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Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84<\/em> opens in the middle of an unusually scored Tokyo traffic jam: \u201cThe taxi\u2019s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast. Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s Sinfonietta<\/em> \u2014 probably not the ideal music to hear in a taxi caught in traffic. The middle-aged driver didn\u2019t seem to be listening very closely, either.\u201d His passenger, a young woman named Aomame, turns out to be not just a part-time assassin and one of the 928-page novel\u2019s three main characters, but something of a classical music aficionado as well: \u201cHow many people could recognize Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s Sinfonietta<\/em> after hearing just the first few bars? Probably somewhere between \u2018very few\u2019 and \u2018almost none.\u2019 But for some reason, Aomame was one of the few who could.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not many pages later, Aomame has, at the driver\u2019s suggestion, ditched the immobile cab in favor of an alternate route to her next victim: a set of emergency stairs built into the expressway that takes her not just to ground level but into an alternate reality. (\u201c[P]lease remember,\u201d the driver ominously cautions as she departs on foot, \u201cthings are not what they seem.\u201d) Apart from the unrepresentative third-person omniscient narration, a device with which Murakami describes himself as uncomfortable, the scene, with its conspicuous reference to Western culture in an explicitly Japanese setting on one side of the boundary between this world and a mysterious other, neatly showcases some of the most often remarked-upon qualities of Murakami\u2019s fiction.<\/p>\n
The narration in Murakami\u2019s earlier novels comes in the voice of protagonists something like himself, or his younger self: Japanese men in their 20s or 30s, individualist urbanites who enjoy cats, cooking, admiring women\u2019s ears, pondering the depth of wells, quoting English-language novels and films, and listening to records. Though 1Q84 <\/em>offers no obvious authorial surrogate, Aomame shares with Murakami the ability to know a Jan\u00e1\u010dek \u2014 and to identify which Jan\u00e1\u010dek \u2014 when she hears one. The Sinfonietta<\/em>\u2019s inclusion in a Murakami novel has ensured that many of the author\u2019s countrymen now also know it when they hear it: world-famous Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa\u2019s recording of the festive, elaborate, slightly maddening piece turned best seller in Japan not long after the book did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n