Postmodern Consciousness in the Novels of Haruki Murakami An Emerging Cultural Complex

The author pursues a psychological approach as a way of understanding Murakami’s novels. In Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, the theme of dissociation is prominent in the main characters. The author explores the notion that this theme reflects a common issue in the collective psyche of Japan as well as in its deeper unconscious dimensions. This dissociation is not only about human relationships and personal splitting but also about a dissociation of the world itself. Something essential is lacking in modern consciousness and the world. The “other side” of the split world is the world of the Gods, of rituals and symbols, and that mythological world of the “other side” is dead or closed off to modern consciousness. The author goes on to distinguish modern consciousness from the postmodern consciousness of Japan, which he describes as dissociative, lacking in boundaries, and, at the same time, plagued with a sense that something is missing in the lost connection to the mythological world. The author detects the emergence of a cultural complex in the Japanese collective psyche as reflected in Murakami’s characters.