after the quake

The story begins with the tragedy of the Kobe earthquake and the abrupt end of Komura’s marriage. Both events are shocking, yet Komura’s reactions are subdued by comparison, revealing his ambiguous character traits of stoicism, repression, and indifference. Like many of Murakami’s fictional characters, Komura is not a clearly defined protagonist. This is emphasized not only in his wife’s contention that he has “nothing inside” (4), a criticism of his lack of substance, but also in Komura’s own puzzlement over his identity. Komura wonders to Shimao, “I may have nothing inside me, but what would something be?” (17). Komura’s inability to conceptualize a deeper sense of self reflects a life devoid of introspection. The story focuses on Komura’s awakening, as he goes on a journey to get away from his problems only to find that the distance helps him find himself.

Komura is depicted as a man of routine and muted self-awareness. He caters to the rich, makes good money, and is taken by surprise when his wife leaves him, a sequence of events that alludes to the theme of Alienation and Class Disparity in Modern Urban Society. The narrator’s deadpan assessment of Komura’s marriage appears more like a checklist than a description of an emotional bond: “His erections were hard; his sex life was warm. He no longer had to worry about death or venereal disease or the vastness of the universe” (3). The description of a “warm” sex life connotes a relationship not of passion but of mildness. Marriage provides a distraction from his existential angst about death, disease, and the meaning of life. Komura reveals that since his marriage, he is “undisturbed by the strange dreams that had troubled him in the past” (3). The dreams are never explained, yet the description suggests that Komura seeks a life where he never has to confront any mysteries, difficulties, or disruptions. He is content to have a partner with whom he can simply come home from work, have a meal, chat, sleep, and have sex. The basic routine “[i]s all he want[s]” (3).

The story’s main actions revolve around Komura’s trip to Kushiro and the minor quest to deliver a box. This premise symbolizes his personal journey to self-discovery and highlights the theme of The Journey Into the Unconscious. The box becomes synonymous with Komura’s elusive sense of self, as suggested earlier when he believes that the women will not be able to identify him at the airport if he doesn’t hold the box as a visual cue. The box is appropriately light and is “like the ones used for human ashes, only smaller” (6). The comparison to a cremation box invokes the mysteries of mortality and the significance of one’s life. Komura carries the box as a literalization of his own “chunk of air,” an oxymoron that signifies the weight of his vapidness and disengagement with the people and events around him. The tragedy of the Kobe earthquake deeply affects his wife, who watches the devastation on the news and neglects to eat or sleep. In stark contrast, Komura returns home from work, eats a snack, and goes to bed alone, underlining his characterization as someone who is either apathetic or avoidant of the national trauma and his wife’s difficulty in coping.

Only toward the end of the story does Komura take enough interest to ask what is inside the box, a sign that he is starting to explore his own desires and disappointments. Indeed, his curiosity is prompted shortly after his inability to have sex with Shimao due to visions of the earthquake’s destruction flashing in his mind. After a day in an unfamiliar place with strangers, Komura becomes more willing to explore his deepest, repressed thoughts of loss and death, themes evoked in the surreal stories that Keiko and Shimao tell him about the wife who abandoned her family after a UFO sighting and a couple who had sex while simultaneously fearing death by a bear attack. Komura finally begins to feel the impact of the natural disaster, the demise of his marriage, and his feelings of loss that have previously remained unspoken. Wanting to know what’s inside the box is akin to wanting to know himself.

When Shimao jokes that the box contained his “something” and has now been given away, Komura reacts with an irrational urge to commit violence, not understanding that who he is, in his deepest imagining, is something that he can never lose. The moment affirms Komura’s earlier agreement that “[n]o matter how far you travel, you can never get away from yourself. It’s like your shadow. It follows you everywhere” (10). Komura’s visceral reaction is his first truly forceful emotion and an inkling that he has become more self-aware. Rather than fearing that he will lose an essential part of himself, he recognizes that he is in full possession of his identity. As Komura settles into the feeling that he has truly traveled far from home, the occasion offers him the physical and psychological distance to break from his routine, see from a different perspective, and re-evaluate his life. The moment is not an epiphany of a true sense of self or a complete revelation of who he is but, as Shimao suggests, the beginning of gaining insight into his unexamined life.