Intermingling of trauma and magical realism in the fictions of Haruki Murakami

Japanese author Haruki Murakami, in his works, projects the so-called real world alongside that of fantasy, where wells are as deep as the state of unconsciousness, a mentally challenged man gains the ability to talk to cats, fish rain from the sky, and one of the characters kills cats in order to acquire supernatural powers. Murakami’s work mostly falls under the magical realism genre, and upon observation, it can be seen that it has its basis in trauma. This trauma is both present in the characters and in the readers, who are left with unanswered queries when the narrative ends, leaving questions unresolved and several threads untied. According to this research, Murakami’s works are exercises to gain a better understanding of the human psyche and human consciousness; in other words, a step towards the understanding of the “human being.” Murakami does so by using trauma in his fiction. This paper is an effort to understand and analyze this intermingling of trauma and magical realism in Murakami’s works, mainly Kafka on the Shore, Sputnik Sweetheart, and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, by taking into account Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory.