Presentation Schedule
Narrative Implosion and the Transformative Practice of Reality in Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (102825)
Session Chair: Melita Quinonez
Sunday, 4 January 2026 14:35
Session: Session 4 (Parallel)
Room: Hawaii Convention Center: Room 305B
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
This paper examines how Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 engages with questions of representation in electronic media-saturated modern society. It argues that, as metafiction, 1Q84 functions both as a critical lens for understanding reality and as an active force for reshaping it within a postmodern media landscape. The study is original in its focus on the underexamined relation between narrative form and media structure. The first half analyzes the female protagonist’s growing awareness of deceptive appearances. The recurring warning, “Don’t let appearances fool you,” together with Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that “the medium is the message,” underscores the narrative’s interrogation of media-constructed worldviews. This resonates with Jean Baudrillard’s concept of hyperreality, in which simulation displaces the real. The second half follows the male protagonist’s transformative practice in resisting a culture of mediated appearances. This culminates in what the paper terms “narrative implosion,” exemplified by the rumbling thunder at the climax. Along with the female protagonist’s conception of a child, these moments symbolize the collapse of false appearances and the emergence of new possibilities. The paper concludes that the song “It’s Only a Paper Moon” encapsulates the novel’s insight: fiction, though unable to alter reality itself, can reshape the future by offering new frameworks for understanding the world. In 1Q84, the emphasis on the mutability of good and evil foregrounds an ethical imperative: if moral categories are not fixed, individuals must make situational and autonomous judgments. Thus, such reframing enables the self to become a “bearer of morality.
Authors:
Naomi Hori, University of Tsukuba, Japan
About the Presenter(s)
Ms. Naomi Hori is currently a PhD student at the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Sunday Schedule
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