Thoughts On "After Dark", By Haruki Murakami
Introduction
This is not my first book by Murakami, he is already my favorite author, making me biased to recommend you this book. But his work is amazing without any doubts. In my opinion, this novel is perfect for those who never read Murakami before or for those who don't like the explicit content in his other works since it does not have any highly descriptive scenes of that kind. Haruki Murakami is a master of magical realism and in creating deep stories with good ambience. In this book, the author transports the reader to the late night Tokyo in a way it appears to be real. So, give it a try.
Summary
Eri
Eri's part of the story is short. At first, she is sleeping and the narrator, who describes itself as "we" - usually referring to itself as camera, a perspective -, starts telling the reader about her room and her appearence, reenforcing the idea of the girl's beauty.
After it, something strange starts to happen with Eri's TV. Even though it was off, images started forming on it and later on a strange man appears on it (this is the most confusing part of the story) and keeps glancing at her.
When the narrator returns to the room, Eri was not there anymore. Later, it finds she was on the TV, the other world or "there". It proceeds to go there and see her in confusion trying to understand what happenned.
Finally, Eri is back in her room and Mari goes there silently and hugs here, entering in sleep together with Eri (it is not clear if she will wake up or not or what will happen later), ending the novel.
Mari, Takahashi, And Kaoru
"After Dark" tells the story of multiple characthers, but focuses in Mari Asai. She is a 19-year-old gril who is trying to run away from a problem: her sister went to sleep to months before and the never woke up.
Mari almost never had a good realtionship with her sister. She describes her sister as "Snow White" and herself as "sheep shepherd". She reckons herself as someone normal, by this, she means that she does not present any talent for something.
Takahashi, who studied with Mari's Sister - Eri, sees Mari sitting alone at a Denny's and decides to sit with her, what she reluctantly accepts. There, they talk for a while, making us know a little bit more about both.
Takahashi was going to practice playing music with his band and had to leave, leaving Mari alone. However, a little bit after, a woman named Kaoru reaches her asking if she knew Chinese, what Mari did, and asks for Mari's help.
Kaoru is the manager of the motel Alphaville, what later on made Mari rememeber of Jean-Luc Godard's movie with the same title. There, a Chinese prostitute had been violented and robbed by a salary-man.
Thus, Kaoru, Mari, and two other workers from the motel - Koorugui and Komugui, start a journey to find who was the criminous. They were sucsseful since they were able to find a video of him in the motel's cameras, and them Kaoru gives a picture of the man to the Chinese mafia member who came to pick up the Chinese girl, in order for him to "revenge".
Later, Mari meets Takahashi again to talk more, goes to the motel and has a realy important conversation with Koorugui, sleeps for a while, and again meets Takahashi to go home.
Shirakawa
Shirakawa is the officer who violented and robbed the prostitute. He is shown working in a computer company called "Veritech" overnight, solving a problem at the company's servers.
His wife calls him, asking why he didn't come home that day as he had promissed. He lies to her, covering up the case with the Chinese girl. He then proceeds to promisse that on the next week he would be returning again to his normal working hours and go home on time again (probably a lie since the man wanted to avoid his family at all costs).
Then, we see him exercising in the sound of classical music and getting a taxi to go back home. Then, he stops at a 7-Eleven to buy something his wife asked and throw away the prostitute's things.
There, he lefts the telephone of the girl, that is later found by Takahashi who was going to buy some food. A man says that when he felt someone touching his back, he knew what was going to happen. Takahashi finds the message stranges and gives the phone to the store's cashier in order for the owner to get it back again. Later, the cashier receives a simillar call.
"Here" And "There"
Murakami is an author who likes to portray the world in a way where things are uncertain. In the novel, he does this with maestry, contrasting two places: "here" and "there". These are subjective, and change depending on the speaker and the way in which we interpret them, however, he generally wants to show us that the distinction between the two isin't clear.
The first sight of this view comes with Eri Asai, who is in a profound sleep state, living in a species of in-between reality and dream. She wakes only for the sake of keeping her body functioning, and sleeps for the rest of the time. Then this progresses to a point in where she goes to a place of nothing. Koorugui, one of the workers of the Alphaville motel. Talks on how she wanted to enter in eternal sleep - simillar to Eri, even though she didn't knew her situation at the time - in order to run away from something. This seems to be the same to Eri. Something is keeping her amidst both places.
Takahashi also mentions something simillar. He tells that, when he was in a court case, he watched a man be condmend to death penalty. Immediately, he thought the man lived in a completely world from his, however, as he continued to reflect, he realized both worlds could have already merged, and that the distinctions between them were unclear. When talking with Mari, he mentions something as a thin pelicule which divided both worlds that could be easily transpassed, something that made things unclear.
When the two were going to the train station in order to Mari go home. Mari tells Takahashi something about her personality, leading him to disagree with her. In his opinion, her temper wasn't "shadowy", as she said. Nevertheless, he mention how this shadow is the in-between light and dark, and therefore reality wasn't a pure duality but a rather complex system.
Before, in the motel, Koorugui tells Mari to find a moment, a memory, where she and her sister had been conected. Where two different people, from different worlds, "here" and "there", where the same. Later, she tells this moment to Takahashi, and as we see in the end, she seems to reconect with Eri. Conjuncting to different things at something exclusive, unique, a kind of shadow that is the mix between of two conflicting forces.
Urban Life And Its Problems
Another topic that is present in the novel is urban life. More especifically, the late night life. Murakami portrays the scenario of a global metropolis perfectly.
Its interesting to see people going at cafés and restaurants at night for many different reasons. People who work late at night going to eat, couples hanging out, or people trying to run away from something of the day (like Mari).
The motel case contributes to this because it portrays the poor conditions of work of women who had to unfortunatelly take the same path as the Chinese girl. Usually, in big urban conglomerates, this type of things start to hapenning with more frequence.
I see, in the man who commited the violence against the Chinese woman, the picture of the broken patriarchate. He is a man who is distant from his family, trying to run away from his marriage and children. Because of this, he starts to use the type of service the Chinese girl offered. Basically, the man lives in two different worlds.
The crime in question is common something that is not rare in real life. People like the Chinese woman don't have a way to protect themselves. For society, they aren't individuals, so they live in a life of invisibility.