Murakami Haruki and the Ideology of Late-capitalist Japan: Learning How to <i>Dance Dance Dance <i>

Abstract

Murakami Haruki‟s sixth novel, Dance Dance Dance, while offering a direct critique of conditions in late-capitalist Japan, is also a work implicated in maintaining the ideological mystifications of the age. At the same time, its underlying exploration of death undermines the simple idea that it is merely a work about the need to give up private forms of therapy and to engage in public acts of commitment. Rather, it is a transitionary work in Murakami's continued effort to seek both public expressions of commitment and a personal reconciliation with the finality of death.