Murakami's After Dark

It is clear in Murakami’s After Dark that in Japan’s demanding work environment and conservative culture, transgression occurs in the late hours of the night. After Takahashi asks Mari out on a date, Mari claims that she has a dark personality that would not make them compatible, and Takahashi responds: “It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does. And to acquire a healthy intelligence takes a certain amount of time and effort” (Murakami 226). Takahashi provides an important lesson about a balancing our actions. One transgresses when they are either too light, or too dark. As seen in Eri Asai’s case, she was too light; she is described as laid back, …show more content…
His darkness came from his lack of interest in his family, even after a long day of work and coming home at the middle of the night, the last thing he wanted was to see his family in the morning. The blackness came when he sought out another woman for sexual pleasure, a woman who is not his wife, beat the Chinese prostitute for menstruating during sex, and then stole her belongings while leaving her with no payment. The only guilt he felt was the fact that he was now suffering from pain in his fist. If Shirakawa lived his life in the middle ground, he would have had an open dialogue with his wife, reflected on their lack of connection, and reacted accordingly with him and his family’s best interests at heart. Shirakwa’s scene in Alphaville also shows that even in the love hotels, which are meant to help people take the time and effort to rekindle their strained and unpassionate relationships, dark acts are being committed and the gray area is violated. Love hotels are the gray middle ground that the Japanese citizens need as a resource to reflect, yet it is simultaneously used for dark