Murakami's Inception: The significance of layers of dreams in After the Quake Anonymous College

Dreams and dreaming permeate Murakami’s works, and After the Quake is no exception, so much so that we can witness layers of dreams in his fiction. Such layering is reminiscent of the dream-within-a-dream-within-dreams dynamic of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Yet, far from being a coincidental allusion to pop culture, this dynamic has shaped Murakami’s fiction.

Unlike traditional fiction, in After the Quake, as in other examples of Murakami’s work, dreams are as concrete as events in terms of being plot motivators. Ordinarily, dreams in fiction signify foreboding or are prophetic yet, the plot of ‘Honey-Pie’ spins on the axis of a dream. In ‘Honey-Pie’ Junpei is caught in a state of stagnation in his relationship with Sayoko because although the character acknowledges that “now was the perfect time for him to be united with [Sayoko]” (Murakami, p124) he continues “not deciding” (Ibid). It is not the earthquake that changes things but in fact Sala’s recurring nightmare of the Earthquake Man. Therefore, it is the elusive world of the subconscious, rather than the concrete world of the conscious, that motivates plot change pushing Junpei and Sayoko together. In Murakami’s fictional world, it seems that dreams wield the same power...