Search

The text discusses the roles of internal and external critique in the development of a literary work. On one hand, the creator’s intelligence, which also includes a strong critical dimension, is not identical to that of the critic, whose perspective entails a distancing and objectification that the author, considering it’s their own work, finds more challenging to adopt. The only drawback of external critique is that it arrives post facto and can only enhance the writer’s future style — thus benefiting subsequent creations, but not the one it critiques. Authentic critique plays an indispensable role as a guardian of value when it is competent, anticipatory, and constructive without being indulgent. The conclusion is that a balanced critical spirit, grounded in a broad culture allowing for diverse references, is a prerequisite for quality.

The mechanical and corrosion properties of duplex stainless steels (DSS) depend on the distribution of ferrite and austenite as well as the presence of secondary phases. It is therefore necessary to accurately determine both the distribution of the phases and their morphology. The aim of this research is to define a standard method for the determination of the volume fraction of the phases present in a SAF2507 SDSS by analysing images acquired by light microscope. To do this, the material is heat-treated at 850 °C for 5 min, 15 min, 30 min, 1h, 5h to stimulate the formation of the σ-phase. The metallographic etchant capable of maximising phase contrast is then identified. Micrographic analyses are performed using different reagents at different holding times and temperatures, in order to find the best combination. A standard procedure is then defined for the image analysis. The data obtained were are processed to calculate the phase distribution. The results are compared with the quantitative analysis performed using X-ray diffraction as reference.The research evidence that Kalling's reagent is best etchant for fully solubilised materials, as it accurately estimates ferrite and austenite content. On the other hand, Marble's reagent should be preferred for the detection of σ-phase. For comprehensive analysis of all phases, Murakami's reagent is recommended.The approach defined in this paper not only improves the understanding of the microstructure of DSS, but also provides an important tool for industrial quality control and material characterisation.

The stories “In Another Country” in Men Without Women (1927) and “Kino” in Men Without Women (2014) are two different but profoundly related short stories written by Ernest Hemingway and Haruki Murakami respectively. Although these two short stories differ by virtue of spatial and temporal variables producing the cultural climate in which the two novelists lived and created their works, by reading these two short stories closely and comparatively, this study aims to point out, prove and comment that both stories reveal the same themes in their narratives as the problematization of men’s relationship with the women together with the impacts of the presence-absence of women figures on men’s lives. The men in “In Another Country” and “Kino”, whose identity crises and search for meaning together with their conditions are analyzed critically, are either proved to be ostensibly indifferent and have some sort of purported stamina or they are implicitly fragile and emotionally imbalanced due to the sorrows they go through and are not able to overcome. Examination of the stories unearths the psychologies of the male characters who have either misunderstood women or misinterpreted their existential conditions. By examining the two short stories critically and comparatively, this study aims to demonstrate while both stories indeed closely revolve around such notions of identity, love, life, unhappiness, isolation and search for meaning in the middle of literal and metaphorical crises due to the presence and absence of one’s beloved, it provides a chance of scrutinizing the intricate dynamics of male and female relationships as well. Focusing on the way through which the dichotomy of presence and absence of female protagonists directs the male protagonists’ course of lives and how it leads them to identity crises and the search for meaning, a comparative analysis and close reading of the two short stories in question are thought to provide rich and evocative results.

Haruki Murakami introduces a wide array of issues and topics in his fiction; his variegated characters typically enact a wide range of human attitudes and behaviours when encountering the problems of modern life. One recurrent theme in Murakami’s novels is memory. The novelist has a unique ability to present his characters “from the inside”, as it were, describing thus the interior mechanisms that make them who they are. His novels present an opportunity to understand the workings of memory and how people are led by its dictates. His characters often find themselves recollecting their past in order to sustain a present existence that is marred by some type of crisis. As they progress in time, protagonists experience a profound sense of disequilibrium that prompts them to return to the past in order to rebalance their self’s sense of value. In this regard, the paper investigates the dynamics of memory as well as its role in the formation of identity in Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2014). For this purpose, the paper draws on different theories of memory and identity in its analysis.

Copyright of Journal of Social & Cultural Studies / Toplum ve Kültür Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of Journal of Social & Cultural Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Este artigo faz uma investigação do comportamente em grupo e individual de um personagem japonês, cuja busca da individualidade perpassa por uma discussão do comportamento do sujeito japonêns contemporâneo e os desafios para se estabelecer frente aos desafios de um mundo veloz e desapegado dos afetos.

Copyright of Alustath is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Haruki Murakami introduces a wide array of issues and topics in his fiction; his variegated characters typically enact a wide range of human attitudes and behaviours when encountering the problems of modern life. One recurrent theme in Murakami's novels is memory. The novelist has a unique ability to present his characters "from the inside", as it were, describing thus the interior mechanisms that make them who they are. His novels present an opportunity to understand the workings of memory and how people are led by its dictates. His characters often find themselves recollecting their past in order to sustain a present existence that is marred by some type of crisis. As they progress in time, protagonists experience a profound sense of disequilibrium that prompts them to return to the past in order to rebalance their self's sense of value. In this regard, the paper investigates the dynamics of memory as well as its role in the formation of identity in Haruki Murakami's novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2014). For this purpose, the paper draws on different theories of memory and identity in its analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Este trabajo pretende arrojar luz sobre algunos misterios de la adaptación de Burning (2018), dirigida por el coreano Lee Chang-dong, inspirada en los cuentos de Murakami Haruki y William Faulkner. En primer lugar, demuestra cómo dialogan los diferentes textos –fílmicos o literarios– en función de la intención de sus creadores; en segundo lugar, pone de relieve los aspectos que pueden resultar productivos a la hora de analizar un trasvase entre literatura y cine; y en tercer lugar, ofrece la posibilidad de examinar detalladamente el resultado del proceso de adaptación mencionado, teniendo en cuenta la filmografía total y los estilemas del director.

From the 1950s to the 70s Japanese literature became the most widely read nonEuropean literature in translation in the USA and Western Europe, as such eminent writers like Tanizaki, Kawabata, Mishima, and Ōe were discovered in English translation. This discovery encouraged and inspired new translations into other European and non-European languages that rendered Japanese literature popular throughout the planet. From the 1990s onward postmodern writers like Murakami and Yoshimoto rose also to global fame. Interestingly, the common point of all these internationally acclaimed writers is that they all have histories with the Nobel Prize in Literature: either they became laureates like Kawabata and Ōe, nominated like Tanizaki and Mishima; was considered as a Nobel candidate like Murakami, or merely “dreamt” of winning the prize someday like Yoshimoto. In this article, we treated the complex relations between Japanese writers and the Nobel Prize, which has become a symbol of cultural universality. We attempted to answer the following question: how have being considered a candidate, being nominated, winning, or losing the prize contributed to the universalisation of these writers?

El trabajo aborda el conjunto de relatos cortos de Murakami traducidos al español, un total de cincuenta y cinco cuentos, recogidos -salvo uno- en cuatro volúmenes compilatorios: El elefante desaparece, Sauce ciego, mujer dormida, Después del terremoto y Hombres sin mujeres. Se busca reconocer la singularidad de cada una de estas obras, y al mismo tiempo las marcas propias de la narrativa del autor. Para ello, se atiende básicamente al panorama temático que cada una de estas compilaciones ofrece. Es pertinente rastrear cómo se ha pergeñado cada uno de estos libros, y los vínculos que pudieran encontrarse con la obra global del autor. Junto al registro del material temático, interesa tener en cuenta el posible empleo de procedimientos narrativos señaladamente murakamianos.

The Maebashi volcanic mudflow deposits constitute major basement strata in the Maebashi-Takasaki area, central Japan. Sr isotope analysis of large volcanic blocks and 14C dating of buried wood blocks elucidated that the volcanic mudflow originated from a failure event of Kurofu volcano, an initial stage volcanic edifice of Asama volcano located about 50km west of these cities, which occurred ca.27 ka cal BP within the last glacial period. However, the cause of sector collapse and mechanism of long-distance movement of volcanic blocks are unknown. In order to get some clues for these problems, we studied the mode of occurrence of volcanic blocks and their specific gravity and Sr isotope ratio（87Sr/86Sr）, which are sparsely remained along the route of the Maebashi mudflow from the northern foot of Asama volcano to the Maebashi-Takasaki area through the Agatsuma and Tone Rivers. Here, we report the results for 13 volcanic rocks from a hummocky hill near Asama volcano, large blocks near the Agatsuma River and small blocks within the Maebashi mudflow deposit. All of them, except one sample, yielded narrow range Sr isotope ratios（0.70394-0.70416; av.：0.70406 ± 0.00001）close to the published data for Asama volcano. A large block transported by the Tenmei mudflow caused by the eruption of Asama volcano in 1783 was confirmed to have the same isotope ratio as above values. The two large blocks similar to Iwagami-no-Tobi-ishi, a representative large block related to the Maebashi mudflow, occur on the slopes 30-50m above present riverbed of the Agatsuma River, suggesting the devastating volume of the mudflow which transported these blocks. An exceptional case on the riverbed of the Tone River in the foot of Akagi volcano was interpreted as a block originated from the eroded hummocky hill from Akagi volcano. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a number of new readings of 'Post‐Truth', defined as 'Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief', our essay interrogates the extent to which magical realism may be understood as the paradigmatic and quintessential discourse of the Post‐Truth era. We paraphrase Homi Bhabha's famous statement, made in the 1990s, that 'magical realism is the language of the emergent postcolonial world', and propose that, in the twenty‐first century, magical realism is the language of the emergent Post‐Truth world. In this essay we analyze and compare the Post‐Truth techniques used in novels such as García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Mo Yan's Big Breasts and Wide Hips and Murakami's 1Q84. We combine Matthew d'Ancona's robust call that we should fight against the follies of political Post‐Truth with Anne Hegerfeldt's argument that magical realism is designed to teach the general public how to read between the lines of politicians' speeches in order to become a mature defender of truth, and therefore propose that the magical‐realist novelist, in effect, ends up telling 'lies that tell the truth'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Folklor / Edebiyat is the property of Cyprus International University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

From medieval to modern and postmodern times, thoughts about death have been among the most important subjects in literature. Among writers who have discussed death, Haruki Murakami addressed not only the notions of death and life after death but also the nature of death through existence. His point of view becomes metaphysical reflections. Through cultural semiotics, psychoanalysis, and existential theory, I show that death is associated with mythical thought and the hybrid between Japanese cultural tradition and Western existentialism. In Murakami's novels, death represents Mono no aware and the beauty of melancholy presage. Life after death is associated with shadow, soul, and a new existence in which death and sex have expressed the desire for eternal freedom. Death is a mixing body and soul, nature and culture. Through death, Murakami created new aesthetic categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article will draw on contemporary clinical scholarship on sleeplessness, cognition, emotional empathy, and memory, and attempt to map it a reading of Haruki Murakami's short story 'Sleep' from his 1993 collection The Elephant Vanishes. Such study will situate sleeplessness as a cognitive/embodied and agentic/extended condition, whereby the female subject feels alternately alienated and empowered through complex forms of memory and embodiment. The article will also examine how the hyperactive and hyper-productive orders of embodiment exemplified by the sleepless subject do not conform to the capitalist masculinist notions of endless productivity but increasingly undercut the same through the caricatured representation the subject's medical/entrepreneurial husband. This article aims to examine the interface of cognitive studies, cultural studies, and literary studies drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to connect to the broader research in cognitive and clinical psychology on sleeplessness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of otherness in literature usually comes under the broad purview of postcolonial studies, relating to the subaltern and the displaced. This paper, however, focuses on the concept of the 'other' and the 'odd' in the light of magical realism and how the characters which are generally side-lined by society on the basis of their sexual preference, mental capability, physical deformity, gender fluidity and age find a clear and distinct voice in these fictions. Haruki Murakami's novel Kafka on the Shore is taken up for this study. The unique blend of surrealism (the progenitor genre) with magical realism (the offspring mode) in the novel creates an oneiric landscape which is still very much rooted in reality, in present day Japan. The paper concentrates on the trauma of certain characters and how their exclusion from society leads to their subsequent recovery. The paper through a detailed and critical study of the novel's unusual characters and their non-deterministic status of being typified in traditional categories posits magical realism as an apt literary mode for those who lack a voice and are underrepresented in conventional texts. Here ostracism is not portrayed as pessimistic but as a locus for growth and self-discovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In An Account of My Hut, a 13th-century classic of Japanese literature, Kamo no Chōmei honors the Buddhist practice of non-attachment, of stripping down to the basics and releasing one’s illusions that physical comforts, especially a large home with servants and multiple rooms, will bring permanent happiness. Whirlwinds and earthquakes remind Chōmei of the fragility of the world, and in beautiful prose he tells of his retreat from the planet’s material lures. At last, at the age of 60, he leaves virtually everything and everyone behind to build a simple mountainside hut, a human “cocoon,” a place where he is less afraid to face unpredictable natural disasters and a constant lack of solidity. He asks for nothing; nor does he want for anything. Centuries later, another great Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, also offers counsel to a nation in the wake of disaster, the earthquake that struck the city of Kobe in 1995, killing over 6000 human beings. Though it is fiction, Murakami’s After the Quake is as well an attempt to provide real-life Japanese with a way forward, though his argument seems contrary to Chōmei’s sense that since nothing beneath our feet is solid, all must be forsaken. In fact, Murakami worries that Japan has lived for far too long in the Chōmei-like spirit of distrust (however understandable) and isolation; he counsels a new beginning, one steeped in the hope of community and in the beauty of family.

David Lynch y Haruki Murakami son dos de los autores contemporáneos que mayor éxito han tenido a la hora de configurar un universo propio. Al tomar como partida la categoría de lo fantástico tal como fue teorizada por Tzvetan Todorov, analizamos cómo estas creaciones se desarrollan en el espacio indeterminado de la fantasía. Tras atender a las concomitancias entre ambos, se advierten algunas diferencias en el tratamiento de lo cotidiano, en cuanto que para Murakami parece albergar un espacio de satisfacción que en las obras de Lynch nos es negado. Por último, se analizan los motivos del sueño y del deseo como acceso al choque traumático con lo real lacaniano, que irrumpe en el orden estructurado de la realidad simbólica en la que, según Lacan, nos constituiríamos como sujetos.

This study tries to analyse a Haruki Murakami’s text translated into Spanish: Todos los hijos de Dios bailan (2013) and tries to compare it with the original Japanese text: Kamino kodomotachiha mina odoru (2000). We analyse how the original text has been modified in the Spanish translation, especially taking into account the narrative resources (the interior monologue and the narration with verbs in indicative present) in the Murakami’s original text. These narrative resources are close to the Japanese language, and also are key in the story. We’ll show not only the difficulty of the translation of the Japanese literature into Spanish, but also we verify that the readers of the Spanish version are not able to notice some story’s keys. In other words, they can’t feel the same thing as the readers of the original text.

Copyright of Tanulmanyok is the property of Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In An Account of My Hut, a 13th-century classic of Japanese literature, Kamo no Chōmei honors the Buddhist practice of non-attachment, of stripping down to the basics and releasing one's illusions that physical comforts, especially a large home with servants and multiple rooms, will bring permanent happiness. Whirlwinds and earthquakes remind Chōmei of the fragility of the world, and in beautiful prose he tells of his retreat from the planet's material lures. At last, at the age of 60, he leaves virtually everything and everyone behind to build a simple mountainside hut. a human "cocoon," a place where he is less afraid to face unpredictable natural disasters and a constant lack of soliditv. He asks for nothing; nor does he want for anything. Centuries later, another great Japanese author Haruki Murakami, also offers counsel to a nation in the wake of disaster, the earthquake that struck the city of Kobe in 1995, killing over 6000 human beings. Though it is fiction, Murakami's After the Quake is as well an attempt to provide real-life Japanese with a way forward, though his argument seems contrary to Chōmei's sense that since nothing beneath our feet is solid, all must be forsaken. In fact, Murakami worries that Japan has lived for far too long in the Chōmei-like spirit of distrust (however understandable) and isolation; he counsels a new beginning, one steeped in the hope of community and in the beauty of family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the debate on the "Japanese identity" of Norwegian Wood, which — though popular — is often conducted in an intuitive fashion. I try to find a way out by looking more thoroughly into the Orphic legacy of the novel than has been done up to now by Japanese scholars. First of all, my purpose is to extend the intertextual reading by bringing into the equation the Japanese version of the Orpheus tale. A comparative analysis can thus trace the author’s more-or-less unconscious cultural influences from Japan (the myth of Izanagi) and the West (Orpheus). Furthermore, I take into account the novel’s love triangles, which connect the two intertexts. In short, I see the novel’s identity as a transformative one. Murakami’s Orpheus — the lovestricken Tōru — tracks across the Greek/Western parameters of the Orphic myth (i.e., the triumph of death and individuality) after his descent into the "Underworld" of Ami Hostel but finally sails back to Japanese home waters, as it were, when he decides to look forward to life and love (Midori). Choosing connectedness over alienation like Izanagi, the protagonist of Norwegian Wood — and arguably its dislocated author — leave behind the tempting but disillusioning Western culture. Both achieve this however thanks to one crucial element which is lacking in the Japanese myth and represented in the novel by Reiko: the wondrous power of music/art. The latter is Murakami’s Golden Fleece brought back from the West. Finally I discuss how this enriched state of mind may have altered Murakami’s "vague, Japanese" fictional "I".

"A good map is worth a thousand words, cartographers say, and they are right: because it produces a thousand words: it raises doubts, ideas. It poses new questions, and forces you to look for new answers", said Franco Moretti (Moretti 1999, pp. 3–4). The purpose of this article is to bring to light relations that would otherwise remain hidden in this current time of globalization and to analyze the literary works of Haruki Murakami in a literary topography: in other words, through literary maps above and under the ground, of today and of the past, and on this world and on the other world. Making literary maps of Murakami's novels, especially of the routes of the characters walks in Tokyo, has been popular (e.g. Tokyo Kurenaidan 1999, Urazumi 2000). When we consider Murakami's obsession with the subterranean world, his fictional metaphors of features like a field well and the bottom of the sea, and the characters’ strange semiconscious walks, however, mapping just the surface of the ground is not enough. We should focus on Murakami’s subterrane as long as he is obsessed with the subterranean world. Therefore, I superimposed a map of ancient Tokyo on that of today. The result is that you find Murakami's characters, even when they walk in downtown Tokyo, tend to walk along the water's edge and through cemeteries and burial mounds: in short, they walk with or as spirits of the dead. These mappings show the past or the dead violently controls characters in the "here and now", and is a pattern from his early novels, which are set in Ashiya, Hyogo. Murakami tells that "Yamikuro" live under the world and controls violence above the ground. The anagram of "Yamikuro" is "I mark you". It means that people on the ground are controlled by the past or the dead under the ground, which is a typical expression for power of memory of Japanese.

Haruki Murakami (1949) is a Japanese novelist who uses fiction to portray modern man's condition. Sexual identity, loneliness, and nostalgia are common themes in his works. Men without Women (2014) is a collection of short stories in which Murakami reverses gender roles to show men's desperate seek for companionship in their lives. According to Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997), a German literary theorist, there is no identical interpretation of any literary text. Yet, a dialogic correspondence between the text and the reader allows the reader's voice to breathe different life into the text. Therefore this study aims to illustrate the identity crisis in a conservative society such as Japan. Murakami's raw style shows the impact of social pressure and isolation of Masculinity in postmodern societies.

Murakami Haruki, Japan's most widely translated and popular author, is known for his repetition of protagonists, motifs, and story arcs across his fictional novels and short stories, which extends to his non-fiction and even personal interviews. Constructing and operating within what I term the Murakamiverse, the author utilizes fan service, genre conventions/parody, visual cues, and manipulation of narrative temporality that has traditionally been the domain of popular culture studies and in particular, comics studies. The Murakamiverse, with its spatial, temporal, and geographic restriction of recognizable tropes to an intellectual property originating from one source, has more in common with the contained and idiosyncratic fictional universes of Marvel or DC than it does with the arbitrary benchmarks of a national literary tradition. I argue in my paper that Murakami consciously employs strategies prevalent in sequential art in order to metatextually question: a). teleology and chronology as defaults for making meaning, b). the manipulation of the reading experience through focalization, c). the hierarchy of genre and attendant categories of form and convention, d). the role of the visual in processing information (this is particularly relevant to the Japanese language, with the visual differentiation of its three alphabets and their complex relationships to notions of national language and the foreign), and e). the move away from serialization as integral to the composition of the novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital re-staging of the body in cybernetic spheres such as Facebook, Twitter or the online gaming world, which occurs on a daily basis in much of the developed world today, represents a biotechnological symbiosis of digital self and organic self which has materialised as the ubiquitous cultural and social norm. The result is an epistemological doubling, a duality of identity, whereby the organic body and its cybernetic other simultaneously inhabit two spaces: that of the real world, and the virtual, straddling ostensibly polarised worlds which are becoming increasingly blurred. As Haraway envisaged, ‘by the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorised and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs’. This article seeks to examine how fiction has responded to such ideas and developments in late twentieth and early twentieth-century audiovisual culture. With reference to the novelsHard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,Fury,Dance Dance DanceandLuka and the Fire of Life, it examines how Rushdie's and Murakami's fiction registers a reality which simultaneously engages with, and disrupts, spatiality through the aesthetics of virtual cartographies, and the metaphor and materiality of simulacra. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]