Haruki Murakami |1Q84

A Philosophical Book Review 

By Liyo Denorte

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“How sure are we of what we know?”.. This is a never ending question that keeps on swimming on my mind.  

I want to start with the striking scene with two moons: Where reality seems to be obscured by what we know and what we really know.

The novel has three volumes with the two main characters: 

AOMAME, a fitness trainer and at the same time, an assassin. Her entrance on this novel is when she’s inside a cab heading for an appointment. While listening to Leoš Janáček’s Sinfonietta, she reads a newspaper clip which reveals to her that slowly, the things around her seem not what it seems to be as if reality itself is disorienting.  Even if she tried connecting the facts she read and her memories, there seems to be unsettling. One cannot determine if the newspaper clip was incorrect or it is her memory which is flawed.

At that very moment, the reader will immerse oneself to the world of uncertainties and parallelism. Of which reality cannot be gauged by one’s memory or the factual findings that an official publication can bring, so as the collective memory of people around you as their version of reality might be flawed as well with biases and false knowledge.

Then here’s TENGO, a math tutor and a part time writer. Being a tutor pays his bills but his passion is really to become a writer. However opportunity is not in his favor up until a project to rewrite a crude novel set his passion ablaze. But the thing is, it is still not his idea, not his concept and definitely not his story. He is just very good technically in writing, but writing a “story” of his own, it is clear that he still lacksluster. What went into the rest of the novel is how he was able to trace what causes his writer’s block and what he needs to do to diminish these obstacles. 

Both went into a series of inexplicable things to decipher what are their “realities” that eventually shed light into their path towards the ultimate “truth”.

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In this book, Murakami put his reader in a spell wherein one could be put in a confusion and at the same time clarity that things that are happening sometimes were not what they appear to be. Situations like “Why do we feel at loss?” and so “isolated” is just the tip of the iceberg. The choice of being alone, unmarried, to kill someone in the name of justice and other things that drives us to do things were deeply seated from our childhood memories and how we are brought up with ideas and morality. It could come from the pain that is caused by people who are close to us. It could be our parents, caregivers, relatives, childhood best friends, a lover and so on.

Murakami was very clear on how he made both Tengo and Aomame, too damaged by their abusive pasts, that leads them to have difficulty to love another person, this can be seen in their repeated failures from the age of ten. They have a hard time to reach out and build a relationship with each other or with anyone else. 

One good thing about this novel is that it has a redeeming point wherein they have healed from their traumas when they finally able to practice, if not able to completely achieve, “how to love”  and attain creativity, Aomame as a mother who is able to give birth to a child and Tengo as a legit novelist.

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Murakami for me is such a philosophical writer, who depicts mostly how it is to live in this era. He was able to capture the “zeitgeist” and let us wonder how it is to become a human being nowadays. With it, we become aware of who we are and what we are capable of.


Philosophy, is an old discipline, of which you could talk about the meaning of life. Here Murakami put his reader into a series of reflection, while practicing the skills of critical thinking. We become fully aware of ourselves --- constantly full of wonder and ever questioning the existence of things.

There are sections in the 3 volumes of this novel that present so many conflicts and Murakami sets his character on how  to think about solutions. Aomame and Tengo were set to question, asking oneself: “Is there more to life than this?”.  They wish to investigate and acknowledge that there is an end for feeling like a driftwood and constantly floating to nothingness, that we, in fact, are anchored to our consciousness. One sample is that they have asked the question, “How can I determine what is real and what is NOT real?”. When Aomame tried to compare the news article that she read to the collective memories she asked from other people compared to her memory. Of which she even wonders if her memory can be "trusted".

In this novel, Murakami uses critical thinking of his characters to find the logic of the seemingly weird happenings around them. In logic, one can find sense on what's going on even how absurd it can get. The author uses this kind of technique in order to support his main argument of “How weird the world and our existence can get” even in the presence of two moons and small people coming out from a dead goat’s mouth. But as a reader, you become convinced that this is real and not just a thwarted person’s mind. In addition, Murakmi gives insight of the nature of human beings, of society and how we perceive morality.

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I can consider these points as valid even if this cannot be factual, well aside from the fact that this is a major work of fiction, but Murakami has a good way of discerning the fundamentals of life.  Of which his characters and together with his readers, reflect on our past and how we have become.  

In this novel, one can learn between LEGAL goodness vs MORAL goodness. Case in point: when the dowager assigned Aomame, who is now an assassin to kill the men who make women suffer, the novel explicitly makes it justifiable to end the lives of the few in order to preserve the lives of the many. Especially with women who suffer a great deal of psychological damage that they end up killing themselves.

The author teaches us the foundation of how it is to be human. Murakami was able to present humans at its very core just like he presents  the trees with its parts, the roots, the branches, the leaves and how things hang together as a big picture.

Murakami also manages to encourage his readers on this novel to reflect about life. While planting questions in our head like  what’s our stand or opinions about ethics and morality.  

*****

As per Gottlab Frege: Sense and reference, as mentioned, reference of a word is the object or concept that it’s meant to designate. Words tie us on the concept while sense of a word is the way in which the words tie us to the object of concept. Whatever meets the conditions for both necessity and sufficiency. This was supported through necessary conditions.

But Murakami uses sufficient conditions instead where something that's enough for “x” to be “x”, but it’s not required for those things to meet that definition. 

Example: The author uses a certain language that involves metaphysics - space and time, while questioning the concept of justice. “Was there a God?”. Who makes things “equal” or can we play ourselves as gods and make things equal. 

Murakami set some arguments specially about malice and morals. In which epistemology plays its role on why do we believe? In a way we go through  investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion by presenting validity of axiological ethics.

******

There are several unsettling personas in these two main characters that makes them a good blend for a disconnected reality. Of which it's up to them to make their own reality. I like it when we can just build our own reality. We don’t have to depend on the world how it presents us, with logic and facts. But in fact it’s all up to us how we perceive it and what  we can come up with it. 

In addition these significant plots definitely have it’s own philosophical implications:

• Aomame’s inability to love or trust anyone, thus he keeps on hurting anyone near her and excuses herself just to be alone for most of her life as fears of being rejected and hurt further.

• Tengo’s hatred about his father, Oedipus complex, having sexual fantasy about his own mother making love with a stranger.

• Aomame’s best friend, Ayumi - Justifies why she was so promiscuous due to stress and  as a result of her boyfriend’s betrayal.

• Dowager’s mission to kill suspecting “abusers' '. Motivated from the death of her daughter, as being physically and mentally abused ---  thus committed suicide to end her suffering. The Dowager then  brings justice in her own hands.

• Sakigake, a religious cult, believe that their ultimate superior is assigned for a sex ritual where he can defile most of the young women (has to be  virgin) in order for him to spread the “good seed” without being persecuted as rapist or molester.

*Case in point: Midsommar (film) 2019 folk horror film written and directed by Ari Aster : Why cults and communes have certain beliefs that are strange to many but it’s okay with them.

 So at first, it is very hard to simply embrace the nature of these people, however through wondering, the author quenches our curiosity by providing us reasons and revelations of their past lives, thus the novel able to synthesize information.  As Plato said “Philosophy starts with wonder”.  We cannot just rely on the answers that we already have but  with the never ending questions we encounter. We have to ask the next questions as it will expand our insights. What we need is to explore and discover new knowledge. With new knowledge, there comes better understanding and we become a better human being.

Let me also quote Bertrand Russell’s words in The Problems of Philosophy, CHAPTER XV

 THE VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY:

“diminishing our feeling of certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our

knowledge as to what they may be; it removes the somewhat arrogant dogmatism of

those who have never traveled into the region of liberating doubt, and it keeps alive our

sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect.”

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This book entangled me with a series of reflections and thus I was able to attain a sort of symmetry of soul and mind combined, an ultimate consciousness from the things which are mundane and banal. That you don’t have to go through extraordinary things in your life to attain a higher level of meaning. But by simply understanding and knowing one’s self --- by going through thorough questioning of things around you can somehow fulfills or quench that ever yearning of finding meaning of our existence. 

Haruki Murakami is not everybody’s cup of tea. One might find his works as dragging, too absurd, too detached from reality. But in each plot and characters have commonalities with other books that give this Novel a “universal” quality. I remember Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of Family Resemblance, as we piece together what’s common between them, the idea of Cluster Concept, so I can assure that this book still have the power to convey things or concepts that are very relatable and significant with our day to day lives.