Frankly, the short story Pornography as the Winter Museum is utterly baffling to me, but because of that bafflement I feel the need to understand it. What is not confusing is why no publisher ended up translating it into english, though that in itself might halt me in my attempts to understand. Is the story confusing because of the translation, or was it never officially translated because it is confusing? Maybe both things are true simultaneously. I can't answer that question, I don't know Japanese. Either way, I'm going to dig out whatever deeper meaning I can from this very strange extended metaphor of sexuality being like a winter museum.
Firstly the narrator's perception of the event of arousal makes it sound like a job. He says, "I am working at this museum, if I'm not mistaken." One would think one would be aware of both when they are aroused and when they are employed, so the fact the narrator seems on shaky ground gives the reader cause to pause. It is possible to read into this that this Boku is like Watanabe with the random hook-ups in the love hotels in Norwegian Wood, going about sexual exploits mechanically more out of bodily necessity than any enjoyment for the fact. That would explain why it is a "winter" museum, that being that it is cold and unemotional, just a collection of carnal facts being presented to a disinterested party. Sometimes Murakami's writing makes me think he needs a hug.
I would think the segment in which he digs through complaints and suggestions might be indicative of the public's opinion on the sexual elements of his stories, though I don't think he actually had published much by the time he wrote this. Either way, people get riled up at the museum as they do with sex, but Boku shrugs it off saying, "After all, isn't the stuff here all just really old news?" Copulation has been around since the dawn of humans, yet it is true that people in the modern world still can spend large segments of their lives getting excited or angry about certain sexual acts. To Boku, all of that is getting worked up over old news, which returns to the idea of him being in some way disenchanted with sex or sexuality.
On an unrelated note, it is hard to say if arousal is the thing that is like the winter museum, as one would think that the fact just hearing about sex is enough to send him to the winter museum is a sign that what is being discussed is arousal and not sexuality itself. But then at the end it talks about the final step being intercourse so maybe it is not just arousal. The man is clearly lonely if he sees sexuality as a large cold stone building, and the implications of the line "everything can be handled by one person," suggests someone who doesn't necessarily need a partner for the act. But then why would he prepare the museum for guests then?
I can look up nothing about this story because if you look up Murakami and Museum in the google bar you'll just get Takashi Murakami, who is a famous graphic designer. Apparently he was going to sell NFT's but then stopped himself, so I guess that's some good news.
Lingering questions that particularly bother me:
Are melted chestnuts a thing? I've heard of roasted chestnuts, I didn't know you could melt them. In the in-person class on Wednesday we discussed the use of seminal imagery, this might just be more of that or it might be a translation mishap.
Why does Murakami always bring up random numbers when it comes to sexuality? In this story we got 36, 52, 21, and 76, which are all numbers that have no relation to one another as far as I can tell. They aren't prime, they don't have a common denominator, I only know so much number theory. Then again I'm not sure Murakami is much of a mathematician either.
-Luke Ptak
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