Mystery in "ufo in kushiro"

Why do we tell stories in which bad things happen? For one, being content is boring. While we can often relate to the feeling of being content, a story is not a place for this. A story can only captivate the reader with challenges, just as the reader is captivated by challenges in her life. When "bad things" happen in a story, the story takes a leap in the reader's mind. Suddenly, the story gains a purpose, and with it a motivation for the reader to keep reading. When these events occur in a story, the reader is left with unanswered questions. How can this conflict resolve? How will this conflict resolve? In this way, conflict propels the plot and keeps the reader on the edge of her seat. Without the uncertainty that "bad things" add to the story, a story would simply lie flat in the emotional landscape, without any peaks or valleys to give it life.

In Murakami's "ufo in kushiro," mystery drives the plot. The story begins with a description of the main character's wife (that is, Komura's wife) and her strange obsession with footage of the earthquake. Komura's wife suddenly decides to leave him for vague reasons (e.g. that he is like a "chunk of air"). Throughout the entirety of the story, this mystery is left unresolved, and thus the events that take place are in constant shadow of the unresolved question: why did she leave him? In this context, other events seem especially eerie; it is natural to suspect that strange happenings, such as those during Komura's trip to Hokkaido, are connected to his wife's sudden departure. For example, it's unsettling that the mutual friends that meet Komura in Hokkaido should recognize Komura at the airport without any special sign, and that there is no explanation for Shimao's desire to talk to Komura about his wife's departure. Shimao's unexpected desire to sleep with Komura only deepens the mystery toward the end of the story.

Without proper explanation of their significances, these strange occurences are placed throughout the plot to keep the reader engaged, as if the answer to these lingering questions is somewhere further along in the story. This is not the case of Murakami's tale, which ends with a false twist: Shimao makes a remark about the mysterious box that Komura was told to bring to a friend in Kushiro, that the box actually contained the "something" that Komura needs to fill the void in his life and that he had given it away when he delivered the box. Before Komura can get mad, Shimao takes the remark back as a joke, but the reader does not believe it. This seeming twist is stopped in its tracks to make way for more mystery and more unanswered questions. It is just then that the story ends, at the height of mystery. Murakami's use of mystery continues until the very last page, when the reader reads each and every word with even more detail and scrutiny, as if to find the hidden meaning and answers the lingering questions. Of course, the page contains no such answers, but the fact that it engages the reader's mind in such a way is proof of its storytelling mastery. While mystery is by nature unclear, Murakami's use of mystery drives the story with a clarity of purpose - to incite the reader's imagination.