Haruki Murakami: Storytelling and Productive Distance

Haruki Murakami: Storytelling and Productive Distancestudies the evolution of themonogatari,or narrative and storytelling in the works of Haruki Murakami. Author Chikako Nihei argues that Murakami's power ofmonogatarilies in his use of distancing effects; storytelling allows individuals to "cross" into a different context, through which they can effectively observe themselves and reality. His belief in the importance ofmonogatariis closely linked to his generation's experience of the counter-­‐-culture movement in the late1960s and his research on the 1995 Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack caused by theAum shinrikyocult, major events in postwar Japan that revealed many people's desire for a stable narrative to interact with and form their identity from.