Traces of a Different Sort of ‘Groupism’ in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (b. 1949)

Abstract

This love romance of Murakami’s is a light-hearted novella. None the less, it constitutes an example of how strongly the group-orientated Japanese psyche underlies the mentality even of the younger generation of novelists whose writing careers started after the Second World War. Superficially, Murakami’s works seem not to reflect the characteristics of the serious side of things, with its challenges to ‘individualism’ and ‘groupism’ as ways of solving the problems of life. As the author himself freely admits in his blurb, the situations in his novella are rather frivolous, and concern the sexual urges of young and middle-aged men and women, without expressing any judgmental views on their behaviour or on society itself.