Introduction

Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's most renowned contemporary writers, has won the admiration of readers worldwide through his nuanced and profound stories. Murakami is also a very important author to me personally. Since starting my podcast "Lucid Dreams" in 2021, I've wanted to create an episode about him titled "Haruki Murakami, Trauma, and Destroyed Sense of Time." However, for various reasons, this plan never materialized until recently, when Murakami published his new novel "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," which consistently addresses this theme. I feel this is an excellent opportunity to organize my thoughts on this subject. If necessary, I may continue to analyze his other works in future articles.

Note: Since this involves literary analysis, this article contains numerous spoilers.

"The City and Its Uncertain Walls"

"The City and Its Uncertain Walls" holds unique significance in Murakami's literary career. He wrote this story at age 31 as his third novel, but dissatisfied with its initial expression, he shelved it, and years later used it as the foundation for "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World." Although the latter became one of his early classics and received high acclaim, Murakami always felt that "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" remained "like a fishbone stuck in his throat," an incomplete piece of his life's puzzle. Forty years later, at age 71, Murakami revisited this story and wrote in the afterword—a form itself quite unusual for him:

As Jorge Luis Borges said, the number of stories a writer can sincerely tell in a lifetime is essentially limited. We merely take these limited themes and, by any means necessary, reshape and rewrite them into various different forms—perhaps it's appropriate to state this frankly.

In a sense, this book is "The Story" he has continuously rewritten throughout his life. It's difficult not to notice how elements that repeatedly appear in his works have once again coalesced masterfully in this piece.

In the story, the protagonist is a middle-aged man who returns to a small city from his youthful imagination that he once shared with a girl he deeply loved, hoping to find her again. However, this city is sealed off by an "uncertain wall," isolated from the real world, as if time has stagnated in some vague past. The protagonist attempts to break through this wall, enter his forgotten memories, and reveal the hidden trauma in his soul. Through this plot, Murakami presents imagery that recurs throughout his work: time locked in the past, characters trapped within invisible walls, like an inescapable dream. For Murakami, this city symbolizes his "city of trauma"—those unresolved emotions and pain, floating in blurred time, as if only glimpsed through uncertain walls.

Reading "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," I felt a profound, ineffable sadness. Murakami revisits all the elements from his previous works: the girl, dreams, solitary quests, strange spaces... These images layer upon each other, evoking his representative works like the twin-like lovers in "Norwegian Wood," the mysterious visitors in "Killing Commendatore," and even the boy in the library in "Kafka on the Shore." Forty years later, these elements reappear in "The City and Its Uncertain Walls." Murakami repeatedly explores these motifs throughout his career, as if his entire life has been devoted to writing the same story—a story about trauma, time stagnation, and alternate worlds.

In interviews, Murakami mentioned choosing to rewrite this story at age 71 because he realized he was entering old age, and if he didn't write it now, he might never have the chance. While we all hope this won't be his final book, we must acknowledge that revisiting this story at this age demonstrates its importance to him. The repeated rewriting itself resembles a "repetition compulsion," intended to work through what Murakami described as "the fishbone stuck in his throat"—a traumatic expression.

Therefore, I will still interpret "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" from the perspective of "trauma and destroyed sense of time." Although there are various interpretations of Murakami's work in psychoanalysis, such as the Jungian approach taken by Hayao Kawai, Toshio Kawai, and other scholars ("Murakami Haruki Goes to Meet Kawai Hayao," "When Murakami Haruki Meets Jung") exploring the collective unconscious in his work, I maintain that at the core of Murakami's stories lies the fragmentation and stagnation of time caused by trauma.

Haruki Murakami and Trauma

Although psychoanalytic research on Haruki Murakami isn't extensive, studies support the idea that trauma is a central theme in his work, particularly how psychological trauma affects one's perception of self, society, and life. In addition to the literature discussed below, Robert Stolorow has cited Murakami in his blog posts, praising his precise descriptions of traumatic experiences.

Many characters in Murakami's works experience varying degrees of trauma and often display a sense of alienation from society. Naoto Kawabata (2002) in "The Need to Know" examines Murakami's "Underground," a book based on interviews with victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack. Kawabata notes that by interviewing both victims and perpetrators, Murakami deeply explores how trauma affects individual and social relationships. Trauma makes it difficult for victims to establish normal emotional connections with others, even creating a sense of detachment from society. This detachment is not merely a stress response to injury but a defense mechanism to avoid further psychological harm.

Doris Brothers (2012) in "Murakami, Connoisseur of Uncertainty" analyzes Murakami's characters from a trauma perspective. Brothers points out that one manifestation of trauma in Murakami's work is the characters' sense of fragmentation—they often split into different parts of self when facing post-traumatic life. She proposes the concept of "Systemically Emergent Certainties" (SECs), explaining how trauma disrupts the fundamental beliefs constituting an individual's self, leading to profound uncertainty about oneself and the world. Murakami's characters typically respond to trauma through self-isolation or dissociation, avoiding direct confrontation with their shattered inner worlds.

Trauma not only causes individuals to feel isolated from others and society but may also prompt questioning of life's meaning. David Potik (2023) in "Existential Issues in the Fictional Writing of Haruki Murakami" notes that characters in Murakami's works often fall into deep doubt about life's purpose due to trauma. He argues that traumatic experiences destroy characters' psychological safety, making it difficult for them to perceive meaning in life. This sense of meaninglessness is often related to Japan's post-war social context, where rapid social changes and the collapse of traditional values frustrated people's search for collective identity. Potik suggests that by exploring the concept of "Chosen Trauma," Murakami portrays characters' pain when facing unmourned historical regrets, deepening the understanding of inner fragmentation caused by trauma.

Characters in Murakami's works attempt various methods of recovery and reconstruction after trauma. Brothers believes that Murakami's characters typically display cautious exploration during rebuilding, trying to regain trust in others and society. She criticizes views suggesting that arousing anger helps heal trauma, believing the key to healing lies in rebuilding interpersonal trust after trauma—a perspective also present in "The City and Its Uncertain Walls." Kawabata points out that Murakami's interview approach in "Underground" demonstrates his respect for trauma victims; by giving each interviewee an opportunity to speak, he helps them find strength and identity in their narratives.

Potik further notes that Murakami's characters exhibit diverse behaviors when dealing with trauma, including compulsive behaviors facing death anxiety and avoidance of life's meaning. In his view, Murakami displays the lasting impact of trauma on human life and the complex struggles individuals face when trying to rebuild through these coping mechanisms.

Trauma and the Alternate World: Core Motifs

In Murakami's literary universe, trauma and the alternate world are recurring core motifs, almost forming the spiritual tone of his works. Trauma is not merely the event itself but a profound blow to time, reality, and even self-identity, making characters feel trapped in a past moment, unable to move forward. Through the unique spatial setting of the "alternate world," Murakami directly presents the displacement of time-sense and psychological isolation caused by trauma.

This alternate world setting appears frequently in Murakami's works, almost becoming his foundational setting. For instance, in "Kafka on the Shore," Saeki enters a mental alternate world after losing her lover in youth; time seems to stop for her, and her life falls into closed isolation. In "1Q84," protagonist Aomame enters a "parallel world" with two moons—a world superficially similar to reality yet containing subtle variations, symbolizing her sense of disconnect from reality after trauma. In "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World," Murakami constructs "the end of the world" separate from reality, where residents have no shadows, time is static, and even memories are lost, symbolizing characters' complete severance from the past in trauma.

I personally believe this concept may have first appeared with the "sheep's shell" in "A Wild Sheep Chase":

"Sheep's shell" refers to the hollow state left by people who were possessed by the mysterious sheep and then abandoned. This concept has multiple meanings in the novel: physically, when the mysterious sheep with the pale star-shaped mark leaves the possessed person's body, it leaves an empty "sheep's shell"; psychologically, the sheep's shell symbolizes a state of lost meaning and direction in life, reflecting spiritual emptiness in modern society.

The most typical "sheep's shell" representative in the novel is the "Sheep Professor." He was once possessed by the sheep, but because he couldn't satisfy the sheep's ambition, it quickly left his body. The sheep's departure made him an empty shell, and the enormous gap in his heart drove him to relentlessly pursue this sheep.

One morning I woke up, and the sheep was gone. Only then did I understand what a 'sheep's shell' is. Hell! The sheep only left behind thoughts, but without the sheep, those thoughts cannot be released. This is the 'sheep's shell.'

Even though the sheep's shell, like other concepts in Murakami's works, has multiple interpretations, trauma is undoubtedly one of them.

Murakami uses alternate worlds to reify trauma, making it a place that can be explored. This place has no passage of time; characters are trapped in old dreams unable to escape, reflecting the lost sense of time caused by trauma. Through this setting, Murakami reveals the truth about trauma: it not only stagnates time but also builds an uncertain "wall" in the soul, firmly locking past pain and emotions within.

Traversing Reality and the Alternate World: Transitional Space

One of the most distinctive qualities in Murakami's works is the traversal between the real world and alternate worlds. In his novels, characters frequently move back and forth between reality and unreality, dream and waking life, searching for self and balance. Except for "Norwegian Wood," which is entirely developed through realistic techniques, almost all of Murakami's works carry strong non-realistic colors.

This surreal quality is influenced by Western literature but in many ways continues the typical "monogatari" (narrative) characteristic of Japanese literature. For example, he has mentioned being deeply influenced by the Japanese classic "Ugetsu Monogatari." In one representative story from this collection, a samurai chooses suicide to keep an appointment, attending in spirit form—this interweaving of reality and unreality evokes both the bizarre and profound sorrow.

In Murakami's novels, such "alternate worlds" can be seen as traumatic psychological spaces and understood as "transitional spaces." Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott's theory of "transitional space" refers to the blurred area between reality and imagination where individuals can explore and digest complex emotions. The characters' traversal between reality and alternate worlds represents the process of self-repair and emotional metabolism in this transitional space. The alternate world as transitional space both carries characters' unresolved trauma and offers them a possibility to reface their pain and integrate their inner selves.

This way, changes in reality affect dreams, and dream content infiltrates reality. This bidirectional process of mutual influence is almost omnipresent in Murakami's novels. For example, in "Kafka on the Shore," Murakami quotes "responsibility begins in dreams"; protagonist Kafka's real life continuously intertwines with his dream alternate world, allowing him to recreate his relationship with his mother in dreams, while certain emotions in real life are constantly influenced by dreams. "Conception in dreams" scenarios also appear in "1Q84" and "Killing Commendatore."

This intertwined spatial setting itself is a way of processing trauma. In Murakami's works, characters gradually metabolize unprocessed inner emotions by continually moving between reality and alternate worlds. It is through this digestive process that the sense of time gradually begins to flow. As in "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the male protagonist gradually repairs his emotions in the dreamscape of the small city; shadow and self finally separate temporarily, symbolizing the initial release of trauma, and time subsequently resumes flowing.

Trauma and Destroyed Sense of Time: Literature Review

When trauma descends, a person's sense of time often changes. Memories may surge like an unstoppable flood, leaving one seemingly trapped in some inescapable past moment; or they may become blurred in consciousness, as if compressed or frozen in an untouchable space. Psychoanalytic research on this phenomenon reveals how trauma profoundly affects our perception of time.

Lenore Terr, in her classic article "Time and Trauma" (1984), suggests that trauma often leads to significant changes in time perception. These changes are not merely psychological phenomena but profoundly affect an individual's memory, emotions, and behavior. Terr proposes two key concepts to describe trauma's interference with time:

  • Time-skew: Trauma survivors incorrectly arrange the chronological order of events. For instance, someone might clearly remember a specific detail yet confuse the exact time it occurred.
  • Omen formation: Trauma survivors tend to view unrelated events before the trauma as warning signals. This mechanism is a psychological strategy attempting to regain control over an uncontrollable environment by seeking causal relationships.

Through these concepts, Terr reveals how traumatic experiences affect individuals' time frameworks, making their perception of past, present, and future chaotic. These distortions reflect the core characteristics of trauma: the intrusiveness of memory and the sense of emotional uncontrollability.

William Auerbach in "Time and Timelessness in the Psychoanalysis of an Adult With Severe Childhood Trauma" (2014) further explores trauma's impact on time perception, especially the time-freezing phenomenon in patients who experienced early trauma. He points out that severe trauma can lead to time freezing or fragmentation, preventing patients from perceiving temporal continuity.

In Auerbach's case study, a patient's childhood trauma caused her to live in an "eternal now," where past traumatic details constantly invaded the present, hindering her connection with reality. Through therapy, the analyst helped her integrate these fragmented time pieces into a broader narrative framework, gradually restoring her ability to perceive time.

The temporal aspect of trauma exists not only in memory but is deeply embedded in the body. Trauma survivors often experience time through bodily reactions, such as sudden tension, unconscious movements, or chronic pain, as if the body is reminding them of some "unfinished" past.

Trauma is not merely a momentary blow but a lasting erosion that deeply embeds itself in an individual's time stream, affecting experiences of past, present, and future. This phenomenon was vividly described by therapist Bob Bartlett as "time-soaked." In his paper "Time-Soaked: How Trauma Submerges In and Out of Time" (2017), Bartlett points out that unprocessed trauma seeps into a person's sense of time like a tide, interweaving past, present, and future, blurring temporal boundaries.

This time-soaked state often manifests as past trauma constantly invading present life; patients cannot escape their obsession with those painful moments. Each day seems overshadowed by past shadows, time seemingly stagnant at the moment of trauma. Simultaneously, this soaking makes the future uncertain or even unimaginable, as the future seems merely a continuation of past pain. For example, someone who experienced early loss might feel their life can never escape the sense of loss of control, unable to imagine a hopeful future.

Bartlett emphasizes in his analysis that a significant feature of time-soaking is repetitive destructive experience. Trauma prevents normal perception of time's linear flow, causing certain emotions, memories, or behaviors to be repeatedly triggered at inappropriate moments. Patients may feel they are reliving past scenarios, even mistaking others for characters from the trauma. This repetition not only brings pain but deepens the individual's sense of "inescapability."

In psychoanalysis, Nachträglichkeit (afterwardsness, après-coup) is a core concept describing how past events gain new meaning from present perspectives. First proposed by Freud and later expanded to discussions of trauma and time, afterwardsness indicates that the impact of traumatic events is not unchangeable but continuously transforms through remembrance and reflection over time.

A group of scholars from the Porto Alegre Psychoanalytic Society (Viviane Mondrzak et al.) in "Trauma, Causality and Time" (2007) point out that trauma's meaning is not determined by itself but formed through the interaction between individual emotional experience and inner psychological structure. For instance, someone might suddenly gain new insight into childhood traumatic memories at some point in adulthood, and this insight in turn affects their view of current life.

The Trauma City Where Time Is Lost

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the small city is such an alternate world. Isolated by "uncertain walls," it is a closed place where time has stagnated—clocks lack hands, seasons no longer change, as if everything has paused at some moment in the past. This timelessness symbolizes trauma's profound destruction of human time perception, showing how trauma survivors are locked in painful memories, unable to enter reality's time flow. The city isolates both external changes and residents' emotional development, making them linger in unchanging "old dreams," as if losing the ability to escape trauma.

This timeless traumatic experience is just as Lenore Terr described in "Time and Trauma": trauma causes "time-skew" and "omen formation." Trauma survivors cannot remember events in normal chronological order but instead constantly revisit painful memories or assign them symbolic meaning, thus remaining stagnant in the "eternal present" of trauma. In the small city, the stagnation of clocks symbolizes this time-skew; residents cannot transfer emotions to the future but can only cycle repeatedly in past phantoms, neither escaping trauma nor entering new time sequences.

Bob Bartlett's "Time-Soaked: How Trauma Submerges In and Out of Time" explores similar concepts, noting that trauma makes people "soaked" in past time, as if surrounded by "time-soaking." In the small city, residents repeatedly revisit old dreams, embodying this soaking: they cannot escape past shadows, seemingly imprisoned in an inescapable time capsule. Bartlett further points out that trauma's time stagnation brings devastating effects on individuals' time perception and interpersonal relationships, making people unable to reconcile with the past or establish future-oriented lives.

Additionally, William Auerbach's "Time and Timelessness in the Psychoanalysis of an Adult With Severe Childhood Trauma" demonstrates through clinical cases how trauma shatters individuals' time perception and self-identity. He notes that trauma survivors seem trapped in a timeless space, their emotions and memories locked in the past, and these fragmented time perceptions disconnect them from reality. The timeless setting in the small city aligns perfectly with Auerbach's description of trauma survivors' psychological state: the male protagonist loses his true self, becoming a "shadowless person," wandering like a futureless ghost in past pain.

Like Murakami's other works, this book contains many time-related descriptions, especially passages about the small city, which is precisely what this article attempts to summarize as "destroyed sense of time." Here are several excerpts:

In that place, all time is casual. Although there's a tall clock tower in the central square, it has no hands.
However, time and seasons are ultimately just an illusion; the small city's actual time exists elsewhere.
Because here, everything is forever.
Because time doesn't exist, time is endless.
Places without time also lack accumulation. What seems like accumulation is merely a brief phantom projected by 'now.' Imagine flipping through book pages. The pages renew, but the page numbers remain unchanged. There's no contextual connection between a new page and the previous one. The surrounding scenery constantly changes, yet we remain in the same position... In this small city, only the time 'now' exists, without accumulation. Everything is rewritten, renewed.

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," Murakami portrays multiple characters connected to the small city, all suffering from trauma and its effects to varying degrees.

The girl's traumatic experience is a key factor driving her self-enclosure. Her birth mother died when she was three, after which she was raised by a foster mother. This childhood loss left an ineffaceable trauma in her deep psyche. This early maternal absence made the girl's emotional perception seem sealed by a membrane, unable to fully enter reality's emotional world. In the novel, she mentions that at age three, her "shadow separated from her self"—the exact age when she lost her birth mother—precisely suggesting the "separation trauma" she experienced in early childhood due to losing her mother, forming a lasting sense of isolation in her deep psyche.

Furthermore, when describing her life and feelings, the girl's words often carry a sense of "linguistic obscurity," seemingly unable to express her true inner state. She lacks interest in the real world, focusing instead on dream exploration—her interest in dreams even exceeds her interest in reality. This tendency actually continues her early trauma: she cannot connect with emotions in reality, forming a self-state isolated from the external world; her inner self is enclosed in dreams and the small city she created with the boy. As stated at the novel's beginning:

The me here is not the real me, just a substitute, like a moving shadow.

Childhood emotional trauma often leads to psychological isolation and emotional detachment in adulthood, especially profoundly affecting relationships with self and others. The girl immerses herself in the dream world rather than reality because, in dreams, she can freely explore those enclosed emotional experiences, while reality makes her feel alienated and isolated. Her disinterest in reality shows psychological isolation, which only changes when she meets the boy. The boy's appearance opens her deep emotional world, finally allowing her to express (endless letter writing and conversations) and create a connection between dreams and reality. However, due to early trauma, this connection always maintains a subtle barrier; the girl still retains her "shadow" in dreams, and her emotions never fully integrate into reality, ultimately disappearing completely from the boy's world.

In the novel, we see that before completely disappearing, the girl had long been in a depressed state:

There's no specific reason. I just simply become like this. Something like a huge wave crashes over me without a sound, I'm engulfed by it, and my heart becomes rock solid. I can't predict when it comes or how long it lasts.

Meanwhile, the boy is profoundly affected by the girl in the small city. In fact, he suffers a layer of trauma from her departure. After the sudden interruption of his initial relationship with the girl, he finds it difficult to continue normal emotional life, as if his entire life has stagnated. His emotional relationships consistently fail; he cannot establish real connections, always repeating a pattern of hurting others and himself. This emotional impasse is precisely what's called "repetition compulsion"—he hasn't freed himself from trauma but remains deeply trapped, lingering in painful memories.

That summer, I was seventeen. And in my inner world, time essentially froze there. The clock hands indeed continued moving forward as always, engraving time, but for me, real time—the clock embedded in my inner wall—remained motionless, stagnant from then on. The nearly thirty years since then seem merely spent filling blanks. Because empty parts needed filling, I just casually used whatever surroundings caught my eye to fill them in. Because air needs to be inhaled, people continue breathing unconsciously even during sleep. The same applies.
...Time seemed to stop here. The clock hands, as if striving to trace precious distant memories of the past, froze there. It took some time before restarting.
I don't want to experience the same thing again—contrary to my wishes, hurting others and, as a result, hurting myself in that way.

This state of being trapped in the past also appears similarly in "Norwegian Wood." In that work, the death of Watanabe's friend Kizuki plunges both Naoko and Watanabe into trauma. Naoko remains stuck in the pain of losing Kizuki; her time seems locked at age 17. Although time passes in reality, she never moves forward. While Watanabe seemingly continues living, deep in his heart, he too remains trapped in trauma, unable to truly move on. Like Naoko, the male protagonist in this novel seems stuck at a certain moment after the girl's disappearance, perpetually unable to escape, caught in an emotional "loop trap."

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the male protagonist returns to the small city, carrying thoughts of the girl. This action, superficially a search for lost emotions, is actually a search for himself—the self trapped in the past, sealed in trauma. As the novel suggests, his return to the small city isn't "coincidental" but driven by inner will, desperately seeking an outlet for release. Mr. Ziyi explicitly states later in the story that the protagonist entered the city because deep inside, he longed to return to this place, to face his past. This returning action symbolizes his attempt to understand and release his trauma.

Besides the male protagonist, other characters connected to the small city also bear profound trauma imprints, as if the small city is a gathering place attracted by trauma. Mr. Ziyi experienced losing his son and lover, falling into a deep traumatic state, almost unable to return to normal life; the Yellow Submarine Boy gradually enclosed himself in the small city's alternate world due to early loss of paternal love and maternal intrusion.

Mr. Ziyi was originally a happy husband and father, fully invested in family life, enjoying what he believed was a perfect life. However, sudden trauma changed everything. First, his son tragically died, then his wife, unable to bear the pain of losing their son, chose suicide. Before his wife's suicide, she was like Xianglin's wife, repeatedly recounting the pain of losing their son. These traumas made Mr. Ziyi witness the abyss of loss, plunging him into inescapable pain. He could only find solace in the library and, after death, gradually became a "shadowless" ghost continuing to exist.

From this boundary, I became a completely different person from before. In a word, I lost all enthusiasm for anything in life and the world. Because part of my heart had burned out, and I, having suffered a fatal wound to my heart, was already half-dead.

Another important character is the Yellow Submarine Boy. This boy possesses extraordinary talents, but during his early development, he encountered an absent father and an overly intrusive mother. His mother's strong control and father's emotional absence prevented him from establishing healthy emotional connections with the real world. The Yellow Submarine Boy seems only able to maintain his existence through reading books, ultimately abandoning his shadow, completely isolated from reality in the small city, forming a closed inner world. His trauma completely keeps him in the alternate world, forever unable to touch reality's time, as if his growth process were locked in a specific time-space by the trauma in his parents' relationship.

This boy's heart isn't tethered to this real world. He hasn't truly rooted in this world in a real sense. Perhaps he exists like a temporarily moored balloon, floating above the ground, living in mid-air. So what he sees is different from the landscape ordinary people around him see.

In the novel, the relationship between the Yellow Submarine Boy and the male protagonist is extremely ambiguous; the book suggests he might be part of the male protagonist, even a symbolic representation of trauma in the protagonist's subconscious.

These characters lingering in the small city—whether the girl, Mr. Ziyi, the Yellow Submarine Boy, or the male protagonist himself—profoundly reflect the city's quality as a "trauma container." The small city attracts people trapped by trauma, unable to return to real life, letting them repeatedly experience undigested emotions in a time-stagnant space.

Walls, Shadows, and Old Dreams: Trauma and Self-Fragmentation

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," Murakami uses "walls" to metaphorize trauma's defense mechanisms. The walls not only isolate the small city from the real world but also symbolize psychological closure when facing pain. The walls in the small city constantly change shape, locking people's hearts in an uncertain space, making them unable to escape or enter reality's flow. Just as walls use people's fears to isolate trauma, these walls also seem to become defenses against inner fears for people in the small city, helping them avoid directly facing the source of pain. Through the wall setting, Murakami symbolizes psychological barriers established due to trauma—they isolate the natural flow of emotions, firmly locking trauma, pain, and undigested emotions in invisible isolation zones, thereby delaying the self-repair process.

In this small city, only those who abandon their "shadows" can enter, as if shadows themselves carry undigested traumatic memories, becoming "burdens" for entering the city. Shadows here symbolize the shadow aspects of human emotions, echoing Jung's concept of "shadow"—both part of the self and symbols of unaccepted emotions and trauma in people's hearts. The male protagonist's shadow seems to represent his undigested traumatic experiences, while people in the small city enter an emotionally frozen state after losing their shadows, with shadows dying quickly after separating from their hosts. However, as the story develops, the shadow's meaning gradually transforms; the male protagonist's shadow lives outside, as if his self exists in real life in an unconscious form. The shadow is no longer merely a symbol of trauma but a part that coexists and resonates with the host; shadow and host aren't completely opposed or mutually exclusive, suggesting that trauma shouldn't be completely rejected but can be accepted as part of the self. This reinterpretation of shadows embodies Murakami's understanding of trauma integration: shadows aren't just pain and darkness but an inner strength that helps individuals recover from trauma through fusion with the host.

Tiny seeds of the heart remain because they can't be completely cleared away, and they quietly grow inside the shadow. The small city quickly scrapes them off as soon as they're discovered, sealing them in special containers... These are the various emotions people possess. Sadness, confusion, jealousy, fear, distress, despair, doubt, hatred, perplexity, regret, suspicion, self-pity... and dreams and love. In this small city, these emotions are useless, even harmful. Like seeds of plague.

The girl's shadow separated from her host because she lost her mother's companionship early, lacking emotional comfort, causing her inner emotional processing mechanism to fracture. The separation of shadow and host became the manifestation of her trauma, just as psychoanalysis describes: children who lose mothers seal painful emotions in the subconscious, unable to release them in reality, and these suppressed emotions ultimately become her "shadow," existing in dreams in another form.

When the male protagonist enters the small city, he loses his "shadow." The shadow symbolizes the true self and connection with reality; losing it means losing a sense of real existence, trapped in the traumatic world, becoming a "dream reader." In the story, he ultimately chooses to give up his shadow, letting it leave the small city, representing a concession to his fragmented self. The male protagonist decides to stay in the small city, seemingly a compromise with trauma, while his shadow carries the part of himself untouched by trauma, continuing to live in the outside world.

Old dreams in the small city are emotions constantly "read," representing undigested emotions—those emotions and memories frozen by trauma. Psychologically, old dreams symbolize emotional stagnation experienced after trauma; emotions that couldn't be truly digested are forced to remain in memory, becoming fragments of the past rather than complete experiences. Traumatic events often instantly "freeze" emotions; undigested emotions are trapped in past moments, forming residual memories like "old dreams." Through old dreams imagery, Murakami reveals how trauma affects time perception: at the moment of trauma, emotional pressure exceeds individual capacity, unprocessed emotions are sealed, gradually becoming "solidified emotions" in the individual's inner world, repeatedly appearing in the subconscious.

What we call 'old dreams' are likely the inner echoes left by those hosts who were expelled outside the walls to establish this small city. Though the hosts are expelled, it can't be done completely cleanly; something will always remain. So they collect these residues, tightly sealed in special containers called 'old dreams.'

During the dream-reading process, dream readers in the small city somewhat resemble psychotherapists/psychoanalysts, helping the male protagonist process, thaw, and understand these suppressed emotions step by step. Just as "dream readers" in Murakami's works do, they help the male protagonist gradually digest and release suppressed emotions by repeatedly revisiting and processing old dreams.

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," walls, shadows, and old dreams interweave to form a complete symbolic system of trauma. Walls are defenses against trauma, shadows are separated selves, and old dreams are undigested emotional memories. Through these images, Murakami shows how trauma freezes time psychologically, trapping people in past shadows.

Twin-like Relationship and Impossible Love

In Murakami's works, early close emotional relationships repeatedly appear, forming a core theme. The closeness of these early relationships makes two characters seem "twin-like" in their interdependence, inseparable from each other. For example, in "Norwegian Wood," Kizuki and Naoko form this close twin relationship; Kizuki's death is unbearable for Naoko, who remains deeply immersed in the pain of loss, as if she and Kizuki had become inseparable parts. In "Kafka on the Shore," Saeki and her young lover also exhibit this "twin complex": they accompanied and knew each other from childhood, almost forming a mirror relationship; when her lover dies, Saeki becomes deeply immersed in irreparable loss, even losing interest in real life. This type of intensely dependent relationship repeatedly appears in Murakami's works, becoming a symbol of characters' deep-level trauma.

In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the male protagonist and the girl's relationship also presents this "twin-like" dependence. The two meet in youth, quickly establishing an inseverable close relationship, making them unable to be independent, forming excessive dependence emotionally. When separated, the male protagonist can never truly forget the girl, seemingly always carrying her shadow in spirit. This symbiotic relationship prevents him from easily moving forward, creating emotional "repetition compulsion," constantly reenacting the pain of loss in later relationships. This overly close relationship makes them unable to bear separation, while post-separation trauma becomes a permanent scar in the character's heart.

This type of "twin complex" in psychoanalysis is called "symbiotic relationship," referring to excessive dependence and emotional entanglement in early relationships. Symbiotic relationships typically occur between infants and mothers, forming important emotional connections during development. However, when this symbiotic relationship fails to transition smoothly, individuals may unconsciously seek a "symbiotic object" in later emotional relationships to replace the security and satisfaction from early dependence.

Such overly close relationships easily evolve into "impossible love." "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" has only one reference: Gabriel García Márquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera." In the latter, the protagonist's love remains in an unrealizable state, becoming an unreachable existence. Murakami similarly depicts the male protagonist's love for the girl in the small city in "The City and Its Uncertain Walls"—an unrealizable, unattainable love.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, such impossible love often relates to the "lost object." The lost object refers to important emotional objects individuals lose during development, leaving trauma and continuously seeking substitute emotional connections. In "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the male protagonist's love for the girl isn't ordinary emotional connection but a continuation of lost love. The girl's departure causes indelible trauma, becoming an irreparable loss. Such impossible love carries an eternally unrealizable regret, just like the unreachable love in "Love in the Time of Cholera."

In Murakami's works, Kizuki to Naoko, Saeki to her young lover, are all types of "lost objects." When symbiotic objects leave, individuals may fall into deep trauma, unable to escape that relationship's psychological influence—this is the traumatic attachment pattern repeatedly appearing in Murakami's works.

Trust and Trauma Resolution: The Boy's Symbolism

In the latter half of "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," the Yellow Submarine Boy's appearance becomes key to the male protagonist's trauma digestion. This boy seems to have a special connection with the male protagonist's spirit, not belonging to the real world but like an incarnation of part of the male protagonist's heart. In the small city, the boy displays a "dream reading" method completely different from the male protagonist: he "reads faster" than the protagonist, meaning he can more quickly digest and process emotions and trauma in "old dreams." When the male protagonist meets the boy and "becomes one" with him, this inner trauma digestion process also accelerates, ultimately helping the male protagonist achieve emotional release, allowing him to exit the small city.

The Yellow Submarine Boy seems to be the male protagonist's "inner child" or immature emotional part in trauma, representing the protagonist's subconscious self-recovery ability. This part of the self perhaps always existed in the male protagonist's inner world but couldn't be activated until the small city experience awakened it. The boy's appearance gradually shifts the male protagonist's attention from past pain to trauma digestion and release. The boy's dream reading speed not only suggests the male protagonist's inner growth but also symbolizes trauma's transformation process in the subconscious—through rapid "dream reading," the male protagonist begins more quickly facing pain isolated by walls, gradually releasing old dreams and undigested emotions.

Ultimately, the male protagonist "exits" the small city, meaning he achieves some release emotionally, escaping past shadows. The Yellow Submarine Boy not only helps the male protagonist digest old dreams but also helps him find a new self-integration in the inner world, allowing him to finally "say goodbye" to memories of the girl. At the novel's end, the male protagonist realizes that if someone he truly trusts waits for him in the external world—in this case, his shadow—his trauma might find true relief. This "trust" has special meaning in Murakami's works, representing how trauma can slowly begin thawing when facing understanding and inclusive relationships.

We're actually floating in emptiness. There's no handle to grab onto for leverage. Yet we haven't fallen. To start falling requires time's flow. If time remains motionless, we'll forever remain suspended in emptiness.
...If something goes wrong and time moves again, we'll fall from height, and that could be a fatal fall.
...Trust that someone on the ground will catch you. Trust it from your heart, unreservedly, unconditionally.
...Trusting your double means trusting yourself.

Conclusion: Can Trauma Really Be Processed?

The three parts of this new work aren't equal in length; the final part about trauma resolution is clearly the shortest, with many "obscure" areas not fully explained. This makes us feel that even though Murakami spent forty years rewriting this story, he still couldn't provide answers for truly escaping trauma, perhaps meaning this story remains an "unfinished work" in his heart. He describes the trauma thawing process through the male protagonist's story, but perhaps he himself hasn't fully untied this "mental knot"; he's merely depicted an idealized possibility through the novel, a hypothesis of what might happen if trauma could be healed. I've always been very curious why Murakami, who seems to have had what was likewise a twin-like relationship but a happy marriage, is so obsessed with trauma as "a fishbone stuck in his throat." But why must we pursue "the chicken that laid the egg"?

References

  • Auerbach, W. (2014). Time and Timelessness in the Psychoanalysis of an Adult With Severe Childhood Trauma.
  • Bartlett, B. (2017). Time-Soaked: How Trauma Submerges In and Out of Time.
  • Blum, H. (2012). The Creative Transformation of Trauma: Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
  • Brothers, D. (2012). Murakami, Connoisseur of Uncertainty: Commentary on Paper by Thomas Rosbrow.
  • Cottis, T. (2019). The Disabling Effects of Trauma in a Time of Austerity: Implications for the Practice and Theory of Child Psychotherapy.
  • Kawabata, N. (2002). The Need to Know.
  • Mondrzak, V., Duarte, A., Lewkowicz, A., Kauffmann, A., Iankilevich, E., Brodacz, G., Soares, G., & Pellanda, L. (2007). Trauma, Causality and Time: Some Reflections.
  • Potik, D. (2023). Existential Issues in the Fictional Writing of Haruki Murakami.
  • Terr, L. (1984). Time and Trauma.
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