The mystery of affliction

In a nutshell, a story where only good things happen is too simple and/or teaches the reader very little. Either the events occur by serendipity, in which case success develops outside of the agency of the character, or through simple hard work (whose benefits we all know). Bad things, however, are far more complex. A working system functions in one particular way; it becomes the sum of its parts, abstracted to form a complete and coherent unit. But a broken system dissolves our illusions, as we are left scrambling to figure out which elements went wrong. There are far more ways, and more complex ways, for something to be bad than good.

In reality, bad situations and misfortune are stressful situations to handle. But from the safe distance of a literary (or non-literary) narrative, we can become intrigued by and emotionally invested in a tale without considering their real consequences. On a certain level, I think mystery and misery in stories are often linked. At least one aspect of our interest in stories where bad things happen is that they are breeding grounds for mystery, coming from either their cause or effects. In ufo from kushiro, the initial mystery for both the reader and Komura is that his divorce was caused by an earthquake. How could such a chain of events possibly occur? Failure is always unexpected, and the human mind thrives on piecing puzzles together. We are interested in understanding both how the misfortune occurred and how the characters will restore order to a confused and jumbled world.

Of course, mystery comes from things besides misery: the mystery of the box doesn’t appeal to the reader only because it came into Komura’s hands as an indirect result of his marital misfortune. Murakami uses mystery in this story (as in many of his other short stories and longer works) to propel his reader and protagonist at nearly the same pace. There’s a sort of parallel between how Komura’s expectation of knowledge from the two women who seem to know much more than they let off directly and our expectations from Murakami and the story itself for the unraveling of its confusion. Leaving meta-narrative strategies aside, part of the reader’s willingness to follow along with the mystery is our belief in these two women (or our belief in Komura’s belief) and their abilities to give answers. Whether or not they yield to Komura, our belief that there is an answer within our reach whets our appetite enough to continue.

The box in this story is a slightly unusual accomplice in the mystery because it acknowledges some of its own conceits. The notion of an empty box operates both within this story as a plot device, but also may or may not be symbolic. Murakami has his characters tacitly admit this when Komura becomes enraged at Shimao’s jokes about the box’s contents. Our frustration as readers over the non-resolution of the box subplot, a driving force in the mystery, is partly an acknowledgement on Murakami’s part of the conventions of mystery.