1Q84

“She was aware that she had become split in two. Half of her continued to press the dead man’s neck with utter coolness. The other half was filled with fear. She wanted to drop everything and get out of this room now. I’m here, but I’m not here. I’m in two places at once. It goes against Einstein’s theorem, but what the hell. Call it the Zen of the killer.”

Throughout the book, the motif of two worlds—1984 and 1Q84—is paired with the idea that each person’s identity, their soul even, may be split in two at any given moment. This underlies the concept of the maza and dohta, the two entities that emerge when an air chrysalis splits an individual in half. In addition, this quote gestures at one of Murakami’s central themes: the juxtaposition of brutality and religion—in this case, Buddhism. A similar phrase emerges later in the book when Tamaru discusses the concept of “Stalinist Zen.”

“Whatever might have happened, she would have to do something to make the world whole again, to make it logical again. And do it now. Otherwise, outlandish things could happen.”

This quote reflects Aomame’s profound need for control. Given that her entry into 1Q84, though accidental, stemmed from her conscious decision to use the emergency stairway, Aomame now believes that only she can transform this new world back to a place of logic—or, if not logic, then at least familiarity. Ironically, it will be her thoroughly illogical love for Tengo that ultimately delivers them from 1Q84.

“Drawing distinctions between religions and cults has always been a delicate business. There’s no hard and fast definition. Interpretation is everything. And where there is room for interpretation, there is always room for political persuasion.”

Through Professor Ebisuno’s character, Murakami addresses the deeply muddled arena of religions, cults, and politics. Despite the fact that Sakigake has no stated doctrine nor belief system, it obtains a religious exception more through Leader’s political savvy than his piety. Furthermore, Ebisuno suggests that the thing religions and cults most share in common is a blind devotion to leadership figures and the hierarchies built underneath them; belief and doctrine are secondary or nonexistent.

“No matter how clear the relationships of things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution. That was how it differed from math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form. Depending on the nature and direction of the problem, a solution could be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that suggestion in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. At times it lacked coherence and served no immediate practical purpose. But it would contain a possibility. Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.” 

This may be read as the book’s metatextual mission statement. The literal or even the symbolic meaning of what happens in 1Q84 is often obscure—a quality made all the more pronounced by the fact that 1Q84 is framed as an arena where logic and order collapse. Yet it is only out of this disorder that Murakami’s characters can arrive at salient conclusions—or perhaps they would be better termed “suggestions”—concerning how best to escape conditions of extreme loneliness. In Tengo’s case, only by straying off the straight and comfortable path of mathematics and into the “forest of story” can he finally reconnect with the love of his life, Aomame.

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life. Even if you can’t get together with that person.” 

For most of the book—and presumably for most of her adult life—this mantra is how Aomame copes with her crushing loneliness. Although it is a pleasant thought that allows her to navigate her life and its challenges without succumbing to despair, it is woefully insufficient as a strategy for emotional and spiritual fulfillment. Instead, it is merely a strategy for survival, and while it kept Aomame afloat—albeit barely—in the old familiar world of 1984, its inefficacy becomes glaring to her once 1Q84 helps her confront the emptiness of her life.

“The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring—and all of the acts carried out—on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with cool, measured detachment.”

The theme of rewriting the past, present, and future through storytelling is central to 1Q84—shown most explicitly in Tengo’s seeming ability to reshape reality and time through Air Chrysalis. This theme also ties 1Q84 to George Orwell’s 1949 novel 1984. In that novel, a totalitarian leadership structure known as Big Brother puts forth false narratives of the past in ways that call into question the idea of truth itself for its citizens. Given the dire consequences of distorting history in 1984—not to mention the chaos Tengo unwittingly unleashes in 1Q84 thanks to his writing—Murakami may be suggesting that humans should be more like the moon: silent and unwilling to tell stories.

“If, as the dowager had said, we are nothing but gene carriers, why do so many of us have to lead such strangely shaped lives? Wouldn’t our genetic purpose—to transmit DNA—be served just as well if we lived simple lives, not bothering our heads with a lot of extraneous thoughts, devoted entirely to preserving life and procreating? Did it benefit the genes in any way for us to lead such intricately warped, even bizarre, lives?” 

The extent to which humans are driven by genetic factors versus external factors is another major theme of the book. Although the dowager’s theory—which echoes Richard Dawkins’ influential 1976 book The Selfish Gene—is compelling, Aomame’s doubts are well-founded. Consider, for example, Tengo’s unhealthy obsession with the image of his mother and another man as a driving force behind his relationships, both with women and his father; or the life-altering influence of various events in Aomame’s life, including the murders of Tamaki and Ayumi. A philosophy like the dowager’s would seem to dismiss the role personal trauma plays in individuals’ actions and personalities. Yet it should be noted that it is only when Aomame and Tengo let go of their past traumas that they are able to embrace their destiny as lovers, thus fulfilling their genes’ agenda to procreate.

“Subsequently, the media defined Akebono as a mutant offspring that Sakigake had had to shake off. A revolutionary ideology based on Marxism had become outmoded and useless in 1980s Japan. The youth with radical political aspirations in 1970 were now working for corporations, engaged in the forefront of fierce fighting on an economic battlefield. Or else they had put distance between themselves and the battle and clamor of real society, each in search of personal values in a place apart. In any case, the times had changed, and the season for politics was now a thing of the distant past. Sakigake was one hopeful option for a new world; Akebono had no future.” 

Mirroring similar trends in the United States, Japan in the 1980s trended sharply toward corporatism and conservatism. Sakigake is in many ways the embodiment of this new ethos. Divorced from political or spiritual doctrine, Sakigake’s moneyed elite represent the new prosperity gospel, spread in the West by religious leaders like Pat Buchanan and secular leaders like Ronald Reagan. Thus, Sakigake’s underhanded obliteration of Akebono can be seen as a microcosm for how big business conservatism swept away more revolutionary elements which held cultural sway—if not actual political power—for much of the late 1960s and 70s.

“It’s like the Tibetan Wheel of the Passions. As the wheel turns, the values and feelings on the outer rim rise and fall, shining or sinking into darkness. But true love stays fastened to the axle and doesn’t move.” 

Here, Aomame attempts to reconcile her biological need for casual sex with strangers against her undying love for Tengo. In this formulation, Aomame seems to frame passion and love as contrary to one another, which may be why she feels the kind of near-debilitating loneliness experienced by many characters in Murakami’s work. She refuses to let real human connection color her sexual trysts, yet she also refuses to seek out Tengo and consummate their shared love sexually. Thus, Aomame’s ideas of love, though romantic in their own way, only reinforce her loneliness.

“You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.” 

Once again, Aomame ponders the divide between genetic predisposition and personal agency. Her insistence that Tamaru give her a gun so she can commit suicide, should certain circumstances arise, reflects her desire to set the terms of her life, including when it ends. This is rooted in Aomame’s discomfort in her upbringing, during which she was forced into a cultish religion, which in turn reinforces her compulsive and self-destructive need for control.

“The awareness that she now possessed a pistol was enough to make the world look a little different. Her surroundings had taken on a strange, unfamiliar coloration.”

This quote harkens back to the book’s first chapter, during which a cab driver warns Aomame that, despite everything, “[T]here is only one reality.” The decision to carry a gun, much like the decision to exit a cab on the expressway, runs so counter to the social norms governing Aomame’s life that the world itself seems to morph into something new and unfamiliar. This supports the idea the differences between 1984 and 1Q84 are rooted in the characters’ perceptions, rather than consequences of an alternate reality taking shape around them.

“What Tengo would have to do, it seemed, was take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present. Then he could create a future, as though he were rewriting the past. It was the only way.” 

Here, Murakami presents readers with a paradox. The term “rewriting the past” generally connotes an act of dishonesty, particularly within the context of Big Brother and Orwell’s 1984. Yet Tengo’s conception of his personal past is so obscured by his unknown parentage and the misleading imagery surrounding his mother that reworking his past into a more coherent narrative is the healthiest way to move toward a happy and fulfilling future. Perhaps it is Tengo’s view of time and reality as malleable things that makes the details of his rewrite of Air Chrysalis manifest themselves in the real world.

“That ‘image’ that had long tormented and confused him was no meaningless hallucination. How much it reflected actuality, he could not say with any precision, but it was the single piece of information left him by his mother, and, for better or worse, it comprised the foundation of his life.” 

Tengo fills the void left by his mother’s absence with an image of infidelity that he cannot verify. But whether or not the image is factual is less important than Tengo’s obsessive fixation on it. It causes him to view all his tensions with his father as evidence supporting a belief that they are not related by blood. Moreover, it causes him to seek the company of older, married women with whom a lasting, meaningful relationship is impossible. Thus, his mother’s absence and the symbols he associates with it comprise the foundational core of his deep loneliness.

“Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from.” 

It is an open question whether Aomame craves “provable truths” or “beautiful, comforting stories.” Given her experiences as a child in the Society of Witnesses, she forcefully rejects God and religion for most of the narrative. Yet her strict adherence to empiricism is challenged by her entry into 1Q84, and the more tightly she clings to logic and order the more chaotic her life becomes. Only when she accepts the fantastical and bewildering elements of 1Q84—the two moons, her mysterious pregnancy—does Aomame accept that truth isn’t always provable, and stories that give her life meaning aren’t always fictions.

“There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person’s heart.” 

In this quote, Leader implies that the contents of a person’s heart can never be fully hidden from public view. This speaks to the book’s broader theme concerning the indomitable power of true love. Aomame believes that she can fence off her love for Tengo somewhere deep in her heart, protecting both it and herself from pain. Yet Aomame’s strategy only makes her lonelier, a truth Leader illuminates simply by speaking Tengo’s name aloud.

“This is no honky-tonk parade. 1Q84 is the real world, where a cut draws real blood, where pain is real pain, and fear is real fear. The moon in the sky is no paper moon. It—or they—are real moons. And in this world, I have willingly accepted death for Tengo’s sake. I won’t let anyone call this fake.”

Once again, the taxi driver’s warning that “[T]here is only one reality” casts a long shadow over the narrative. 1Q84 may not be 1984, but that doesn’t make it a dream or a fantasy. If Aomame dies here, she is dead forever, and there is no better barometer for reality than that. Yet Aomame also references Leader’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon” motif. Based on the lyrics to that song, reality isn’t defined by pain or death; it’s defined by love, as Ella Fitzgerald sings, “It wouldn’t be make-believe, if you believed in me.”

“It appears that he and I are narrowing the distance between us bit by bit. Circumstances carried us into this world and are bringing us closer together as though we are being drawn into a great whirlpool. It may be a lethal whirlpool. But Leader suggested that we would never find each other outside such a lethal place, just as violence creates certain kinds of pure relationships.” 

The purpose and genesis of 1Q84’s existence are largely kept obscured in the narrative, as readers are left with few concrete answers as to how the world came into being and why Aomame arrived there. Yet this passage implies that 1Q84 and the circumstances around it exist to nudge Aomame and Tengo into each other’s arms. Had they not faced mortal danger from shadowy religious organizations, Aomame and Tengo would have likely continued living desperately lonely lives and keeping their love for one another locked away in their hearts. The “lethal whirlpool” of 1Q84 thus shocks both individuals out of their low-simmering despondency.

“Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people’s fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes like a warm collective memory.” 

This quote deftly gets at the heart of exactly why the appearance of a second moon is so disturbing. For millennia, the moon has been a source of both light and familiar constancy; it is a comfort to know that the moon one sees in the sky is the same moon others saw thousands of years ago, lending humanity a consistent thread tying the species together on a supermassive continuum of time and space. Therefore, to find that the sight of the moon has been invaded by a foreign object is a deeply destabilizing experience for all who perceive it, including Aomame, Tengo, and Ushikawa.

“I’m just a machine. A capable, patient, unfeeling machine. A machine that draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time from the other end. It exists in order to exist.”

Fuka-Eri’s soul-piercing gaze turns Ushikawa’s world on its head, and here he tries to re-stabilize himself to a former state of being. Before his involvement in Sakigake’s investigations of Tengo and Aomame—that is, before he came into contact with Fuka-Eri, the two moons, and other fixtures of 1Q84—Ushikawa was a lot like Aomame, cutting himself off from emotions so he can perform his duties as coolly and capably as possible. Yet just as it did for Aomame and Tengo, 1Q84 forces Ushikawa to confront his profound loneliness. This is why that brief moment of recognition from Fuka-Eri is so painful to him. Moreover, the metaphor of a machine that “draws in new time through one end, then spits out old time for the other end,” speaks to Tengo’s increasingly untraditional perception of time. For example, rather than view time as something that runs in one direction at a constant speed, after reconnecting with Aomame he feels the previous 20 years collapse into a single instant, allowing for no separation between the past and present.

“Society might see his father’s entire life as amounting to almost zero, but to Tengo, it wasn’t next to nothing. Along with a postal savings book, his father had left behind a deep, dark shadow.”

This quote speaks to the dark and abstract emotional inheritances parents leave behind to their children, whether they mean to or not. NHK may not have rewarded Tengo’s father for his single-minded devotion to fee collection, but that obsession continues to leave behind psychic shockwaves for Tengo, who never had a close relationship with his father because of it. Similarly, his mother was a part of Tengo’s life for such a short period of time that she only left a single image behind. Yet that image comes to consume Tengo, speaking to the outsized influence of parental figures, absent and available alike.

“Principles and logic didn’t give birth to reality. Reality came first, and the principles and logic followed. So, he decided, he would have to begin by accepting this reality: that there were two moons in the sky.”

Ushikawa’s reaction to a second moon in the sky is far different than Aomame’s or Tengo’s. Aomame reacts by assuming there is either something wrong with her or something wrong with the world. True to his artist’s personality, Tengo views the second moon as a manifestation of his own writing—which may very well be true. Ushikawa, however, takes a far more pragmatic approach, accepting as fact his own perceptions. Ushikawa’s confidence when it comes to matters of observation leads to his downfall. Furthermore, it is notable that of the three perspective characters, all of whom can see the second moon, Ushikawa is the only one to meet a tragic end.

“Cold or not, God is present.”

In what may operate as the closing thing to a theological doctrine in the book, this line from Tamaru expresses the ubiquitous nature of God in all things—even the rat-infested orphanage where Tamaru grows up. This is consistent with Leader’s depiction of the Little People as supernatural mini-deities who are neither good nor evil. Within the religious framework of the text, what’s most important isn’t that God triumph over the Little People or vice versa; it’s that a balance is struck between the two entities.

“Maybe we shouldn’t meet again. Tengo stared up at the ceiling. Wasn’t it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core—a tiny flame to cup one’s hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.”

Here, Tengo’s old impulses toward loneliness tug at him, in an attempt to convince him that it is better to keep one’s love locked away in secret so nobody is hurt. True, the book does not depict Tengo and Aomame’s relationship after the night they escape 1Q84, and it is possible that the coupling will end in heartbreak and a return to loneliness. Yet hope is an emotion bound to time, as individuals cope with the present by anticipating joy in the future. Having already exposed the illusory nature of time, Tengo must once again allow the 20 years between their elementary school handholding and the present collapse in order to escape his loneliness once and for all.