Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa

 It was fun to read Hideo Furukawa's "Slow Boat" because I felt like this story did a good job of borrowing elements from Murakami. I felt that in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the author seemed to borrow a plotline from Murakami, which is fine, but that was distracting for me to read, personally. In "Slow Boat", Furukawa seemed to carefully incorporate Murakami's style into his story, so much so that if I was told Murakami wrote the story, I would believe them. The story opens with "I toss a pebble into the well of my consciousness." Already this is a comparison between the two writers, as Murakami tends to delve into the realm of consciousness/unconsciousness in his writing. Going on from this aspect, I could tell that Furukawa borrowed elements of Murakami's "other world," as he shows how cold the protagonist is, and how he tries to warm himself up with "warm thoughts" at the beginning of the story. This idea of the other world continues as the character falls asleep and enters a dream. It really struck me when the protagonist described his dream in which he was looking at himself, as an observer instead of an active participant. In a previous blog post, I mentioned how Murakami, whether intentionally or not, tends to describe episodes of dissociation when characters delve into their unconscious or the "other world." In this instance, what Furukawa described was an episode of depersonalization, in which a person has an out-of-body experience. During depersonalization, a person is looking at themselves from outside of their body and watching them perform actions. As this happens, as I have learned in previous classes, a person feels like they are not in control of their body, they are simply watching it. In the story, the protagonist says, "I'm a character in this world" and closely follows that with "I'm a part of it - under its control" (37). In this way, specifically, I could tell how this author was inspired by Murakami. There were other elements too, such as the importance surrounding the age 19, the emphasis of sex in his writing, and how Furukawa incorporated a sort of "hunt" for a place neither character knew definitively about. Overall, I think Furukawa did a great job of incorporating elements of Murakami's writing into his story, and I enjoyed the story as a whole.

Corrina