Paper short abstract:

Taking up the two fictions, _Norwegian Wood_ and _Dance, Dance, Dance_, which Murakami Haruki wrote in Europe, this paper will explore their strongly Japanese nature in themes, settings, and characterisation as well as faint shadow of the foreign land where he lived.

Paper long abstract:

Murakami Haruki spent for three years from October 1986 to autumn 1989 in Europe. During these years, he completed two long novels, _Norwegian Wood_ and _Dance, Dance, Dance_, short stories to be collected in _TV People_, travelogues for various journals and, also, sketches to be rewritten as _Toi Taiko (Distant Sound of Drums)_. Writing the two long novels in out-of-season Mikonos, noisy Palermo, wintry Rome and grey London, Murakami made them, if anything, very Japanese works. For they are inextricably knotted with the Japanese period situation, the 1960s in _Norwegian Wood_ and the 1980s in _Dance, Dance, Dance_ and the writer's own life in Japan via his alter ego, 'Boku'. The major characters in _Norwegian Wood_ , which is a realistic novel according to the author, are Japanese university students who live in the great social turmoil triggered by student revolts in the 1960s, while the protagonist, Boku, in _Dance, Dance, Dance_ is, like the author himself, a 34-year-old man who spent the 1960s as a teenager and obtained all his sense of value from the decade. _Dance, Dance, Dance_ is a parable of what has been lost in the late capitalist Japan and an elegy for the bygone 1960s . Murakami admits after returning from Europe that he was lonely because though his wife, Yoko, was always with him, he had no close friends and though he spoke some of Greek and Italian, he was not proficient enough to have complicated and meaning conversation in them. As a result, he descended deeper into the world that was familiar to him rather than widened his fictional world. Did not his three years in Europe leave any mark? It is, if any, the 'shadow of foreign land' that Murakami himself called after he returned to Japan. The foreign shadow that is embedded in his 'European' novels is the admiration of simplicity found in Greek people and life as well as the envy of long-lasting tradition in Italian people and life.