Nr. 3 (28) anul VIII / iulie-septembrie 2010 - ROMDIDAC

arely remember Naoko, who seemed the world to him then, and the most
vivid memory related to that particular time is the setting, the background,
the “insignificant”. All that is left for him is an abandoned place, a meadow
without people:
“Everything that seemed so important back then-Naoko and the self I was
then and the world I had then: where could they have all gone? It’s true, I can’t
even bring back her face- not straight away, at least. All I’m left holding is a
background, pure scenery, with no people at the front.” 1
His own persona is nothing but an empty space, where the “kicks” which
Naoko’s memory inflicts upon him do not even hurt, as a result of the trauma
that his beloved’s eventual suicide worked on him. The memory of her grows
weaker and weaker and only writing can save Naoko from loss:
There’s no pain at all. Just a hollow sound which echoes with each kick. And
even that is bound to fade one day. At Hamburg airport though, the kicks were
longer and harder than usual. Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To
understand. It just happens to be the way I’m made. I have to write things down
to feel I fully comprehend them.(NW: 8)
Ex Ponto nr.3, 2010
Going back to music, it is mostly classical or jazz music that strike a
sensitive chord in Murakami’s characters. South of the Border, West of the
Sun takes its name after Nat King Cole’s song, which carries a sentimental
value, and, as in Norwegian Wood, it triggers off the memory of Shimamoto,
the unattainable woman whom Hajime (the “I “) pursues yet never completely
possesses. This jazz song is associated with the times when Hajime and
Shimamoto listened to old pick-up disks in Shimamoto’s bedroom and with their
meeting years later in Hajime’s jazz bar. If Hajime sees Shimamoto as being
from “the other world”, this is reinforced by the way Shimamoto interprets the
title of Nat King Cole’s song. As she confesses, she was disappointed when
she found out that the song was actually about crossing the border to Mexico.
In her imagination, “south of border” had to do with “something beautiful, big
and soft” 2 , something from the country of the probable, as she calls it, whereas
“west of the sun” could be explained through the Siberian hysteria, an illness
allegedly suffered by farmers living in Siberia who, drudging on the open fields
with nothing in view but the horizon of the land in all directions, eventually
lose their minds and head off in desperation in the direction of the setting sun.
The hysterical farmers would collapse and die from the exhaustion in the end.
Unquestionably, both “south of border” and “west of the sun” are mysterious
places. When asked by Hajime what was west of the sun, Shimamoto replies:
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Or maybe something.” (SBWS: 156)
An interesting suggestion would be that the two essential women in
Hajime’s life, Shimamoto and Izumi’s cousin, stand for the south of border and
west of the sun. 3 Shimamoto is that “beautiful, big and soft” ineffable thing
from the country of the probable, while Izumi’s cousin is a nameless woman
for whom the protagonist felt an irresistible magnetism that drew him to an
immense sexual urge, such that he felt a consuming desire to almost grab
something inside her. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, this urge can be explained
through the passion for the Real. The passion for the Real is the passion for
an ultimate object or experience that promises to offer the final guarantee of
our ontological reality and significance, yet, what the Real often turns out to
be is not some final reference point from which the true nature of reality could
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