ABSTRACT
Drawing on theories of discourse structure in literary stylistics and (male) gaze in Lacanian psychoanalysis and gender studies, this chapter examines how multiple layers of male gaze are inscribed in the narrative structure of Murakami’s novel After Dark. I argue that through the design of the first-person plural narrator, the reader is incorporated into the story world of the novel and hence participates in gazing at the powerless female character Eri Asai. In this way the reader is almost given an omnipresent privilege from gaining scopophilic pleasure of gazing at a character’s life, but this privilege is later revealed to be subject to what I call the System’s validation. It is this readers’ participation in the male gaze process that I argue is the true problematic of Murakami’s much contested treatment of gender in his work.
