South of the Border, West of the Sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun

First edition (Japanese)
Author	Haruki Murakami
Original title	国境の南、太陽の西 Kokkyō no Minami, Taiyō no Nishi
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Publisher	Kodansha
Publication date	1992
Published in English	1999
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	192 pages
ISBN	0-09-944857-2
OCLC	51106989

South of the Border, West of the Sun (国境の南、太陽の西, Kokkyō no Minami, Taiyō no Nishi) is a short novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami.

Title

South of the Border is a song about Mexico. But what is west of the sun? Shimamoto called it hysteria Siberia and told one story: "Try to imagine this, you’re a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it’s directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. In the winter they stay home and do indoor work. When spring comes, they head out to the fields again. Anyway, that cycle continues, year after year, and then one day, something inside you dies. Maybe nothing or maybe something in the west of the sun. At any rate, it’s different from south of the border.” ^[1]

Main characters

Hajime

Hajime grew up in the environment of small family model. He is the only child in his family which makes his parents have absolute control over him. Being the only child makes him feel inferior, feeling as a special existence because he couldn’t share his feelings with siblings. The most unendurable is the prejudice against the only child by others. Many people think the only child must be spoiled by parents, sickly, and extremely headstrong. The prejudices of the people makes him irritated, but what really makes him irritated is the fear that what people think of him is true. He tried to cover up and ignored these weaknesses, but it always seems to be mentioned by others. This really makes him feel friendless in his boyhood. At the same time, Hajime has experienced political and campus struggles. He againsted toward to the rapid development of the bubble economy of the postwar Japanese capitalism. He believes that now their parents have created the "self", not a "true self" for him, he even sank into a crisis of self-identity, he tried to pursue his own real scenery which belongs to himself. However, later on he used his father in law’s capital to open a Jazz club, and according to the instructions of him, Hajime invested his money into the stock market and real estate, and quickly become rich. Although he has his own everything, family and wealth. This may be a perfect life, even in his own eyes. But his soul is not filled, he always felt something was missing. It was a certain thing he had lost in his boyhood....

Shimamoto

Shimamoto appeared while Hajime feels inferior as the only child in his family. They were 12 years old when they met, and she was like a ray of sunshine to open Hajime‘s heart. Shimamoto was a very pretty girl but polio has left her lame, even though Hajime still thought she was very pretty and different from others. The solitary Hajime encountered with Shimamoto who also came from a one-child family and found that there were many common points between each other. However they soon became good friends whom could share their secrets with each other. They spend long afternoons in her living room listening to Liszt and Nat King Cole on her father's prized new stereo, and talking with a pre-adolescent openness that becomes erotic only in retrospect. They were in a delicately poised relationship and had a period of pure and amused time. Shimamoto saved Hajime and gave a great support to his unbearable isolated world. For Hajime, Shimamoto’s existence was not just the end of the loneliness, more importantly he found the resonance of the mind from her. Shimamoto filled the missing sense of his life, she was the indispensable existence. They separated when entering junior high-school and moved to different areas. Dramatically, they met each other at 36 years old again. Hajime is catapulted into the past unreservedly but Shimamoto suddenly left him without a word after they spent a night together. Shimamoto is a beautiful, intense and mysterious woman; we don’t know any background of her later life. We know that she had a baby who died in infancy. She was single, not working, but had a very decent quality of life.

Yukiko

Yukiko was married to Hajime at her age of 30. But Hajime rarely mentioned her in the 6 years’ marriage life as a husband, until he met Shimamoto again at his age of 36. The author only slightly mentioned her. However, the image of Yukiko as a wife is still pale. Until the end of story, Yukiko as a woman and a wife had the first initial conversation with Hajime, while he feels helpless since Shimamoto left. Her figure was clearly fleshed out, and played a vital role in the end of the story, such as she pointed out Hajime is egocentric, and he only pays attention to his own feelings while ignoring other people's feelings, especially her psychological process in the marriage life. In addition, she has been acting as a traditional wife who always listen to her husband, but suddenly standing in a strong position in the end and lecture the husband how to be a better man. She is the person who can love and light up others in love, and only her love is not destructive in this novel. Her husband's betrayal once made her desperate, however she returned to love and opened her heart to accept her husband.^[2]

Historical background

Hajime, born in 1951, belongs to the first birth tide of Japanese post-war.^[3] At that time the aftermath of war is almost nonexistent. Japan has just recovered from the rubble and entering the high-speed development period, but lacking of laborers and material resources. Therefore, the State encourages people to have children to build their homes. Most families had at least two or three children and middle-class families who have only one child such as Hajime are rare. Hajime is forlorn being the only child without any siblings, and therefore develops a relationship with books and music in his childhood. This situation and people’s prejudice affect him personally establishing a little solitary and obsessive view of the world.

Background

Murakami wrote the novel in 1992 while he was a visiting scholar at the Princeton University.^[4] The English translation, by Philip Gabriel, was released in 1999.

Part of the title, 'South of the Border,' refers to the song as sung by Nat King Cole.^[5] However, there is no evidence that Nat King Cole actually ever recorded this song. The other half refers to an Inuit syndrome called Piblokto or Arctic (or Siberian) hysteria.

Plot synopsis

The novel tells the story of Hajime, starting from his childhood in a small town in Japan. Here he meets a girl, Shimamoto, who is also an only child and suffers from polio, which causes her to drag her leg as she walks. They spend most of their time together talking about their interests in life and listening to records on Shimamoto's stereo. Eventually, they join different high schools and grow apart. They are reunited again at the age of 36, Hajime now the father of two children and owner of two successful jazz bars in Aoyama, the trendy part of Tokyo.

With Shimamoto never giving any detail as to her own life and appearing only at random intervals, she haunts him as a constant "What if". Despite his current situation, meeting Shimamoto again sets off a chain of events that eventually forces Hajime to choose between his wife and family or attempting to recapture the magic of the past.

References