61 pages • 2 hours read
after the quake
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Alienation and Class Disparity in Modern Urban Society
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and pregnancy termination.
The collection’s stories feature disconnected characters who live in large cities and are alienated from society, their families, and even themselves. Komura from “ufo in kushiro” and Katagiri from “super-frog saves tokyo” both represent modern men who are successful in their jobs but whose work upholds the status quo and provides little personal fulfillment. In “thailand,” Satsuki is a successful medical professional on a luxury vacation, yet she carries a buried resentment that threatens to erase her compassion for others.
“ufo in kushiro” highlights the hollow consumerism that surrounds Komura’s life. Komura’s clients are mostly “doctors, wealthy independent businessmen, and rich provincials” who buy high-end electronics simply because they have money to burn (3). Unsurprisingly, Komura’s lack of a “something” inside himself reflects the emptiness born from commercialism and social status, where “[t]he most expensive items [a]re the first to sell out” (3). Komura’s wife, who remains nameless throughout the story, is a figure who finds little pleasure in her upper-middle class home and “stylish” husband with a “decent income” (3). Her anonymity represents a sense of alienation in the dense urban crowds and commercial backdrop of Tokyo. Komura’s wife finds comfort in Yamagata, the quiet city that is home to her doting parents and sisters. She visits her family’s home repeatedly and returns reinvigorated. The change in setting from urban to rural reflects a change in priorities, where Yamagata represents his wife’s desire for family, love, and renewal and Tokyo represents the opposite values of social status, wealth, and routine. Komura thought that his life as a successful salesman and competent husband and lover was enough to make him and his wife content. Yet the narrative suggests that selling luxury goods to the wealthy and living a routine life in the city are hollow endeavors that comprise Komura’s “chunk of air.”
In “super-frog saves tokyo,” Katagiri works a thankless job as a collection officer and has no friends, no family, and no self-esteem. The story’s setting is depicted as a society where gangsters collude with politicians to uphold their power and profits. The neighborhood is described as a “labyrinth of violence” where loans are eagerly approved with insubstantial collateral so that bankers can scale the corporate ladder (86). Katagiri’s job is to track clients who have defaulted on their loans, and his supervisor instructs him to “squeeze whatever you can out of them” (86). The imagery of constriction, literalized in the form of a giant worm who lives directly under a bank, symbolizes the greed and exploitation that confine society and Katagiri’s personal life. Frog contends that because of Worm’s destructive earthquake, “[p]eople will be made to realize what a fragile condition the intensive collectivity known as ‘city’ really is” (86). The earthquake symbolizes both destruction and political awakening, and Frog chooses Katagiri specifically for his “passion for justice” (90). As symbolic projections of Katagiri’s alienation, both Frog and Worm represent an outlet for Katagiri to find agency in his oppressive state.
In “thailand,” Satsuki vacations at a luxury resort to ease the malaise afflicting her, but the distraction fails to provide true comfort. Despite having friends and a successful career, Satsuki is disconnected from herself and is only made aware of her unhappiness and how to treat it when she visits a traditional soothsayer, the antithesis to the modern and technological doctor. The story highlights the class disparity between the luxury hotel and the impoverished village to comment on Satsuki’s lack of self-awareness. She does not realize how privileged she is until Nimit shows her how others live. At the same time, she is also unaware of how much she is hurting, and Nimit is direct when he tells her, “You seem always to be dragging your heart along the ground” (77). Satsuki’s main awakening occurs when the soothsayer tells her that the man she had privately wished to suffer in the earthquake survived “without a scratch” and that Satsuki “should be grateful for [her] good fortune” (76). Satsuki admits to wishing and possibly willing the earthquake into being and relishing the idea of the man’s painful death. Her resentment had desensitized her to the reality that thousands of lives were lost and thousands more wounded and displaced. Her bitterness made her callous, like the “hard, white stone” inside her (75), to the suffering of others. After leaving her life in Detroit and taking a break from Tokyo, Satsuki comes to a more compassionate understanding of the world and of herself.
Throughout the collection, wealth and an urban setting contribute to the numbing that the protagonists feel from themselves and their surroundings. Komura, Katagiri, and Satsuki all live in Tokyo and appear indifferent to tragedy and sadness, whether on the national or personal level, until the emptiness of their modern lives is brought to their attention.
The Arts as a Source of Self-Discovery and Renewal
Many of the characters in after the quake process their feelings of anxiety, isolation, and sorrow through various art forms to create a sense of inner peace. In “landscape with flatiron,” literature provides Junko with a lens through which to process her feelings of despair, and for Miyake, painting and bonfires are outlets through which to exorcise his inner fears and regrets. In “all god’s children can dance,” Yoshiya finds spiritual release in dance, and Satsuki in “thailand” finds nostalgic comfort in jazz music. Finally, in “honey pie,” literature plays a central role in helping Junpei cope with unrequited love and in allowing him to imagine and realize a happy ending for himself.
In “landscape with flatiron,” Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” helps Junko process her feelings of despair. Desperate to escape an unhappy home life, Junko ran away and identifies with London’s protagonist as someone who seeks peace from the harshness of life by “meeting death with dignity” (London, Jack. To Build a Fire and Other Stories. Bantam Books, 2007, p. 175). For London’s protagonist, peace finally comes in death, but for Junko, she hopes that starting a new life in quiet Ibaraki will bring her some serenity. Junko finds beauty in the story’s ending because the protagonist no longer suffers. She, too, longs for an end to her suffering, not for death itself. She tells Miyake, “I’ve never once thought about how I was going to die […] I can’t think about it. I don’t even know how I’m going to live” (37). For Junko, her interpretation of the short story allows her to acknowledge her longing to feel release from the pressures of living and just surviving. As she falls asleep before the fire, the scene invokes the man in London’s story who “drowse[s] off into what seem[s] to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he ha[s] ever known. […] There [a]re no signs of a fire to be made” (London 175). The reference to comfort and the end of struggle suggests Junko’s longing for peace and acceptance.
Miyake uses his art, both the bonfires and his paintings, as an exercise in introspection. Miyake thinks of each piece of driftwood as representing moments in his life and arranges them thoughtfully, understanding their relationship to other pieces and to the structure as a whole. The narrator compares him to a sculptor, and the art of bonfire building serves as a metaphor for examining one’s life with balance and constantly building and rebuilding to create a fire that is truly “free” (32). Miyake “adjust[s] the progress of the fire with great care, using a long branch to keep the flames from either spreading too quickly or losing strength” (33). His paintings are also experiments in self-expression, and he explains to Junko that sometimes objects can represent something else. This type of self-awareness, recognizing that one’s perspective may have repressed meanings or unuttered significations, is an essential condition for the making of art.
In both “all god’s children can dance” and “thailand,” the arts of dance for Yoshiya and jazz music for Satsuki are almost taboo until each character revisits their past to reclaim a sense of connection and comfort. Yoshiya was previously insecure about dancing with his college girlfriend and felt hurt by the nickname she gave him of “Super-Frog” (57). The name alludes to the hero in “super-frog saves tokyo,” and Yoshiya comes to enjoy the wild movements of his limbs. Dancing, as the story’s title asserts, is what everyone does, and Yoshiya comes to realize that he is not alone in experiencing moments of doubt or shame in his life. For Satsuki, jazz music is a nostalgic reminder of the bond she had with her father. After his death, her mother discarded all his records, and during her marriage, Satsuki’s husband expressed contempt for the genre. When Satsuki hears jazz on Nimit’s radio, she is transported to a past that was prohibited from her. She opens herself up to the bittersweet mixture of loss and memory for her beloved father. Both “all god’s children can dance” and “thailand” end with the protagonists enjoying dance and jazz, respectively, leaving the impression that these art forms have steered them on a path to self-acceptance.
Finally, in “honey pie,” Junpei’s renewed attitude is reflected in both his stories for Sala and his professional writing. The story of the bears, at first an allegory for his friendship with Takatsuki and his feelings of inadequacy, transforms into a story about embracing a family with Sayoko. Tonkichi the bear represents Junpei, a figure who initially refuses his friend’s help and dejectedly leaves the mountain to “try [his] luck somewhere else” (127), only to be captured in a zoo. Like Tonkichi, Junpei denies Takatsuki’s encouragement to marry Sayoko and lives a solitary, passive life of his own making. In his new ending for the bears, Junpei focuses on his relationship with Sayoko. Tonkichi learns to contribute to his own happiness by returning to the mountain and making honey pies rather than walking away and isolating himself. Junpei realizes that his avoidance only made him deny a happiness that was within his reach. He begins to actively pursue “a happy ending” for both the bears and himself and creates a story where “they live[] happily ever after in the mountains, best friends forever” (131). Junpei writes the most clichéd conclusion but also the most genuine one. He officially becomes part of a union that has always been his family.
As a contrast to the world of business and finance that seems to alienate the characters in the collection, the arts of literature, painting, dance, and music offer an outlet for personal growth and acceptance.
The Journey Into the Unconscious
In each of the stories in after the quake, characters undertake a journey into the hidden terrain of the psyche, prompted by the upheaval of the Kobe earthquake. This inner journey is often symbolized by a physical journey, as the protagonists travel to strange and disorientating places as part of their path to self-discovery. The real, concrete destination stands as an embodiment of the unconscious, an uncanny setting that is hidden deep behind a barrier and houses the traces of repressed desires, traumas, and memories. In “ufo in kushiro,” Komura physically travels to an icy, distant city that awakens his emotional responses to the world. Yoshiya in “all god’s children can dance” traverses dilapidated spaces to comprehend his longings for a father figure, and in “thailand,” Satsuki travels to a foreign country and confronts a painful memory and violent wish.
Komura travels to Kushiro, an isolated winter setting in the north, far from Tokyo’s bustling density. The new landscape represents a site of contemplation and the unconscious. Shimao drives down the icy roads as sharp winds and freezing cold puncture the “dark and desolate” atmosphere that represents the obscurity of his deeper thoughts (10). Despite the hostile cold, the winter backdrop functions as a setting for transformation, where “the wind is strong so whatever piles up gets blown away” (10). Komura arrives in the city with repressed feelings about the end of his marriage and other unexpressed emotions and memories of a past that troubles him. The biting wind, which strips away the accumulated snow to reveal the frozen ground, symbolizes a stripping away of habit and social performance to lay bare a hidden and unresolved truth in Komura’s psyche. As if on cue, the wind moans the moment that Komura admits that he is bothered by the mystery of the box and wants to know what is inside, a sign that he wants to examine who he is. The wind “c[omes] from someplace unknown to Komura, and it bl[ows] past to someplace unknown to him” (20). Kushiro, with its fierce winds and dark landscape, serves as a symbol of Kushiro’s unconscious—a site for him to confront his repressed feelings of rejection and loss.
Komura’s journey exemplifies Murakami’s tropes of boundary crossing and the strange encounter, which have been criticized for their use of female characters as narrative devices. Novelist Mieko Kawakami refers to Murakami’s figure of the seductress as the “sexual oracle” whose function is primarily to sleep with the male protagonist so that he can experience a transformation or journey into the unconscious (“A Feminist Critique of Murakami Novels, With Murakami Himself.” Literary Hub, 7 Apr. 2020). Shimao fulfills the role of the sexual oracle as the female stranger who instigates sex with Komura and awakens his emotions. Komura tentatively takes Shimao’s advice to “lighten up and learn to enjoy life a little more” (17), and she becomes the catalyst for his introspection. Shimao dispenses stories about abandoned spouses and the fear of death that spark Komura into self-examination, though little is known about her. Shimao ignores Komura’s questions about her friendship with Keiko and vaguely responds, “We do stuff together” (10). Shimao is an enigmatic character whose main function in the story is to move the male protagonist to his self-realization.
In “all god’s children can dance,” Yoshiya’s journey into the unconscious shifts from the crowded trains of Tokyo to an increasingly isolated and dilapidated landscape. Yoshiya vainly looks for a father figure amid the sea of strangers in his daily, multi-transfer commutes. The long, detailed description of Yoshiya’s transfers from the Chuo Line to the Marunouchi Line and finally to the Hibiya Line emphasize the repetition and tedium of Yoshiya’s typical movements from home to work and back again. The commutes are almost automated and require little introspection. In contrast, Yoshiya’s movements when he follows the stranger translate from something lateral within the city to something metaphorical and deeper within his unconscious. Yoshiya crosses “a block of shuttered shops, past a number of dark empty lots, past the lighted windows of a hospital, and through a new development crammed with boxy little houses” (52). The architecture becomes increasingly desolate and hostile, with factories and warehouses, and culminating in a junkyard. All the dilapidated and industrial structures signify Yoshiya’s anxieties of abandonment and neglect. The multiple crossings in the story highlight the many barriers that have kept Yoshiya estranged from himself and from the impossible expectations of being the son of God to the simple, unfulfilled wish of catching a ball.
In “thailand,” Satsuki is introduced as a figure already in motion, as she sits midair on a flight from Japan to Thailand. Satsuki has also traveled in her past, from her time living in Detroit to her return to Japan. Most of her early scenes occur while she is a passenger in Nimit’s car as he drives down the boisterous streets of Bangkok and crosses wooded mountains to reach the resort. Even her hobby of swimming laps connotes a willingness to traverse spaces and stay in motion. However, once at the resort, Satsuki comes to a standstill, and her daily routine of going from the hotel to the pool and back again mirrors Yoshiya’s numbing commute to and from work. Satsuki’s consequential crossing occurs when Nimit takes her to meet the old soothsayer in an impoverished village. The rustic and mystic setting is the antithesis of Satsuki’s luxurious resort and modern medical background, and it is here that she confronts a deep resentment that keeps her from moving on in her life: a wish for an unnamed man’s death in the earthquake and a cryptic reference to a destroyed child. In the unfamiliar setting, Satsuki is given guidance for yet another crossing, this time into her dreams and, hopefully, a release from a traumatic past.
For the protagonists, the journey into the unconscious never ends in a lucid epiphany with a clear resolution or closure. Komura never finds out what was inside the box, Yoshiya’s final utterance to/of God is enigmatic, and the identity of the man whom Satsuki wishes dead is never revealed. Rather than elucidating the unconscious, which, by definition, is an inaccessible place, the journeys are often ambiguous and unsettling confrontations with the unknown within the self.
Unlock all 61 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Haruki Murakami
