Ann Osborn
April 12, 2010
Reid
English 210
Landscape with Flatiron
Haruki Murakami’s story “Landscape with Flatiron” is about a young Asian girl, not even old enough to be out of high school, named Junko. She has taken her father’s seal and passbook along with three hundred thousand yen, and run away. She ran to a little place called Ibaragi where she met a boy, not much older than she, named Keisuke. While living with Keisuke and working in a convenience store, Junko met an older gentleman called Mr. Miyake. Mr. Miyake was in his 40s and was not well known in the town. He had the accent of a person from Kobe, but spoke little of his past or of his family. We only really see the difference between Mr. Miyake and the people around him when Keisuke asks him if he had any family harmed in the earthquake that hit Kobe. He could tell Miyake was from there because of his strong Kansai accent. Miyake was hesitant to discuss anything with Keisuke, but after he left Junko questioned him about the sad look in his eyes when Keisuke had asked about his family, and Miyake revealed that he did have a wife and children in the mountains of Kobe (Murakami 946-951). He did not act as though he knew whether they had been harmed or not, just that the region hadn’t been damaged as much as other regions, which leads us to believe that he was not in touch with his family at that time. Much of Miyake’s life is a mystery to Junko, as we can assume hers is to him.
The only things positively known about Miyake are what people in the town have observed and what he has told Junko. From what people have observed we know that he loves building bonfires and does a great job at it. He builds them with driftwood in a very methodic way when he knows the driftwood is just right. He does not go out when there are a lot of people on the beach, but waits late at night in non-tourist seasons when he can have the beach and the fire to himself. This happens any time there is good driftwood up until the time Junko befriends Miyake, then the only thing that changes is that any time there was a good fire Junko (and sometimes Keisuke) would join Miyake on the beach. On the night portrayed by Murakami in the story, Keisuke goes home early and Junko and Miyake are left to contemplate their feelings and the fire. In the end they learn more about each other than anyone else knows and both declare a feeling of emptiness, like there is nothing in them anymore. After that both decide that it would be better just to die, but they want to wait until the fire goes out, and so the story ends (Murakami 946-956).
Murakami has written this story in a very somber tone. We can tell that each of the characters feels like an outcast from the world in which they began. They have all run away from something they knew they didn’t like, but found something they weren’t sure about either. Junko didn’t want to live with her family, Keisuke didn’t want to go to school or take over the family business, and Mr. Miyake, though we never learn why he left his family, followed his love of setting bonfires to a place with a lot of good driftwood. None of them fit in, but Miyake and Junko find something in one another that is alike. They find that each of them has deadness inside that they cannot live with (Murakami 950). As they contemplate the bonfire in the beginning of the story, Miyake and Junko both think of a story written by Jack London called “To Build a Fire.” They relate the story to the fire before them, and to their own lives (Murakami 948). In London’s story a man fights for survival, and the only way he will live through the rough circumstances he is in is to build a fire. Unfortunately the man cannot make the fire and ends up dying, but when Junko studied this story in school she was told to assume that the man wanted to live. Even though she believed that the man had given up, she was ridiculed for revealing her feelings about the story. By reading London’s story we can easily see how Junko would have the feelings she did regarding it. Having come from a life where she would have an easier time accepting death than being an outcast, Junko could tell from the story that the man was giving up and dying peacefully. “The man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and besides, never in the dog’s experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire” (London 808). Miyake also refers to death a lot when mentioning London’s story to Junko and describing his dream to her where he is locked in a refrigerator and dies slowly because there is a slow leak of air.
It is important to understand that this story was written soon after the Kobe earthquake where hope for the future was something not a lot of people had. As we can tell, Keisuke was not impressed with the fire that had been around and would continue to be around forever, “The trouble is, I don’t have a damn thing to do with anything fifty thousand years ago – or fifty thousand years from now, either. Nothing. Zip. What’s important is now. Who knows when the world is going to end? Who can think about the future? The only thing that matters is whether I can get my stomach full right now and get it up right now. Right?” (Murakami 947). During this time period many people wondered if their lives would ever go back to the way they were before the quake, and there were many who simply wanted to give up hope. We could see this in Junko’s description of “To Build a Fire” and Miyake’s decision that he was destined to die slowly in an enclosed space. Murakami really touched on how people felt for years after the quake when they thought nothing would be rebuilt. Eventually the Port of Kobe was reconstructed from the damage of the quake, 130 years after the opening of the port, and two years after the earthquake, but during that time the people of Kobe felt hopeless (Port of Kobe Japan). This port was the main line of trade and food for this area of Japan, and without it many people were helpless. Murakami definitely showed this situation through Junko and Miyake making the decision to give up.
London, Jack. "To Build a Fire." The Story and its Writer. 7th ed.. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's,
2007. Print.
Murakami, Haruki. "Landscape with Flatiron." The Story and its Writer. 7th ed.. Ed. Ann Charters. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. Print.
"Port of Kobe Japan." Kobe Japan. Port of Kobe Japan Co. Ltd., 2009. Web. 12 Apr 2010.
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