After Dark

By Haruki Murakami

Murakami makes oblique, coded reference to the recent hikikomori phenomenon, a condition where Japanese adults and adolescents withdraw from normal life to live a nocturnal solitary existence. Murakami has made reference in interviews to fearing he might die when working on a novel, and he introduces this concern here as his characters try to contemplate the nothingness that will follow the end of existence. – Matt Thorne
Denny’s
Boston Red Sox
Sisters, same names almost: one awake, one asleep.
Ending – lips moving
Conflict?
TV Screen – Man watching
Women in the night
The cell phone and calls
Governing power of gangs
The narrator is we and description of camera angles
Shirikawa’s “pain with memories” in his fist
The man’s only memory of the assault is an aching hand, which he nurses with a self-pity that jars unpleasantly with his amnesia about the violence just past. The analogy with Japan’s persistent ”forgetfulness” about its war in China is simply too potent to resist; and from here it is a short step to the idea that Japan’s young people retreat from the present because the nation itself is in full flight from the past. – Margaret Hillenbrand
Alphaville chambermaid
Western food
Horror in Postmodernism
The love hotel in After Dark is called Alphaville, the name of Godard’s inspired 1965 film. In this movie (about an imaginary city in the near future where you're not allowed to have deep feelings), Godard presented a dystopian sci-fi world in which no special effects were used and the sets were Parisian streets. The strange planet, in essence, was very much like our own. Murakami achieves a similar effect here. – Ted Gioia
Murakami, through his portal on the mother ship, hovers, observes and ultimately approves. He sees how bravely earthlings muddle on, bits of eternity lashed, prodded by baffling appetites and instincts into vinyl-upholstered booths at Denny’s and Lysol-soaked rent-by-the-hour motel cubicles. No wonder it’s his practice as a writer to log every song that comes in over the radio; catchy tunes offer legitimate solace to such beings. In the darkness a beacon is anything that shines, however weakly, however briefly. Standing sentry above the common gloom, Murakami detects phosphorescence everywhere, but chiefly in the auras around people, which glow brightest at night and when combined but fade at dawn, when we go our separate ways. – Walter Kirn for NYT
1. What clues are provided in Murakami’s novel After Dark that might help you to speculate on why Eri is sleeping so long?2. How would you describe Mari and Eri’s relationship? Do you think it has changed by the end of the story? What are the differences?3. What is Takahashi’s attraction to Mari? Does he just want to learn more about Eri or does it develop beyond that?4. Given his family background, do you think Takahashi might be a good friend for Mari?5. Why do you think Mari is so aloof with Takahashi? Do you think she...