The narrator of Murakami’s novel is the owner of a moderately successful jazz bar named Hajime. The beginning of the novel tells of Hajime’s progression from a boy to this middle-aged man, and the young man’s early ‘perfect’ friendship with a girl named Shimamoto. However, when Hajime moves away, he loses contact with the girl and finds himself unable to replicate the friendship with anyone else.
South of the Border, West of the Sun differs from most of Murakami’s work due to its apparent rejection of more fantastical elements. However, the story remains mysterious, as Shimamoto reappears full of secrets and refuses to explain her actions. At the time of the couple’s meeting, Hajime is 36 years old, married with 2 children, and well-regarded by others. Despite this, he is filled with an inexplicable melancholy as he searches for the meaning of his life, which means that he is convinced that Shimamoto could provide it for him.
Shimamoto’s entry into his club for the first time adds to the sense of surrealism that seems to permeate all of Murakami’s work. The conversation between the two seems more similar to a dream sequence than an actual event, and after Shimamoto’s departure, Hajime is left looking for evidence that it really happened. This, combined with Shimamoto’s unexplained absences for months on end, adds a strange quality to their relationship. This could perhaps be seen as a reflection of how Hajime is searching for something insubstantial to create meaning in his life.
Hajime seems to struggle to respect women ever since he lost Shimamoto at such a young age, possibly due to any subsequent woman’s inability to measure up to her. As such, Hajime has a series of sexual adventures, both before and after her marriage, and seems to have little regret about them. Her first true girlfriend, Izumi, is the worst of them, as Hajime crushes her with her actions, the full consequences of which are only seen later in the novel. Hajime’s attitude towards women makes it harder to sympathize with him, as South of the Border, West of the Sun features a protagonist who can be off-putting.
While the clichéd midlife crisis/love triangle plotline may seem hackneyed and outdated by Murakami standards, South of the Border, West of the Sun adds a new dimension to the story. The questions surrounding Shimamoto suggest that there is more at stake than just Hajime’s marriage, in fact, it is in great danger from various sources. However, the reader sometimes begins to get angry with Murakami for what can be seen as a lack of originality, a crime of which he has rarely been accused before. The story of a relatively successful married man seeking excitement has been done thousands of times before, and while South of the Border, West of the Sun adds a number of unique twists to the story, it still seems to lack the power of Murakami’s other works. . As beautifully written as the novel is, demonstrating once again Murakami’s ability to make poetry out of the most mundane of situations, South of the Border, West of the Sun lacks the substance to go with it.