After the Quake is a collection of six short stories written by Haruki Murakami between 1999 and 2000. The stories were written in response to Japan’s 1995 Kobe earthquake, yet each story is loosely related to the disaster. Recurring themes of emptiness and solitude common in Murakami’s earlier short stories and novels are present but with notable stylistic changes.
The translator of the collection, Jay Rubin stated that “the central characters in After the Quake live far from the devastation, which they witness only on TV or in the papers, but for each of them the massive destruction itself becomes a turning point in their lives. They are forced to confront an emptiness they have borne inside them for years."
In U.F.O. in Kushiro, Komura's wife grows obsessed with disaster footage and leaves him; clueless, grieving Komura agrees to deliver something for his co-worker, flying all the way from Tokyo to Hokkaido to do so; while there, the friend of the person he's delivering the package to, Shimao, seduces him with the telling of a personal story involving sex in a bear-populated forest; finally, the story ends with Shimao pointing out, "But really, you're just at the beginning."
“Next to his clean, classic looks, his wife could not have seemed more ordinary. ... And it wasn't just physical: there was nothing attractive about her personality, either. ... Still, though he himself did not quite understand why, Komura always felt his tension dissipate when he and his wife were together under one roof; it was the only time he could truly relax. He slept well with her, undisturbed by the strange dreams that had troubled him in the past. His erections were hard; his sex life was warm. He no longer had to worry about death or venereal disease or the vastness of the universe.“
To those who have read other works of Murakami, the character of Komura seems already familiar. The formula goes likes this: a faithful husband with good economic status left by an ordinary wife with no apparent reason. The husband is clueless but remains apathetic. He will meet some women along the way (some could be younger than him) yet with no intentions of liking them, he will find himself being seduced and there suddenly they just had a drink and made love casually.
But more than that, the story’s message lies from Shimao’s advice to Komura:
“You need to lighten up and learn to enjoy life a little more. I mean, think about it: tomorrow there could be an earthquake; you could be kidnapped by aliens; you could be eaten by a bear. Nobody knows what's going to happen.”
The events mentioned in the narrative such as the earthquake, alien abduction, and the “bear story” suggest that taking risks and chances and at the same time, a cry for safety. We don’t know what will happen next and how the turn of events at present can affect the future. Life is short and only us can give meaning to it. Yet we must keep ourselves secured to be able to live life to the fullest. This and many other impressions left a niche in my memory after reading this particular story.
Read the story here. The rest of the collection is enigmatic and puzzling yet worth reading. Ja ne!
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