Between True Love, Fate and Reality in Haruki Murakami's short story

"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning“

byCarla Thurmanita

Characters:

The unnamed boy (narrator and main character)Someone100% Perfect Girl

This short story written by Haruki Murakami is a part of his book, The Elephant Vanishes which consists of his short short stories collection that he wrote in 1983-1990. As his other works, this short story has the same element that Murakami mostly uses in his writings. Haruki Murakami is known as a Japanese novelist who is really experimental and also against the mainstream flow of other Japanese or other Asian writers. His works always includes the feel of combination between realism and surrealism, and also brings the theme of love, loneliness, confusion and self-searching. Murakami also uses first-person narrative in most of his works. As for this short story, it has all those elements. But the most interesting part of this story to be analyzed is the relation between the twist in the story and the reality that most of people experiencing love in their elder age. This story is a twist of fate, true love, and reality.

The story starts with the first person unnamed character, a boy, telling his story. Here he tells that he found a 100% perfect girl for him in one beautiful April morning, on a narrow street in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. In this part, we can already see the glimpse of true love and fate. Logically, how could someone know whom would be his/her soulmate, that 100% perfect figure? Do he/she would feel that click feeling once he/she meet this figure? There's no formula of this situation.

Besides, the first person character describes his 100% Perfect Girl with "She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a 'girl', properly speaking." The boy likes a particular shape of girl's the most. But here, he can't even recall the shape of this 100% Perfect Girl's nose. This can be the symbol of how strong his feeling towards the girl. He can remember that this girl isn't that beautiful, yet he said, "The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert". This kind of thing what we could say as a true love, the kind of love that you don't know how and why you could be into someone else that might be out of your type standard.

But the reality strikes into him for he doesn't know what would he say to this girl. After all, this boy and this girls are strangers to each other who happen to meet in an intersection when "she was walking east to west, and he west to east." He keeps thinking and thinking the possibility he could say to the girl and the "What if..." questions that at the same time he doesn't know that he's running out of time. And when he realized, the girl has already lost in the crowd.This could symbolizes the reality of people live in real world. People tend to use their much time to think too much until they finally realize, they've lost the time already. All of chances, opportunity and even love of their life are gone already because people think and worry the "what if..." possibility too much.

But the reality strikes into him for he doesn't know what would he say to this girl. After all, this boy and this girls are strangers to each other who happen to meet in an intersection when "she was walking east to west, and he west to east." He keeps thinking and thinking the possibility he could say to the girl and the "What if..." questions that at the same time he doesn't know that he's running out of time. And when he realized, the girl has already lost in the crowd.

This could symbolizes the reality of how people in real world. People tend to use their time too much to only think too much until they finally realize, they've lost the time already. All of chances, opportunity and even love of their life are gone already because people think and worry the "what if..." possibility too much.

When the boy realized the girl's gone, he is stroked with a thought of what he should have been said to the girl when he met her. And here's when the twist happens in the story.

The boy seems to use a parable - as he started it with "Once upon a time" words - of one ordinary lonely boy and one ordinary lonely girl who experience the miracle of true love and fate.

One day they came upon each other on the corner of the street - and that time they knew that they're 100% perfect boy and girl to each other. They spent their lovely time together on that day and they couldn't feel happier than that time. But as they were spending their time together, a slight of doubt took root in their hearts: "Was it really all right for one's dreams to come true so easily" like they had? Then they decided to test their fate, They decided to part from each other because they believed if they were really meant to each other, they must be met again in some other time. Then they parted. Soon they grew older, they experienced another love but never the same as 100% as before. And as they grew older, the memory of their first meeting started to fade away.

Years later, on one winter, the lonely boy was walking from west to east, and the lonely girl from east to west. They passed each other in the very center of the street in Harajuku neighborhood. And when they passed and saw the glimpse of each other's face, both of them felt a rumbling in their chest. The faintest gleam of their once lost memories glimmered for a while. At that time, they knew they found the 100% perfect figure again. But since they grew older already, their memory was too weak. And their memory and feel towards fate doesn't have a clarity at all. Then they passed each other, without a word, disappearing into the crowd. They lost each other once again.

Then the first person character, the unnamed boy, ended the parable with,"A sad story don't you think?“

The boy feels that is what he should have been said to the 100% perfect girl for him.

As I keep reading the parable over and over again, it strikes me. The parable feels surreal and real at the same time. The parable might stay as a parable only that the boy wanted to use as a 'fairy tale' story. But it also could be the reality that really happened to the first character in a long time ago. It could be in another parallel universe, in their earlier life, the boy and the 100% Perfect Girl had met each other for the first time and found that they're 100% perfect to each other. But the same as the parable, they parted because of they tested the fate. Then once they met each other again when they have grown older, it was only one person that realized that memory. In this case, only the boy who realizes the earlier memory of him and his 100% Perfect Girl together.

The parable also seems to symbolize the reality of growing older. As people grow older every year, the purity of their child / teenage heart is no longer existed. Younger people have more excitement of true love in everything. Somehow they believe that the miracle of their 100% love is still waiting for them out there. But during the time of the maturation process, there are events happen in the process that ease the purity little by little. Those events might be pain, loss and searching for identity. And those events eventually turn the pure idealism of love into a realistic thought.

We can see it from the story; when the boy and the girl happen to meet again after years are gone. The pure heart they had when they were young is changed by those events in the process of growing older. They no longer believe in such 100% thing. That when they met each other again for the second time, they passed each other and parted for the second time. They knew that they are the same 100% perfect figure for each other as their first meeting. But they can't believe that such thing could happen again in reality. Their faded memory is too weak to help them for believing in such thing.

People's heart can change, either theirs. And this time, fate is on their side no more. It is symbolized with the emphasizing of words "she was walking east to west, and he west to east" repeated for thrice. The opposite way that the boy and the girl always took seems to show that their way will never be intertwined again. Because their fate is not the same again as before .

Even though this story is hard to differentiated between which one is real and surreal, I think the author tries to tell something to the readers from this story. That fate is not something to be challenged for and played with. Once we have found our 'the one' - it could be chances of everything, work opportunity, or even soulmate - we must not let them go. Because chances do not come twice. And we will never know what will happen next since the cycle of life keeps changing every seconds and that cycle can change people's self.

As Haruki Murakami wrote in this story,

"The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other's 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully."