113

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers:
F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami
Toshifumi Miyawaki
I. Minnesota Winter in Fitzgerald’s Literary Imagination
The essence of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s dream was born and nurtured in Minnesota andnever forgotten throughout his life. The bitter cold and Midwestern winters remained
alive deep in his imagination and can be found in many of his works including The
Great Gatsby (1925).
Have you ever seen a palace made of ice? It is ephemeral, just like the Navaho sandpaintings. It is also as fragile as a sandcastle. As long as the cold continues, an ice
palace can stand up firmly but as soon as it warms up, it is destined to melt away. It is
impossible to retain the beauty of ice in the presence of heat. Although no one wants thebeauty of ice to disappear, we also look forward to spring’s warmth returning, which
inevitably causes ice to melt, destroying an ice palace without mercy.
Images like this give us a sense of Fitzgerald’s complex and contradictory emotions.
This is the most exquisitely beautiful aspect of his writing. From one moment to thenext, he moves from sparkling beauty to grotesque ugliness in a way that is similar to
how snow changes throughout the winter. During the first snowfall, as the earth issilently blanketed in pristine whiteness it is incredibly quiet, almost solemn. The world
becomes a magical place. This beautiful scene warms our hearts as creation istransformed into a winter wonderland.
Then, suddenly without notice, the snow stops, and beauty is complete, brilliant andfantastic. This winter scene embraces us even more tenderly than the soft darkness ofthe night. But moments like this cannot last forever. Inevitably, people will walk in thesnow and cars will drive through it. Slowly its purity will be defiled and it will become
ugly, completely transforming the dreamlike world of just a few moments earlier into
the mundane world of winter.
Because the beauty of such poignant moments disappears all too soon, we mustgrab it as quickly as we can. The only way to capture this beauty is through memory,which then becomes eternal. Although Fitzgerald never returned to St. Paul after the

114

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

birth of his daughter, Scottie, the beauty of his hometown continued to live on in his
imagination. The St. Paul he describes in his work exists only in memory. For writers
like Fitzgerald, memories are a precious treasure. They are the prima materia that
authors weave into their stories.
Only someone born and raised in Minnesota can tolerate such long winters. At thevery least, it takes time for people new to the area to acclimate. It must have come asquite a shock for a Southern girl like Sally Carol Happer in “Ice Palace” (1920) to visit
St. Paul for the first time in the middle of winter. In any case, the fact that Sally Carol
couldn’t deal with the cold wasn’t anyone’s fault.
Fitzgerald’s “Ice Palace” is a story born directly from this environment. Even thetitle chills the reader. Although it begins with abundant warm sunshine, and ends withlanguid, sultry heat, the core of the story is filled with cold, depressing images like theice palace. When Sally Carol was lost inside the ice palace, she felt “deep terror,” which
was for her the incarnation of the North. She experienced “the dreary loneliness thatrose from ice-bound whalers in the Arctic seas, from smokeless trackless wastes where
were strewn the whitened bones of adventure. It was an icy breath of death; it was
rolling down low across the land to clutch at her” (58). What she wanted was “warmthand summer and Dixie.” Things in the North were all “foreign” (59) for her. The sharp
contrast between cold and warmth in this story makes the frigid Minnesota winter evenmore unbearable and her break-up with Harry Bellamy all the more poignant.
There is a fundamental difference in temperament between people from the Northand the South, which is undoubtedly shaped by these radically different environments.
This is, of course, a major theme in this story. It is only natural that readers sympathizewith the Southern belle Sally Carol. Fitzgerald has a special kind of affinity for images
like the ice palace, which confine dreams within, creating a beautiful form of suspended
animation. He suggests that eternity cannot exist in this world. If this is true, then wemust capture the most brilliantly beautiful aspects of life whenever we can, even if only
for a moment. No one can criticize this desire. When Sally Carol suddenly left Harry toreturn to the South, his incarnation of beauty also deserted him. He could no longer
keep alive the beauty he longed for, which was embodied in the person of Sally Caroland the ice palace. They both melted away with her departure.
On the surface, the ice palace is clearly a symbol of beauty, drawing others to it. But
it is also a very sad image, encasing the dreams of Fitzgerald’s characters, making them

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 115

inaccessible and maybe even killing them off in the process. Fitzgerald was very
attracted to this kind of complex, multi-dimensional image, which contains both sadness
and an ephemeral sense of beauty. It reminds us of the powerful effect Daisy had on
Gatsby in his younger days. Even though he knew she would eventually disappear, hedesperately wanted to embrace this kind of short-lived beauty. He was satisfied even if
their relationship lasted for only a brief moment.
Fitzgerald savored this kind of transient kind of beauty that eventually melds into
the dark blue night. This dark blue is the color of the deepest winter nights in Minnesota,
which gave birth to the ephemeral dreams Fitzgerald tried to capture in his writing andlife.
Whenever I think of Minnesota winters, I recall the golf scene from Fitzgerald’s
short story “Winter Dreams” (1922). After a dreadfully long winter, when spring finallycomes and the weather warms up even the tiniest bit, people are absolutely crazy to get
outside. Even if there is still snow on the ground, they joyfully rush out to the golfcourse to play golf again. Although I can understand their feelings, I also can’t help
wondering why no one is willing to wait just one more week until the ground is clear.
But that’s impossible. It’s just the way it is.
In April the winter ceased abruptly. The snow ran down into Black Bear Lake
scarcely tarrying for the early golfers to brave the season with red and black balls.
Without elation, without an interval of moist glory, the cold was gone. (43)
Needless to say, colored balls are essential for these hasty golfers because they areeasy to spot in white snow. This insignificant little scene from Fitzgerald’s short story
actually reveals a very important theme that runs throughout all of his work. There is anunderlying hope that stems from the knowledge that spring will always return. No
matter how harsh the winter is, a glimmer of hope remains because spring always comesback. This kind of optimism, or tenacity of purpose, is found in many of Fitzgerald’s
characters.1
One example is found in “Afternoon of an Author” (1936), Fitzgerald’s short story
from his later years. “The author” in the story seems to be very ill and it takes him a
1

See my book, Gure-to gyatubi no sekai: Da-kuburu- no yume [A Dark Blue Dream: The Great Gatsby]

116

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

great deal of resolution to go out. Also, his business as a writer is presumably not goingwell. But he encourages himself: “Stick to your last, boy” (175). While waiting for abus, he says to himself: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees”(177). These are actually Stonewall Jackson’s last words, who was a Confederate generalduring the Civil War. They are not the last words one would expect of the declining
author. He still has the will to cross the river and hang in there after taking a rest under
the trees. He still cherishes life itself, “not wanting to give it up at all” (178). Moreover,when he comes back to his apartment, he fancies looking up at his apartment windows:“The residence of the successful writer. . . . I wonder what marvelous books he’s tearing
off up there. It must be great to have a gift like that—just sit down with pencil andpaper. Work when you want—go where you please” (180). This attitude of “the author”
comes from nothing but his patience or tenacity. An inexhaustible desire for life can beseen in him.
Another example is found in “Pasting It Together” (1936) where Fitzgerald refers tohimself as a “cracked plate.”. . . the cracked plate has to be retained in the pantry, has to be kept in service
as a household necessity. It can never again be warmed on the stove nor shuffledwith the other plates in the dishpan, it will not be brought out for company, but it
will do to hold crackers late at night or to go into the ice box under left-overs. . . .
(145)
This is nothing other than his attachment to life. He tried to stick to the last minute of
his life, though it was rather a short one.
Growing up in Minnesota taught him that if he waited patiently through the longdark months of winter, something deep inside would survive and flourish once again
when the days warmed up. Then, what survived during those long dark winter nights?

II. Lost City and Found CityAt the end of “My Lost City” (1932), the narrator, who is Fitzgerald himself,
screams within, “Come back, come back, O glittering and white!” What does thisglittering whiteness refer to? I believe he is most certainly talking about New York, his“lost city”, but the image of snow in Minnesota also comes to mind. He also says, “I canThe Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 117

only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage” (115). This evokes not only the imageof the New York City of his youth but also the image of Judy Jones in her own splendid
youth in “Winter Dreams.” Dexter Green, the protagonist of this story, was always
searching for “the glittering things themselves,” not “association with glittering thingsand glittering people” (47). This means that Judy Jones was only a symbol or
incarnation of “the glittering things” that Dexter longed for. She was just a “mirage” forhim after all as New York City was.
Rudolph Miller in “Absolution” (1924) has the same kind of desire for glittering
things as Dexter Greene. Rudolph creates “a make-believe playmate” Blatchford
Sarnemington as a new identity “who embodies everything the lonely Rudolph is not
and wants to be” (Stavola 127). He is evidently “a legitimate precursor to Jay Gatsby”(Stavola 129). When Rudolph hears “Father Schwartz’s half-crazed talk of a glimmering
world” (Stavola 128), even though he doesn’t understand what he is talking about, he issure that there is “something ineffably gorgeous somewhere that ha[s] nothing to dowith God” (92) as he has been secretly fantasizing about. Fitzgerald celebrates “the vastcreative power of the imagination” (Stavola 128) in this story.
His characters Dexter and Rudolph share the same kind of dreams. Dexter isunconsciously driven by his own winter dreams while Rudolph’s imagination is set freeat dusk when he engages with his imaginary playmate, Blatchford Sarnemington. While
Dexter’s dreams are activated in the presence of a real person, Judy Jones, Rudolph’s
dreams come alive in the presence of his imaginary self. With nothing to worry about,
Rudolph “... took a deep breath of the crisp air and began to say over and over to himself
the words ‘Blatchford Sarnemington, Blatchford Sarnemington!’”(83) He prepared thisname for the times when he would put himself in the midst of the glittering things. The
dreams of Dexter and Rudolph were both born in Minnesota and deeply influenced by
the American dream.
Sometimes, there comes a moment in a man’s life when he encounters a very special
woman who stands glittering before him, altering the course of his destiny. Without adoubt, this is what happens to Dexter Green when he meets Judy Jones, the woman he isdestined to love. She is clearly an embodiment of the dream he carries within himself,born from his experiences of growing up in Minnesota. In stories like this, we see
clearly that engraved into one side of Fitzgerald’s memory is the fleeting nature of hislost city, New York, while firmly embedded on the other side is his hometown, St. Paul,118

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

Minnesota.
Another aspect of his writing that is influenced by Minnesota winters is his use ofcolor. For example, in “Winter Dreams” he writes: “Later in the afternoon the sun went
down with a riotous swirl of gold and varying blues and scarlets, and left the dryrustling night of western summer” (50).
The color blue described here is the unmistakable dark blue essence of his dream,born from the lakes and sky of his home state. In this summer scene, this color will soontake on a darker tone and develop a stronger sense of presence as it moves from autumn
into winter. As a result, Dexter is increasingly filled with a sense of joy as autumn
arrives. He “knew there was something gorgeous about the fall.” That is also the time
when Nick Carraway decides to go back to Minnesota after Gatsby’s death.
Fall made him clench his hands and tremble and repeat idiotic sentences to himself
and make brisk abrupt gestures of command to imaginary audiences and armies.
October filled him with hope which November raised to a sort of ecstatic triumph,
and in this mood the fleeting brilliant impressions of the summer at Sherry Island
were ready grist to his mill.
In this season, Dexter readies himself for his own winter dreams. This is the most
exciting time of year for him. During “the long Minnesota winter” that “shut[s] down
like the white lid of a box” (43), there are many days when the gloomy sky hovers above
like a heavy mass of lead. Everything is motionless and completely silent, except for
falling snow. But in spite of such a heavy atmosphere, Fitzgerald suggests that if we“stretch out our arms farther” (Gatsby 141), tomorrow we will eventually be able tograsp that quintessential green hope lying just beyond the darkness.
If that is indeed true, then what is it that Fitzgerald really longed for? Is it the
sparkling effervescence of champagne and the hustle and bustle of New York streets?
He certainly enjoyed these things but at the same time, the land and the climate of theMidwest itself, especially Minnesota, remained deep within him. At least within theimages of St. Paul in Fitzgerald’s writing, there is a sense of mystery and eternal youth.
This eternal youth is what Nick, who had been lost in New York, sought in Minnesota.
Beyond what the protagonist of “My Lost City” saw from the summit of the Empire
State Building was the Midwestern prairie, “the bored, sprawling, swollen towns beyond

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 119

the Ohio” (Gatsby 137) including Minnesota. What he saw from there was the city that“was not the endless succession of canyons he had supposed but that it had limits.” NewYork “faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue thatalone was limitless.” It “was a city after all and not a universe” (114-15).
In “Winter Dreams,” it comes as no surprise that Judy’s physical beauty slowly
fades within the reality of married life. She cannot retain the sparkling vitality of her
youth forever. That’s only natural. Time moves on and changes everything. No one canstop this. Yet Dexter tries to keep her beauty in a frozen state of suspended animation.
Harry Bellamy might have unconsciously wanted to keep Sally Carol’s beauty in the ice
palace too. In this respect, Nick and Gatsby are exactly the same. For whatever reason,
neither of them can tolerate any sense of personal disillusionment. This is the inevitablechallenge everyone must face when they try to live the American dream. One must
eventually reconcile the reality of their own lives with the magnificent dreams that first
ignited their imagination.
The first time Nick sees Gatsby, it is under the dark blue night sky.
The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my headto watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged fromthe shadow of my neighbor’s mansion and was standing with his hands in his
pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely
movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was
Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local
heavens. (20)
Gatsby is often portrayed in nocturnal scenes because of the natural connection
between the world of dreams and imagination. On Nick’s last night in the East, herealizes that he has lost touch with the living reality of the dream itself. Then, in a
precious moment, the significance of Gatsby’s dream is revealed to him as he gazes out
into the dark blue night. Through Nick, Gatsby’s dream is able to live on. As “the moon[rises] higher,” the “inessential” (140) things from his life in the East fade away and herecalls the moment Dutch sailors first laid eyes on this vast green continent. The original
American dream was born then. He realizes that so many of the worthless things heexperienced while living in New York have been nothing but distractions, keeping him

120

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

from what is truly important and now he knows that the time has come for him to returnto the Midwest where he can reconnect with and nurture his own dark blue dream.
Shortly after, as winter begins and “the wind [blows] the wet laundry stiff on theline,” Nick leaves the East behind and returns to Minnesota. The coldness of this scene
overlaps with the frigid air of the homecoming train scene toward the end of the novel.
When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began tostretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small
Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We
drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold
vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour
before we melted indistinguishably into it again.
That’s my middle-west—not the wheat or the prairies or the lost Swede towns
but the thrilling, returning trains of my youth and the street lamps and sleigh bells
in the frosty dark and the shadows of holly wreaths thrown by lighted windows on
the snow. I am part of that, a little solemn with the feel of those long winters, alittle complacent from growing up in the Carraway house in a city where dwellings
are still called through decades by a family’s name. (137)
It is not a coincidence that he chooses this time of year to return to Minnesota
because it clearly holds a special meaning for him. Even if his decision was madeunconsciously, there is no doubt that the embryo of his dream, which was conceived
during the long Minnesota winters of his youth, remains alive deep within, guiding him.
Once Nick can bring his dream back to the dark blue skies of the Midwestern
prairies and exposes it once again to the harsh winters, it will undoubtedly begin to
move forward, dashing toward the promise of spring. He was no more a part of New
York than Fitzgerald who reminisces about himself in “My Lost City,” even while living
there. It was the city where “a lot of lost and lonely people” (110) lived. Just like thefirefly that Toru Watanabe, the protagonist of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood
(1987), released and saw off. They were all in the same boat. The city is full of suchlonesome fireflies. Furthermore, they are the same class of people as those who gathered
at Gatsby’s parties and passed by Toru in the phone box at the very end of the novel.
When Toru calls his girlfriend Midori from a phone box, she asks him where he is now.

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 121

But he can’t answer the question:
Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All thatflashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere.
Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was
no place. (386)Just like Toru in Tokyo, the narrator of “My Lost City” was in such an uncertain
situation in New York, but he is part of the Midwest where his snow is and where henever loses his identity. Where will his dream run to next? No one knows. But surely it
will continue to move toward something “glittering” off in the future, where tomorrowalways waits.
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes
before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–tomorrow we will run faster,
stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(141)
In this way, the archetypal environment of Midwest lives on in Gatsby, just as it does inFitzgerald’s writing, and becomes a driving force in his work and life.
The artist Pablo Picasso, in a similar way, was also attracted to the color blue.
During his younger days in Paris, when he was an up-and-coming artist, he immersed
himself in this color. This is known as his “blue period,” which is said to represent thedespair, loneliness and melancholy he felt after the suicide of his friend. Even though
this period was followed by a “rose period,” which lasted for several years, the color
blue continued to play an important role in his life and is often found in the backgroundof his work. Blue sustained him throughout his life. Although the basic tone of Picasso’s“blue period” is certainly emotional, it was never negative. Behind it was a kind of
audacious vitality, and through cubism, his relationship with blue led him to become
one of the greatest artists in the new century.2
In the same way, the dark blue of Minnesota winter nights is always present in the2

Okamoto p. 79

122

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

background of Fitzgerald’s writing. As we know, “green” also plays a significant role asa foreground color in The Great Gatsby, but it is dark blue that lies in the background of
his work nourishing and supporting him. In Fitzgerald’s case, “blue” represents the
tenacious sense of hope he clung to throughout his life.
Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from myreaction – Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn.
If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there wassomething gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,
as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten
thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby
impressionability which is dignif ied under the name of the “creative
temperament”– it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as
I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever findagain. No – Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, whatfoul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interestin the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men. (5-6)
Isn’t it the origin of the America spirit that Gatsby’s “heightened sensitivity”
grasped? As Nick realizes at the end, the spirit has been lost during the rapid change ofsociety. Gatsby was the only person who could stick to it, while others had alreadyforgotten about it. Those were the people who gathered “like moths” (33) at Gatsby’s
parties. They were just wandering around in a strong sense of loss. The spirit is, in otherwords, the essence of the American dream. Fitzgerald desperately tried to piece together
the whole picture of it in his work.

III. The Lost Original Landscape
Haruki Murakami, a literary successor of Fitzgerald through space and time, once
confessed that he had been at odds with his father for a long time and the issue has often
been covered when critics talk about him and his work. His father was a high school
teacher of Japanese literature and rigid to his only son. Murakami was urged to readJapanese classics since he was a small child. In fact, he read many of them, or almost allof them, but at the same time, a certain kind of revulsion to Japanese literature began toThe Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 123

grow inside him which eventually led him to the world of Western literature, especially
American literature. For him reading American literature was a backlash against
Japanese literature, a symbol of the patriarchal system for him. It was actually not just
Murakami but most Japanese who longed for a release from the burden of traditional
Japanese culture after World War II. Just like American youth after World War I whowanted to be freed from old Victorian morals and values.
The changes that came about were the natural outcome of this desire for freedom
from the past for both the United States and Japan. In spite of a quarter-century time
gap between them, the problem was the same. Change came very suddenly for bothcountries. In the case of Japan, people voraciously absorbed everything from American
culture that flowed in after their complete surrender to the United States in World War
II. As Kawamura points out, Japanese people internalized anything they encounteredfrom America unconditionally. America meant great and glittering things that included
food, music, and a new way of living. Hungry in so many ways, Japan had no choice but
to avidly consume this new culture. There was no room to stop and think about what totake in. They should have “once return[ed] to a certain starting place and go over it all
slowly,” (Gatsby 86) but they couldn’t. Instead Murakami performed it in his works onbehalf of the Japanese people. He retraced the footsteps people followed after the war
and found that what they were immersed in was a casual and superficial Americanized
way of living. That was Murakami’s Japan in the raw.
Murakami is not complaining about the fact that Japan has willingly accepted
American culture since the end of the war. He himself has been actually an active
receiver of it, jazz and literature especially. He just gives a warning to Japanese people
who have unconsciously lost their spirit, which also means eventually losing theiridentity. The same is true for Fitzgerald. Murakami always tries to make people
remember what they are losing and forgetting when they mindlessly consume what is in
front of them. He urges them to pause and reminisce about the past from time to time inorder to know where they are now. He is not telling them to stay in the past even if it is adelightful place. It is a bygone world. They should come back to the active present andkeep moving toward future. But they should move on along the new current, whileconstantly identifying their point of origin. That’s why Murakami emphasizes: “Where
do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”
It is common knowledge that Yukio Mishima praised pre-war Showa era before

124

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

1941 and was disillusioned with the postwar situation of Japan. In the end, he committed
suicide. Whatever the reason was, we can be certain that he avoided facing reality. He
could only live in the past beautiful world of his imagination. Murakami refers to
Mishima in the beginning of A Wild Sheep Chase (1982) in a brief and indifferent way.
We walked through the woods to the ICU campus, sat down in the student
lounge, and munched on hot dogs. It was two in the afternoon, and Yukio
Mishima’s picture kept flashing on the lounge TV. The volume control was broken
so we could hardly make out what was being said, but it didn’t matter to us one
way or the other. A student got up on a chair and tried fooling with the volume, but
eventually he gave up and wandered off. (9)No one seemed to care about his sensational death. This apathetic treatment of agreat writer suggests that Murakami never allows his protagonists to give up their lives
in spite of what happens to them. As a matter of fact, the protagonist of this novel
survives the harsh reality of his life even though his close friend Rat kills himself.
Actually Rat can be also seen as an alter-ego of the main character, demonstrating how
all of us live with this tension between the part of ourselves that struggles to survive,
while another aspect of self may want to die.
In Murakami’s short story “Firefly” (1983), he described nostalgically and with alittle sense of lament the original landscape of Japan, which no longer exists. This
became the prototype for his legendary best-selling novel Norwegian Wood. One of the
major reasons for its great popularity is that this novel reminds us of how lost we are
now in this super capitalist society.
Toru Watanabe is presented with a firefly in an instant coffee jar from his dorm
roommate. It is a stray firefly that has been separated from its group. He takes it to thedorm rooftop where the dorm residents usually hang their laundry. Dusk is deepening
and no one is up there.
The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light too weak, itscolor too pale. I hadn’t seen a firefly in years, but the ones in my memory sent a far
more intense light into the summer darkness, and that brilliant, burning image was
the one that had stayed with me all that time. (61)The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 125

Fireflies in Toru’s memory cast a blaze of light “like a shower of sparks” but the one
in front of him now is so weak that it seems to be dying. What a contrast. He tries toremember when and where he last saw fireflies. He can “see the scene in [his] mind,”
but can’t “recall the time or place.”
After he puts himself in the middle of “that long-ago darkness,” he releases thefirefly from the jar. But it seems unable to “grasp its new surroundings” (62) and justhovers about. Toru waits for a long time studying it.
Only much later did the firefly take to the air. As if some thought had suddenly
come to it, the firefly spread its wings, and in a moment it had flown past thehandrail to float in the pale darkness. It traced a swift arc by the side of the watertank as if trying to bring back a lost interval in time. And then, after hovering there
for a few seconds as if to watch its curved line of light blend into the wind, it
finally flew off to the east.
Long after the firefly had disappeared, the trail of its light remained inside me,its pale, faint glow hovering on and on in the thick darkness behind my eyelids likea lost soul.
More than once I tried stretching my hand out in that darkness. My fingers
touched nothing. The faint glow remained, just beyond their grasp. (62-3)
Although a dim light lingers, Toru is unable to touch it. This symbolizes the present
situation that surrounds Toru and his contemporaries. The bright shining clusters offireflies in the darkness of his memory are gone now, at least in the big cities like Tokyo.
They are lost, maybe forever, but a single firefly can remind us of the “fragment of lostwords” that Nick finds in what Gatsby says.
Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was remindedof something—an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard
somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in mymouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling
upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound and what I had
almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (87)126

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

We find the same kind of situation in “Winter Dreams,” which is the prototype of
The Great Gatsby. The beauty of Judy in Dexter’s memory is gone irretrievably now.
Dexter is dominated by an incurable sense of loss. These things considered, they sharesomething in common, which is a lament for the lost original landscape where ourpsyche is nurtured. This lost firefly in Norwegian Wood takes wings with its last strength
left searching for the lost landscape. Just like the case of Nick Carraway, however, what
Toru has “almost remembered was uncommunicable forever” or unrecoverable now.
When Toru releases the firefly on the dorm roof at twilight, it reminds us also of
Nick as he focuses his thoughts on “the last and greatest of all human dreams” (Gatsby140). It is as if the beauty of memory is frozen in the dark blue of a frigid winter night.
During the harsh winter or the depth of night, memory’s beauty remains in a pristinecondition. But winter ends or even the darkest night transforms into dawn, bringing
such beauty to an end. The kind of beauty in Fitzgerald’s and Murakami’s worlds iscompletely transient. No matter how hard we try to preserve it, such beauty elusively
evolves and changes. It only exists in memory.

- or the Sense of Impermanence
IV. Mujo
On a personal note, as a person deeply steeped in Japanese aesthetics, Fitzgerald’s
perseverance appeals deeply to me. This is also true for a number of other Japanesereaders. In Japan, natural disasters are very common, including earthquakes, tsunami,
and typhoons. As a result, a particular kind of worldview has evolved which enriches
Japanese people’s appreciation of Fitzgerald.
For example, there is an aesthetic principle known as “mujo-” which can help us- can be translated asunderstand why his work is so popular in Japan. The term mujo
“impermanence.” It conveys the notion that nothing lasts forever, and everythingchanges constantly. Stories by Fitzgerald, such as “Ice Palace” and “Winter Dreams,”
embody this worldview beautifully, tugging at our heartstrings ever so tenderly. He
offers us hope even in the middle of profound despair. Murakami himself must havebeen greatly encouraged by Fitzgerald as well.
- as follows in his acceptance speech for the
Murakami explains this notion of mujo
Catalonia International Prize in 2011:- means that there is no steady state that will continue forever in life. All
Mujo

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 127

things that inhabit this world will pass away; all things continue to change without
end. We cannot find permanent stability. We cannot find anything to rely on that- finds its roots in Buddhism, the concept
will not change or decay. Although mujo
of mujo- has taken on a significance beyond its original religious sense. This- has been seared deeply into the Japanese spirit, forming a national
concept of mujo
mindset that has continued on almost without change since ancient times.
- perspective that all things must pass away can be understood as a
The mujo
resigned worldview. From such a perspective, even if humans struggle against thenatural flow, that effort will be in vain in the end. But even in the midst of such
resignation, the Japanese are able to actively discover sources of true beauty.
In the case of nature, for example, we take pleasure from cherry blossoms inspring, from the fireflies in summer and from the crimson foliage in autumn. We
do so as a group and we do so as a matter of custom. We enthusiastically enjoy
such fleeting seasonal moments, as if the pleasures they offered admitted of nofurther explanation. The places in Japan famous for cherry blossoms, or fireflies, orautumn foliage, are crowded with people when their season comes.
He refers to the firefly here too, raising the question, why do the Japanese love andcherish such things?
Because cherry blossoms, fireflies and autumn foliage all lose their exquisite
beauty in a very short span of time. We travel far to witness that moment of thenatural phenomenon in its full glory. Yet it is not merely a matter of observing abeautiful locale. Before our eyes, evanescent cherry blossoms scatter, the fireflies’
will-o’-the-wisp vanishes, and the bright autumn leaves are snatched away. We
recognize these events and we find in these changes a certain relief. Oddly, it brings
us a certain peace of mind that the height of beauty passes–and fades away.
- is not actually pessimistic.
As D. T. Suzuki explains in Japanese Spirituality, mujo
Rather it is aesthetic even though it is sometimes regarded negatively.3 Last of all,
Murakami connects this sense of mujo- with the natural disasters that have been3

- nari” [“Al1 things are impermanent”]
Suzuki, pp. 370-73. Sect. 4, Chap. 5 with a subhead “Shogyo wa mujo

128

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

constantly challenging Japan without mercy throughout its long history.
Whether or not that spiritual perspective has been influenced by those natural
catastrophes of Japan is beyond my understanding. Nevertheless, we haveovercome wave upon wave of natural disasters in Japan and we have come toaccept them as “unavoidable things”. . . . We have overcome those catastrophes asa group and it is clear we have carried on in our lives. Perhaps those experiences
have influenced our aesthetic sensibility. (2)In this speech, named “Speaking as an Unrealistic Dreamer,” Murakami talks about
the catastrophic earthquake that hit Northeastern Japan in 2011. He himself went
through the big earthquake that hit the Kobe area in 1995. He was living in Cambridge,
Massachusetts at the time, but his parents were caught in the middle of the earthquake
and their house collapsed, as a result.
In 1997, after returning to Japan from America, he spent two days walking alone
through the Kobe disaster site. That was two years after the quake. In his essay “A Walk
to Kobe,” he refers to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926). He stopped at a little
restaurant toward the end of his walk.
When I was young, I often used to come to this place with my girlfriend, down a
few cold beers, and eat a freshly baked pizza…. We’d talk about our future. And of
all the predictions we made then, not a single one came true. But this was a long,
long time ago. Back when there was still a sea here, back when there were
mountains.
Not that there aren’t still sea and mountains here. Of course there are. What I’m
talking about is a different sea, and different mountains. Different from the ones
here now. As I sip my second beer, I flip open my paperback copy of The Sun Also
Rises and pick up where I left off. The lost story of a lost generation. I’m quickly
lured back into their world.
When he left the restaurant, it was raining heavily outside.
When I finally leave the restaurant, it’s raining, as predicted, and I get wet.

The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 129

Wretchedly wet, soaked to the bone. But by this point it’s too much trouble to buy
an umbrella. (175)Here we can find the sense of resignation that mujo- embraces. There is no point inworrying about floundering now.
Among American literature, Murakami especially has a liking for works that include
a kind of glasswork-like sensitivity and fragility reminding us of the strong sense of loss
that is often present in Truman Capote’s and Fitzgerald’s work. As he reread The Sun
Also Rises, with its scenes of fishing and bullfighting, he became particularly aware of
the fact that Hemmingway wrote with the same kind of sensitivity and sense of loss as
Capote and Fitzgerald. At that time, Murakami might have thought in this way like Jake
Barnes, the protagonist of the novel: “There certainly used to be a bright city of myyouth. It isn’t here anymore. But it surely was. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’” (251) This isalso the story of a lost generation. This is Murakami’s version of “my lost city.” Thehome or the original landscape of one single firefly in Norwegian Wood no longer
remains either. The sheer sense of loss is here, but at the same time it is filled with asense of resignation. There is no sense of despair. Although Murakami might have felt
quite lost, just as Fitzgerald did, he can still find hope. He seeks relief in the aesthetic-.
sense of mujo
Just like the city of Kobe, Japan itself, made a rapid economic comeback after thewar. Looking back on Japan’s history and development, there is certainly a profoundsense of loss. During its dramatic development, Japanese people gradually, and without
realizing it, lost something very important deep within themselves. The rapid pace ofchange has accelerated this intense sense of loss. With no time to stop and reflect upon
what was happening, a generation was left behind and unable to catch up with thedirection in which Japan was moving. When they finally noticed what was going on,
only a sense of “emotional bankruptcy” remained. They found themselves in the same
situation that Josephine faces in “Emotional Bankruptcy” (1922). It is a cautionary talethat can be applied to lost people like the Japanese after World War II.
She was very tired and lay face downward on the couch with that awful, awful
realization that all the old things are true. One cannot both spend and have. Thelove of her life had come by, and looking in her empty basket she had found not a

130

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）

flower left for him, not one. After a while she wept.
“Oh, what have I done to myself ?” she wailed. “What have I done? What have
I done?” (286)
How symbolic it is! Josephine’s wail is a prime example of “lost and lonely people”
in “My Lost City” and many other stories of the same ilk. All of them share Josephine’s
sense of loss.
But after that, from under the rubble, a fragment of lost spirit began to emerge once
again. This happens when people recognize their mistakes, wondering if it is too late?
No, it isn’t. If they can just keep the spirit inside of themselves alive, it is possible tostart over again just like Nick, who decides to trace back Gatsby’s wake of dreams.
In the same way, many American people rapidly abandoned their old values afterWorld War I. As a result, for many, only a tragic sense of loss remained. The Great
Gatsby demonstrates us this clearly. Behind materialistic prosperity, they began to lose
their American spirit. Jay Gatsby, who kept an unwavering sense of faith, was the only
exception, though he mistakenly pursued wealth. Realizing that, Nick Carraway, returns
to the Middle West to seize it back after Gatsby’s death.

V. Unrealistic Dreamers
What Nick has found once again in his journey from loss to regeneration is notrevealed in the novel, but it must be something equivalent to the “real snow” that exists
in Nick’s memory. On his final night in the East, he reaffirms that the Midwestern snow
he knew in the past was actually “real” and hopes that it is still true in the present.
Gatsby holds a never-give-up attitude within himself throughout his entire life,
while Nick, who is also calmly hopeful, also possesses a sense of resignation at thesame time. The contrast between Gatsby and Nick is clearly seen when they have adisagreement about how they each understand the past. When Nick says, “You can’t
repeat the past,” Gatsby hits back passionately.
“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of
his house, just out of reach of his hand.
“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before, he said, noddingThe Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 131

determinedly. “She’ll see.” (86)
Nick probably wanted to agree with him, but he was calm and mature enough to berealistic. Later he practiced what Gatsby wanted to do. Inheriting Gatsby’s will, Nickdecided to return to his starting point to see what the right thing to do would be.
In this way, Nick’s attitude gradually moves toward pursuing infinite hope in theend. It was the Midwestern “real snow” that eventually changed him. His experience of“the thrilling returning trains of his youth,” which meant returning to his originallandscape, supported him until the end of his life.
“Real snow” is Nick’s Midwestern identity and the origin of the American dreamthat Jay Gatsby adhered to throughout his life. They were both from the Midwest, Nickcame from Minnesota and Gatsby from North Dakota. They get lost in the East, just likeFitzgerald who found himself lost in New York. Like his characters, Fitzgerald was able
to revive his spirit back in the Midwest. Gatsby is dead now but his spirit, his American
spirit, will continue to survive there and be carried on by his friend Nick Carraway.
- or impermanence, means an acceptance of reality, but at theThis concept of mujo
same time there remains a glimmer of hope. It does not mean the end of something, butrather refers to the unyielding spirit which is included within this worldview. The“glittering and white” of an ice palace and winter dreams embody mujo- views
beautifully. As Dexter cries out, “Long ago . . . there was something in me, but now thatthing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. Thatthing will come back no more” (65). It is such a forlorn cry. All things are destined todisappear eventually. Impermanence is a fact of life. It is also where we can deeply- at work. Resignation in the face of loss can also be the force
sense the spirit of mujo
from which new hope emerges, eventually becoming eternal. Hope is cyclical in thatnew things always emerge after the disappearance of something. Hope should lastforever.
- shares a lot in common with Fitzgerald. They are
In view of this, Murakami’s mujo
both connected through this perspective. The same applies to Jay Gatsby and Nick
Carraway too. Murakami says that dreaming is the novelists’ task, which he learned
from F. Scott Fitzgerald. In other words, they are both dreamers. They are both beautiful,unrealistic dreamers.
(Professor Emeritus, Seikei University)

132

成蹊大学経済経営論集 第53巻第1号 （2022年7月）* The main idea for this essay was originally presented at the 14th International F.
Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference held under the theme of “Was Student—Am Now
Writer” in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2017. That presentation was entitled “Minnesota
Winter in Fitzgerald’s Literary Imagination.” I have expanded upon that material for thisessay.

Works Cited
Fitzgerald, F. Scott (2007), “Absolution.” All the Sad Young Men. Ed. James L. W. West III.
Cambridge UP. Print.
─ (2005), “Afternoon of an Author.” My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920—1940. Ed.
James L. W. West III. Cambridge UP. Print.
─ (2009), “Emotional Bankruptcy.” The Basil, Josephine, and Gwen Stories. Ed. James
L. W. West III. Cambridge UP. Print.
─ (1991), The Great Gatsby. Ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli. Cambridge UP. Print.
─ (2000), “Ice Palace.” Flappers and Philosophers. Ed. James L. W. West III. Cambridge
UP. Print.
─ (2005), “My Lost City.” My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920—1940. Ed. James L. W.
West III. Cambridge UP., 2014. Print.
─ (2007), “Winter Dreams.” All the Sad Young Men. Ed. James L. W. West III. Cambridge
UP. Print.
Hemingway, Ernest (1926), The Sun Also Rises. New York: Scribner’s. Print.
Kawamura, Minato (1995), Sengobungaku wo tou: Sono taiken to rinen. [The Question on
Postwar Literature: Its Experience and Ideas.] Tokyo: Iwanami-shinsho. Print.
Miyawaki, Toshifumi (2013), Gure-to gyatubi no sekai: Da-kuburu- no yume. [A Dark Blue Dream:
The Great Gatsby.] Tokyo: Seidosha. Print.
Murakami, Haruki (1987), Norwegian Wood. Translated by Jay Rubin, New York: Vintage, 2011.
Print.
─ (1982), A Wild Sheep Chase. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum, New York: Vintage,
2002. Print.
─ (2011), “Speaking as an Unrealistic Dreamer.” Translated by Emanuel Pastreich. The
Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 9, Issue 29, Number 7, July 19. pp. 1-8.
https://apjjf.org/-Murakami-Haruki/3571/article.pdf
─ (2008), “A Walk to Kobe.” Translated by Philip Gabriel, GRANTA, Issue 124 (2013The Aesthetics of the Unrealistic Dreamers: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Haruki Murakami Toshifumi Miyawaki 133

Summer), pp. 161-75. Print.
Okamoto, Taro (2000), Seishun pikaso. [Picasso in His Youth.] Tokyo: Shincho bunko. Print.
Stavola, Thomas J. (1979), Scott Fitzgerald: Crisis in an American Identity. London: Vision P.
Print.
Suzuki, Daisetsu (2010), Nihonteki reisei: Kanzenban. [Japanese Spirituality: Unabridged
Edition.] Tokyo: Kadokawa sophia bunko. Print.