Return to What One Imagines to Be There: Masculinity and Racial Otherness in Haruki Murakami's Writings about China

Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Summer 2004 by Lo, Kwai-Cheung

At a first glance, the China the story alludes to is more a symbol of a certain fantasy or longing than a concrete cultural and geopolitical entity. As the narration strongly implies, "A Slow Boat to China" is not really about any specific racial group. Critics in general, such as Tamotsu Aoki, also agree that the piece has nothing to do with Chinese people per se. The so-called "China" or the encounter with the Chinese is merely a stand-in for a mood, for a faded memory or for something long gone. "Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leaching into everything it touches. Slowly, gradually, until nothing remains.... I sit on the stone steps by the harbor, and I wait for that slow boat to China. It is due to appear on the blank horizon. I am thinking about China, the shining roofs, the verdant fields" ("A Slow Boat," 239).7 Turning China into a sheer symbol without any historical depth, Murakami seems to echo the original Western song. But when China is treated superficially so intentionally, it may be a certain disavowal of its troubling existence. Why can't we read the story as something specific about China and Chineseness, even if it keeps telling us not to do so?

The story is about Chinese people living in Japan, not those in China. In a way, the "China" the protagonist encounters is not so far away as he imagines. Such a focus on Japanese-born Chinese in Japanese fiction would readily make one recall that the nationalism of the dominant, majority group is commonly constructed by consuming the otherness of the ethnic minority. The racial others presented in national productions could be appropriated merely to affirm the uniqueness of the national self. However, Murakami's story is very careful not to turn the Chinese in Japan into a cultural other. Early in the story the narrator clarifies that his interest in the Chinese has nothing to do with their being a racial other:

The town where I went to high school was a port town, so there were quite a few Chinese around. Not that they seemed any different from the rest of us. Nor did they have any special traits. They were as different from each other as could be, and in that way they were the same as us. When I think about it, the curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book.

There were several Chinese kids in my class. Some got good grades, others didn't. There was the cheerful type and the dead-quiet character. One who lived in an almost palatial spread, another in a sunless one-room-kitchenette walk-up. Really, all sorts. Though I never did get especially close to any of them. I wasn't your let'smake-friends sort of guy. Japanese or Chinese or anything else, made no difference. (225)

Does the narrator try to claim that being, or universal humanity, is common to all men, regardless of whether they are Japanese or Chinese? Would it really not make any difference when it comes to the question of being ("their singularity always goes beyond any category")? Perhaps not much, if we believe that historically there has always been some Chineseness in Japaneseness.8 But singling out the Chinese and finding it difficult to get close to them while saying they are no different from the Japanese already stresses their difference. What purpose does this articulated difference, though not very remarkable, serve in the text? The story begins with a question: "When did I meet my first Chinese?" (218). The narrator then makes an effort to recall the first encounter from his fragmented memories. What filters through his remembrance of things past is a number of events, including the world heavyweight title fight between Johnson and Patterson and a baseball game one afternoon during summer vacation. During the game, he ran at full speed after a pop fly, crashed head-on into a post, and passed out. While he blacked out, he found himself thinking of death, which reminded him of the first Chinese he had encountered. His memories of the Chinese emerge through the boxing event, the baseball game, and the near-fatal accident. A fight, sports, a possible violent death, and the life-and-death struggle are all intimately connected to the growth of a little boy into a certain kind of ideal man based somewhat on Western machismo. However, the image of the Chinese came in when the narrator was remembering how he tried to attain and achieve masculinity. The Chinese characters the protagonist encountered at different stages of his life became the witnesses to his path to full manhood-from a village boy to a married man settling in the city. His masculinity, although permeated by Western references, nevertheless is defined in relation to the otherness of the alien Chinese that becomes the external guarantee for the meanings of his modern life.