Mood Music

Haruki Murakami has a bit of a mythical origin story: he is a long-time owner of a jazz bar in Japan, and one day when he was at a baseball game the idea simply popped into his head that he could write a novel. Since, he has done so to critical and reader acclaim. After Dark is Haruki Murakami’s eleventh novel, written and published in 2004 in Japan, translated into English by Jay Rubin in 2007. Short, strong, and open-ended, it comes well into his career, at a point where Murakami has perfected his knack for atmospheric scene setting. 

Short, strong, and open-ended, it comes well into his career, at a point where Murakami has perfected his knack for atmospheric scene setting.

The ambience, atmosphere, and imagery of the scenes in After Dark are what struck me most about the book (it even inspired me to write my own short story in the same style). Music and sound, and even sometimes the absence of sound, play a huge part in this. Even in the Denny’s restaurant where the story begins, the music is noted and though it seems preposterous to think of an American Denny’s playing anything akin to Percy Faith and His Orchestra’s “Go Away Little Girl” or indeed anything at all besides low-volume muzak (maybe this is different in Japan.), it doesn’t really matter. We’re in the hours after midnight where the world can take on a different tone, different sights and smells and sounds that make up their own world separate from that of the waking hours. 

They step outside. The street is as busy as ever despite the time. Electronic sounds from teh game center. Shouts of karaoke club barkers. Motorcycle engines roaring. Three young men sit on the pavement outside a shuttered shop doing nothing in particular. When Mari and the woman pass by, the three look up and follow them with their eyes, probably wondering about this odd couple, but saying nothing, just staring. The shutter is covered with spray-painted graffiti. 

What I love about this passage is that the imagery is covered in short, staccato sentences that convey the look and sound of the street that Mari walks down, but also takes a moment to watch the three young men, whose actions impart a certain feel, a dramatic tension, to the scene that brings together and unites the sensory images that are provided. It gives a complete picture of the scene, not just the way it looks and smells and sounds, but also the way it feels, and the way the characters feel in it. 

The way the scene is written gives the reader a complete picture, not just the way it looks and smells and sounds, but also the way it feels, and the way the characters feel in it.

Another passage:

Mari thanks him and from the counter she picks up a book of the bar’s matches, which she stuffs into her jacket pocket. She climbs down from the stool. The sound of the needle tracing the record groove. The languorous, sensual music of Duke Ellington. Music for the middle of the night. 

This puts such a strong image in my mind: Mari standing next to the stool, hand in a pocket fingering the book of matches, the turntable behind the bar, and the quiet, middle-of-the-night feel that the music. Murakami is a master of this, and these little tableaus appear throughout the book to give the reader strong images that are solid reminders of the middle-of-the-night feeling that pervades the characters and their world. 

Lastly: 

Shirakawa’s office. Naked from the waist up, Shirakawa is lying on the floor, doing sit-ups on a yoga mat. His shirt and tie are hung up on the back of his chair, his glasses and watch are lined up on his desk. [...] A scarlatti cantata sung by Brian Asawa flows from the portable CD player on his desk. Its leisurely tempo feels mismatched to the strenuousness of the exercise, but Shirakawa is subtly controlling his movements in time with the music. 

Music is an important part of how Murakami builds his late night world, and he uses it here to differentiate this character from the rest of them: not only in what kind of music Shirakawa listens to (classical versus jazz and rock) but also how he listens (privately in his headphones versus with others in bars and restaurants). It’s a deliberate choice to make music a part of the book, and using it as a tool to not only set scenes and create an atmosphere, Murakami smartly uses it to characterize the people that inhabit the world. Slick.