Abstract

This article discusses how advanced capitalism, criticized in Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance (1988), relates to “mobility,” which defines human life as well as Murakami’s narrative strategy. Various forms of movement in Murakami’s novels have yet to be observed in previous studies, possibly due to readings of advanced capitalism and alienation being limited to the Japanese context. Applying the issue of mobility to Dance Dance Dance can be a useful tool in analyzing the universality of Murakami’s work in the contemporary world. The concept of mobility includes technological means and infrastructure for movement of individuals, people who move around, networks of people, and places. Research on mobility is interdisciplinary in its direction, and it is only in recent years, even in Europe that the idea of mobility was applied to literary studies. Along with mobility, the concept of “immobility” can also be explored. Immobility involves a person whose movement is denied or suppressed, the network that the person forms, and the place for such a network. In Dance Dance Dance, we find the starting point of mobility in Japan in the late 1980s better than any other novels by the author or by other writers in contemporary Japanese literature. Murakami might not have intended to deal with this theme. Although he opposes capitalism, the mobility he represents in his novels still works within the capitalist system. The narrator
thinks he rejects advanced capitalism, yet his mobility capital in actual life is optimized for the mobility of driving, traveling, and walking. The narrator does not work, but he always has money to spend whenever he feels the need to travel to forget his loneliness. Moreover, in the adventure of “occult code/travel,” the main character always secures safety even if the people around him are in danger. This is also true for the readers: they solve mysterious cases that the protagonist cannot understand, and they are participants in the scene. The fantasy of movement in Dance Dance Dance as a mobility narrative is the basic element of
the global attributes of Murakami’s works.


Keywords

Haruki Murakami, mobility, Dance Dance Dance, “occult code/travel, ” globalization

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Kritika Kultura
Department of English
School of Humanities
Ateneo de Manila University

The Philippine Commission on Higher Education (CHED) declares Kritika Kultura as a CHED-recognized journal under the Journal Challenge Category of its Journal Incentive Program.

International Board of Editors

Jan Baetens
Professor
Faculty of Arts
Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium)

Joel David
Professor of Cultural Studies
Inha University (South Korea)

Michael Denning
Professor of American Studies and English
Department of English
Yale University (US)

Faruk
Faculty of Cultural Sciences
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Indonesia)

Regenia Gagnier
Professor of English
University of Exeter (UK)

Leela Gandhi
John Hawkes Professor of the Humanities and English
Brown University (US)

Inderpal Grewal
Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies
Professor of South Asian Studies, Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies
Yale University (US)

Peter Horn
Professor Emeritus and Honorary Lifetime Fellow
University of Cape Town (South Africa)
Honorary Professor and Research Associate in German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Anette Horn
Professor of German Studies
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

David Lloyd
Distinguished Professor of English
University of California, Riverside (US)

Bienvenido Lumbera
National Artist for Literature
Professor Emeritus
University of the Philippines

Rajeev S. Patke
Director of the Division of Humanities
Professor of Humanities
Yale NUS College (Singapore)

Vicente L. Rafael
Giovanni and Amne Costigan Endowed Professor of History
University of Washington (US)

Vaidehi Ramanathan
Department of Linguistics
University of California, Davis (US)

Temario Rivera
Professorial Lecturer
Department of Political Science
University of the Philippines

E. San Juan, Jr.
Philippines Studies Center (US)

Neferti X.M. Tadiar
Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies
Barnard College (US)
Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race
Columbia University (US)

Antony Tatlow
Honorary Professor of Drama
Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)