Analysis of the relation between true love, fate and reality in Murakami's short story.

1. Between True Love, Fate and
Reality in Haruki Murakami's short
story
"On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl
One Beautiful April Morning“
by
Carla Thurmanita

2. Characters:
The unnamed boy (narrator and main
character)
Someone
100% Perfect Girl

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. 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 .

16. 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.

17. 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."