ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the formation of public history out of the material of private imagination in the post-Aum fiction of Murakami Haruki. The four novels examined in this section—Sputnik Sweetheart (Supuotoniku koibito, 1999), Kafka on the Shore (Umibe no Kafuka, 2002), After Dark (Afutā dāku, 2004), and 1Q84—draw connections between the personal trauma experienced by characters and the larger history that connects the URA and Aum events. Because the process of merging private and public experience involves a discussion of both psychological and narrative dynamics, this chapter details the mechanisms of narrative psychology in the novel form by which the material of personal fantasy and trauma can rise to the level of a shared experience, eventually forming the narratives that make up the larger historical imaginary. By allowing characters to serve as storytellers of shared narrative experiences, Murakami’s fiction weaves marginalized experiences and voices of Heisei culture back into the official versions of the past that inform the cultural consciousness of the period.
