Libraries in Murakami (Sadie)

 Having previously presented on bars and cafe's in Murakami's work, the reoccurring theme of libraries stood out to me upon reading The Strange Library. The library is an essential third place, unlike a cafe or a bar, and serves as a public archive and a place to seek knowledge. This makes sense if you consider that Murakami's characters are always on a quest fueled by nostalgia.

Obviously, The Strange Library begins with the narrator entering a library, only for it to turn into a prison. Libraries are important in Kafka on the Shore and Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and the narrator even works in one in the latter title, untangling dreams from unicorn skulls and releasing the information from them. In Kafka on the Shore, Komura Memorial Library is Kafka's destination when he leaves home on his 15th birthday. It serves as the main setting for the characters, but is also a special place that records the characters lives.

It makes sense that Murakami sees a library as a maze to untangle, as it is impossible for just one person to absorb all the information that a library contains. We as individuals go to the library to seek information, but that is a quest that is unique to just us, making the library a place to see out a specific answer. This makes sense with the "black box" metaphor we read about in Strecher's article. If the black box is something of an uncrackable box of memories and experiences that Murakami is trying to open up and analyze, it makes sense for a library to be the place to do it.