Dance Dance Dance
Apathy, Will, and Autonomy in Japan’s Economic Miracle
Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance is, like much of his work, a novel mired in layers of mystery and intrigue: riddled with seemingly inane details and descriptions, internal monologues, surreal montages of inscrutable characters, and a cascade of seemingly disjointed events. Indeed, it might seem that the nameless protagonist, referred to by many Murakami readers as Boku, is adrift in a series of plotless vignettes, struggling to define himself or make sense of the world around him as events just happen around him, to him, but never enacted by him. However, it is this very lack of will on Boku’s part that makes Dance Dance Dance such a poignant portrayal of young adulthood, particularly in the latter years of Japan’s economic bubble period. As Boku floats aimlessly through life, ostensibly with all of the adequate resources to succeed in the world, he is simply “shoveling cultural snow.” He has no desire, no passion, and no drive, despite the abject success of his former career and the prosperity of the world around him; in fact, these things only serve to further alienate him from any sense of determination. It is not until he finally sheds this apathy and decides to truly want something (his relationship with Yumiyoshi) that he is able to claim his autonomy as an individual, crying for himself for the first time and moving forward into the future with determination.
It could be asserted that the entirety of Murakami’s so-called Trilogy of the Rat is dedicated to manifesting the condition of the Japanese young adult psyche in various time periods throughout contemporary Japanese history. By the time of the events in Dance Dance Dance, the economic miracle years would soon be coming to a close. However, there is still much evidence of the continuing rapid transformation of Japanese society to reflect more and more of a facade of opulence and seemingly unending economic prosperity. The complete renovation of the Dolphin Hotel from a dumpy, small place to a massive, sleek, brand-new Western style hotel manifests this social condition in the sense of the built environment, although the hotel itself is almost as much of a character as anyone else in the novel. Boku’s old high school classmate Gotanda also exemplifies the glory of the miracle years, but it is through him that the cracks in the psychic facade of fame, riches, and success are revealed. Gotanda laments that he has everything he could possibly want, except for the one thing that he actually does desire.
“‘But who wants to hear this grief? After all, I live in a jet-stream condo in Azabu, I drive a Maserati, I have this Patek Philippe watch-- a step up from Rolex, don’t you know? And I can sleep with a high-class call girl anytime I feel like it. I’m the envy of the whole goddamn town. I want you to know I didn’t ask for any of it. But the worst thing is-- boy, this must be getting boring-- as long as I keep living like this, I can’t get what I really want.’
‘Like, for instance, love?’ I said.
‘Yeah, like, for instance, love. And tranquility. And a healthy family. And a simple life,” he ran down the list. Then he placed both hands together before his face. “Look at me, I had a world of possibilities, I had opportunities. But now I’m a puppet. I can get almost any woman I want. Yet the one woman I really want..’” (Murakami 291).
Gotanda is stifled by the riches and accessories forced upon him by his management company, partially because they are impeding him from being with his wife, but also partially because they exemplify an irony which reveals the true hollowness of advanced capitalist consumer culture. It seems unspeakably cruel that he should have everything which everyone else desires, but not a “simple life” that any old person could have. Perhaps it is because of this stifled desire, for the simple love of his wife, that he feels the need to so violently lash out against Kiki, and possibly Mei. By murdering Kiki, he acted on a basic animalistic want, breaking out of the unending, vapid monotony of his everyday life. He acted on the world around him, claiming some twisted sense of autonomy over his powerlessness in love and life. However, in the end, this transposed action of desire wasn’t enough to fulfill his desperate need for control over his life, and Gotanda is forced to finally act on one more dramatic gesture of autonomy: suicide. Gotanda reveals the tragic, violent consequences of someone forced to stifle their actual desires in service of the economic and cultural conditions of the world around them and the role they are expected to play.
Yuki also represents a wayward figure abandoned by the miracle years. The riches and success of her parents matter very little to her; in the end, she also seeks to be a normal teenager, listening to pop music and rebelling in small ways, but she is left without a school environment or any actual parental supervision or guidance. Similarly to Boku, she is left on her own, drifting through each day, ostensibly able to do anything she wants with her time, but only desiring to do things as simple as eating cake or listening to her Walkman. She clearly has a lot of spark and energy in her soul, and can be quite wilful and opinionated when given the chance, but she rarely is given any meaningful situations to act upon. It is perhaps due to this repressed agency in her own life that she maintains her sensitivity to psychic forces. It isn’t until the death of Dick North that Yuki finally commits her act of willpower: she decides to go join her mother, aid her in her mourning, and embark on a friendship with her rather than a mother-daughter relationship. In this sense, she can finally remove herself from the stand-in parental relationship she had with Boku; her past-tense final goodbye to him indicates that, in a sense, by exerting her autonomy, she is growing up.
If the two peripheral friendships in Boku’s life demonstrate the kind of directionless apathy of Japanese society in the miracle years, Boku himself does tenfold. Continually shoveling cultural snow, he simply goes through the motions of living a life in the contemporary world. He goes on writing assignments without any real passion or care, is somehow roped into a casual relationship of becoming Yuki’s parental figure (although he refuses to embark upon any formal arrangement; this would be too firm of a commitment for him), and is whisked away on an indefinite, haphazard journey to Hawaii. All the while, Murakami portrays a sense of disconnectedness in Boku’s thought process. He is always a bit confused, but never too determined to find the truth. He experiences truly strange events, such as his encounter with the Sheep Man in the Dolphin Hotel, yet he does not work tirelessly to solve the mystery.
The Dolphin Hotel, of all things in Boku’s life, seems to be the one thing that provokes any sort of actual decision making on his part. He decides to go there because he feels “someone” crying out for him, calling him back; he assumes that this is Kiki, but in the end, perhaps it is the hotel itself, enticing him to the beginning of all of the events that will unfold around him. The next time that Boku makes such a willful decision, when he chases down Kiki on the streets of Honolulu, yet another mysterious scene is revealed to him: the room of the skeletons. Each time he commits a small act of autonomy, another piece of the puzzle unfolds before him.
All the while, the only other thing that he really wants is, inexplicably, Yumiyoshi, an altogether ordinary girl whose main distinctive feature is that she, too, has seen the Sheep Man’s floor of the Dolphin Hotel. This connection between them manifests itself in his desire for her. He even feels inexplicably jealous of her swim club. Eventually, as all of the other events of Boku’s life in Tokyo begin to fall away, the people around him making decisions that irreversibly change their fates, he is finally driven to the point where he must make a decision: seek out what he wants, or be lost shoveling cultural snow forever, meeting the same fate as Dick North and the other skeletons in Honolulu.
When Boku finally decides to go back to the Dolphin Hotel, it is almost as though after all of the events that have unfolded in Tokyo, Hakone, and Hawaii, he is the one who finally makes the decision to move the plot forward. His intention is clear: for the first time, he wants something tangible, something real. He wants Yumiyoshi. In the penultimate scene of the novel, they return to the realm of darkness in the Dolphin Hotel only to find that the Sheep Man, Boku’s “switchboard operator,” is gone. He is no longer necessary; Boku has finally taken the reins of his own life. He wants to move to Sapporo, and have a life with Yumiyoshi. For the first time, he has determined a fate for himself rather than letting things happen around him while he shovels the snow of Japanese culture to keep up. As Yumiyoshi disappears through the wall, he solidifies his decision. He doesn’t know what lies on the other side. It is terrifying, but it is something he himself must face head on. For the first time, he decides to go through, into the unknown. Time moves forward, and he moves with it.
“I held Yumiyoshi tightly, and I cried. I cried inside. I cried for all that I’d lost and all that I’d lose. Yumiyoshi was soft as the ticking of time, her breath leaving a warm, damp spot on my arm. Reality.
Eventually dawn crept up on us. I watched the second hand on the alarm clock going around in real time. Little by little, onward.
I knew I would stay.
Seven o’clock came, and summer morning light eased through the window, casting a skewed rectangle on the floor.
‘Yumiyoshi,’ I whispered. ‘It’s morning.’” (Murakami 393).
Finally, in the new light of morning, Boku is ready to live a new life. An uncertain life: one of unending choices, of inevitable loss and pain, but worth it. For the first time, he cries for himself rather than letting the Dolphin Hotel, or Kiki, or whatever it was calling out to him, cry for him. He breaks free from the malaise of advanced capitalism by no longer being an apathetic participant caught up in the flow; he has something to live for. An ordinary life, a quiet kind of love in the light of early morning, that is, without realizing, all he has wanted all along. The facade of the economic miracle years falls away: beneath it all, each person is an individual, with the potential of their own autonomy. Boku casts aside the shovel, and treads forward through the snow along his own path with Yumiyoshi, hand in hand, free from the mindless steps of the dance at last.
