Japanese magical realism

"Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe."


— Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)


I have a confession. Despite mentioning him in my PhD, I have never read an entire Muarakami novel. Here, in my hotel room in Osaka, I think the time is right to make amends. He is after all one of the most significant magical realist's around.

The first singer I have heard described as magical realist...

(And I agree...)

Magical realism as a philosophy for living - Step Three

Step Three - Be the looker and the looked upon

 ‘Why does it disturb us that Don Quioxte be a reader of the Quioxte and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious’ (Borges).

If we are able to look at our reality as a kind of fiction we can then be empowered to make alterations, attempts at re-inscription, author the play of new solutions. All this rather than sighing over the indelible ink that long ago dried sealing all our fates.

‘I am convinced that there are events that occur only because we fear them.

 If they were not summoned by our fear, you see, they would remain forever latent. 

Surely it is our imagining them that activates the atoms of probability and awakens them,
as it were, from a dream. The dream of our absolute indifference’  (Fuentes).