation of a dream can lead to unnatural processing of the original dream, because the dream itself conveys the depths of the mind.
An apple appears in a dream, for example, the therapist thinks, “What does an apple mean to that client?” For one it may be a Forbidden Fruit, while for another it may be their most favorite fruit. Or it may represent a symbol of an attainable goal. The therapist considers “what the apple means to this client” while carefully considering what storyline the “apple” is in.
Dreams can only be appreciated through the mind of the dreamer. Dreams are influenced not only by individual values and ideas, but also by things beyond the individual. Dreams are influenced by family, culture, environment, time, history, and other factors beyond the individual. The “apple” of a person’s dream is unique to them. Depth psychology believes that the depths of the mind contain the accumulated content of human history, in a sense, the history of Life.
In other words, when we deeply read a dream, we arrive at the ancient layer of the mind. It is the dream analyst’s job to read the whole mind, from the surface of the dream to the ancient layers. The work is similar to the work of reading “old dreams” in Haruki Murakami’s novels. In the novel, he describes the dream-reading work this way that the dream you read passes through your body in the dream-reading process. And,
Sometimes they stimulate my insides from strange angles, awakening some long-forgotten sensations within myself,” he said. Like old dust that has long accumulated at the bottom of a jar, it is lifted into the air by someone’s breath.
Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Shinchosha 2023), p.99
In counseling, the therapist opens the therapist’s own mind while listening to the client’s dream and concentrates on the dust that moves in the depths of the mind. Sometimes, following the movement of the mind, the therapist gathers these subtle dust and brings them up to the surface consciousness, conveying it to the client as words. Or it may remain silent, sink in the depths. Most of the time I do not verbalize the words because, as I explained earlier, verbalizing them may interfere with the storytelling process.
The Transformation of the Mind and the Depths of Storytelling
The client’s mind produces stories. Writers, too, create novels through their own minds. However, it is a difficult tasks to translate the “old dust” in the depths of the mind into words.
It took Haruki Murakami 40 years from his previous work, “The End of the World,” to the completion of this work.
It took a long time for the old dust that piled up in the depths of his mind to write as a new novel.
However, this work is “an arrival point that could be narrated at this point in time,” and the story of “Dream Reading” may come to another form of realization after a few more years.
Truth is not found in a fixed stillness, but in a constant shifting phase. This is the essence of storytelling. That is how I see it.
Haruki Murakami, The City and Its Uncertain Wall (Shinchosha 2023), p.661
The work of reading dreams affects the reader. Reading a story that comes from the depths of the mind affects the deeper mind of the reader. By experienced through the writer’s storytelling, the depths of the mind transform.
Through reading the stories, the reader’s own memories, sensations, and various old dusts that transcend the individual are brought to the surface in the depths of the mind. The old dust transforms the reader’s mind in subtle changes.
A story should not be interpreted, but only experienced by the reader. Narrative is also a personal experience that cannot be shared with others. Great storytelling transforms the reader’s mind. Like the storytelling of “dream reading,” the power of storytelling reaches the depths of the mind of those who are inevitably encountered.
As Haruki Murakami himself once answered a reader’s question, reading stories is only a personal act. The stories accumulated inside us have a value that cannot be invaded by others.