ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses food culture and consumerism in Murakami Haruki’s work, focusing mainly on the short story ‘Zō no shōmetsu’ (trans. ‘The Elephant Vanishes’) to show how the portrayal of the kitchen and the vanished elephant reflect transformations in food consumption and production practices in the late capitalist society of postwar Japan. Specifically, I argue that the story does not simply criticise Japanese society through its plot about an elephant that has vanished but uses the kitchen as a hinge that dovetails Murakami’s own opinion about people’s complicity and negotiation with the System. I aim to expand the study of Murakami’s fiction by calling attention to the theme of food, eating, and cooking.
