1Q84 (collective work) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

• Masami Aomame: A thirty-year-old gym instructor and personal trainer who lives and works in Tokyo. One of two main characters of the novel.
• Tengo Kawana: A 30-year-old writer and part-time math teacher who lives and works in Tokyo. Has occasional crippling flashbacks of his mother. One of the two main characters.
• Yuji Komatsu: An editor of literary magazines, convinces Tengo to rewrite Fuka-Eri's version of <b>Air Chrysalis</b>
• Fuka-Eri: Eriko Fukada. Seventeen-year-old author of Air Chrysalis. Her real name is Fukada Eriko.
• Mr. Miyama: A specialist at an oil company.
• Ken'ichi Tamaru: Enigmatic bodyguard at the Willow House, protector and assistant to the Dowager, and friend to Aomame.
• Shizue Ogata: The dowager widow, Aomame's confidant and sometime-employer. Independently wealthy and a protector of battered women.
• Azami Ebisuno: A young friend of Fuka-Eri's, who typed the original book Air Chrysalis. Daughter of Professor Ebisuno.
• Takayuki Ebisuno: Known as "The Professor"; Azami's father, and Fuka-Eri's protector and unofficial guardian, a former cultural anthropologist.
• Mr. Tamotsu Fukada: Fuka-Eri's father, the founder of Sakigake and the man called "Leader" by its followers.
• Ayumi Nakano: A policewoman in Tokyo who befriends Aomame. In many ways, she is her counterpoint and one of her few friends.
• Tamaki Otsuka: Aomame's closest high school friend.
• Tsubasa: A ten year old girl who the dowager harbors after she escapes from Sakigake.
• Saeko: Tsubasa's caretaker at the safe house.
• Toshiharu Ushikawa: A disbarred lawyer, unusual looking, and Director of the New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts. A link between Sakigake and the outside world.
• Kyoko Yasuda: Tengo's older, married girlfriend.
• Mr. Yasuda: Kyoko Yasuda's husband, who phones Tengo late one night.
• Buzzcut: One of Leader's two bodyguards, an older, shorter man.
• Ponytail: The younger of Leader's two bodyguards.
• Kumi Adachi: One of the three nurses at the sanitorium in Chikura who cares for Tengo's father and befriends Tengo.
• Nurse Omura: One of the three nurses at the sanitorium in Chikura who cares for Tengo's father and befriends Tengo.
• Nurse Tamura: One of the three nurses at the sanitorium in Chikura who cares for Tengo's father and befriends Tengo.
• Bat: One of Ushikawa's mysterious investigative sources, who helps him obtain illegal information.
• Toshie Ota: Tengo's and Aomame's former elementary school teacher.
• Aomame (青豆): gripping tale from first to last
• Masami Aomame: Assassin, gym trainer and a glowing character in the story
• Aomame: 30 year-old Japanese women, protagonist, hired killer.
• Mrs. Fukada: Fuka-Eri's mother.
• Carl Jung: Quoted by Tamaru before he kills Ushikawa
• Einstein: Add a description of this character.
• Toru
• Isak Dinesen
• Anton Chekhov
• Mr. Kozu
• Sonny
• John Dowland
• Faye Dunaway
• Jeff Beck
• Professor Ebisuno
• Steve McQueen
• Okura
• Kyoko Yasuda
• Telemann
• Nakasone
• Miss Takai
• Junko Shimada
• George Orwell
• Anwar Sadat
• Eriko Fukada
• Takayuki Aomame
• Dickens
• Sean Connery
• Cher
• Proust
• Leoš Janáček
• Bobblehead
• Charles Jourdan
• Aristotle
• Noah
• Sibelius
• Mao Zedong
• Louis Armstrong
• Mrs. Tamura
• Adachi Ward
• Kamila

Quotes edit see section history

• “1Q84 — that's what I'll call this new world, Aomame decided. Q is for 'question mark.' A world that bears a question.”

• “Yes, it may sound irresponsible of me, but 'I have no idea' is the gist of this story. You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throught the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.”

• “Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears.”

• “The Professor has big power and deep wisdom. But the Little People have just as deep wisdom and big power as he does. Better be careful in the forest. Important things are in the forest, and the Little People are in the forest, too. To make sure the Little People don't harm you, you have to find something the Little People don't have. If you can do that, you can get through the forest safely.”

  Fuka-Eri

• “In fact, however, this is a town of cats. When the sun starts to go down, many cats cross the bridge into town — cats of all different kinds and colors. They are much larger than ordinary cats, but they are still cats.”

• “I don't have a single friend — not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.”

  Tengo Kawana

• “If you go to a town of cats and don't do anything about it afterward, bad stuff can happen. Come here and hold me. We have to go to a town of cats together.”

  Fuka-Eri

• “Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.”

  Tengo Kawana

• “The moon was as taciturn as ever. But it was no longer alone.”

• “La matematica è come lo scorrere dell'acqua. Naturalmente le teorie sono numerose e abbastanza complicate, ma la logica fondamentale è molto semplice. Come l'acqua che scorre dall'alto verso il basso seguendo il percorso più breve, anche la matematica non ha che un unico flusso. Se lo si osserva a lungo, con attenzione, quel percorso emerge da solo. Basta che ti limiti a guardarlo, senza far nulla. Se ti concentri e guardi con attenzione, tutto si chiarisce da sé. In questo grande mondo non c'è nessuno che mi tratti con tanta gentilezza, a parte la matematica.”

  Tengo Kawana

• “Quando scrivo, usando le parole sostituisco il paesaggio che mi circonda con qualcosa che per me è molto più naturale. Cioè lo ricompongo. Solo così riesco ad accertare che questa persona chiamata "io" esiste davvero nel mondo.”

  Tengo Kawana

• “La violenza non assume soltanto forme visibili, e non sempre dalle ferite scorre il sangue.”

  Aomame

• “A cat met up with a big male rat in the attic and chased him into a corner. The rat, trembling, said, 'Please don't eat me. Please let me go.' The cat said, 'Don't worry, I won't eat you. To tell you the truth, I can't say this too loudly, but I'm a vegetarian. I don't eat meat. You were lucky to run into me.' The rat said, 'Oh, what a wonderful day! What a lucky rate I am to meet up with a vegetarian cat!' But the very next second, the cat pounced on the rat, held him down with his claws, and sank his sharp teeth into the rat's throat. With his last, painful breath, the rat asked him, 'But Mr. Cat, didn't you say you're a vegetarian and don't eat any meat? Were you lying to me?' The cat licked his chops and said, 'True, I don't eat meat. That was no lie. I'm going to take you home in my mouth and trade you for lettuce.'"”

  Tamaru

• “So wait for me. I'm heading your way. Can you hear my footsteps? I don't believe you can. I'm like a tortoise, hardly making a sound. But step by step, I am getting closer.”

  Mr. Ushikawa

• “You can't choose how you're born, but you can choose how you die.”

  Aomame

• “Ayumi had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it.”

• “"...it's like his nerves are a piece of rubber that has been stretched out. It's hard to go back to the original shape."”

  Tamaru

• “"To get something important, people have to pay a price. That's the rule the world operates by."”

  Aomame

• “<p.93> His mother took off her blouse, dropped the straps of her slip, and let a man not his father suck on her breasts. Tengo slept next to him, his breathing audible. But at the same time, Tengo was not asleep. He was watching his mother. This was Tengo's souvenir photograph of his mother. The ten-second scene was burned into his brain with perfect clarity. It was the only concrete information he had about his mother, the one tenuous connection his mind could make with her. They were linked by a hypothetical umbilical cord. His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.”

  Narrator

• “<p.97> Again Tengo and Fuka-Eri stopped talking and, side by side, watched the cityscape stream past the train window opposite them. Featureless houses without end stretched across the flat, featureless earth, thrusting numberless TV antennas skyward like so many insects. Had the people living in those houses paid their NHK subscription fees? Tengo often found himself wondering about TV and radio reception fees on Sundays. He didn't want to think about them, but he had no choice.”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Japan: The country the novel is set in.
• Tokyo: The city most of the novel takes place in.
• Shinjuku: The area in Tokyo where Tengo and Komatsu meet.
• Willow House: The dowager's home in the Azaba neighborhood of Tokyo.
• Yamanashi Prefecture: A prefecture in Japan where Sakigake and Akebono are located.
• Lake Motosu: Site of the farm owned by Akebono and the police shoot-out incident.
• Futamatao: The small mountain town where Professor Ebisuno lives.
• Hotel Okura: The hotel in Tokyo where Aomame meets the man called "Leader".
• Chikura: A seaside town in Chiba, where Tengo's father lives in a sanitarium.
• Koenji: An area in Tokyo where Tengo lives, and where Aomame hides at one point in the story.
• Sakhalin Island
• Sinfonietta
• Azabu
• Shibuya
• Tateyama
• Hokkaido
• Ushilcawa
• Manchuria
• Sangenjaya
• Australia
• Chiba Prefecture
• Yohga
• Africa
• Heaven
• Ikejiri
• Akasaka
• Bohemia
• Paris
• Chuorinkan
• Yoyogi
• Tsudanuma
• Ushihwa
• Uslukawa

Organizations edit see section history

• Sakigake: Meaning "Forerunner"; the organic farming community out of which Akebono was born; now a secretive religious community.
• Akebono: Meaning "First Light," a radical, revolutionary group of organic farmers situated in Lake Moetsu.
• Takashima Academy: A utopian commune the Fukadas went to in the 1970s.
• New Japan Foundation for the Advancement of Scholarship and the Arts: An organization that gives endowments to promising young artists or researchers.
• NHK: (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai) The Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Japan's national pubic television broadcasting company, whose services are paid for by fees collected from viewers.
• Society of Witnesses: A Christian sect characterized by separatist ideologues, dogmatic expectations, and unyielding adherence. In 1Q84, Aomame's family belongs to the Society.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Paucity: The presence of something only in small or insufficient quantities or amounts; scarcity.
• Timpani: Also known as kettledrums; a type of drum, consisting of a skin stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper or fiberglass.
• Crudités: Assorted raw vegetables served as an hors d'oeuvre, typically with a sauce into which they may be dipped.
• Dowager: A widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband.
• Roman-fleuve: A novel featuring the leisurely description of the lives of closely related people.
• Zaibatsu: A Japanese term referring to industrial and financial business conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed for control over significant parts of the Japanese economy from the Meiji period until the end of World War II.
• Dohta: According to Leader, a dohta is "something like a living shadow".
• Maza: The opposite or counterpart of a dohta; the original person of which the dohta is the shadow of their heart and mind.
• QED: Short for the Latin phrase "Quod erat demonstrandum", meaning, "which was to be demonstrated". Used to signal the completion of a proof of something.
• Koan: A story, dialogue, question or statment from Zen Buddhism, the meaning of which cannot be understood by rational thinking but rather through intuition. Eg., "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"
• Kakekomidera: Buddhist refuge convents in Japan from the 13th century until the Meiji period that took in women trying to escape their abusive husbands.
• Hoi polloi: The masses; the common people.
• Yakiniku: Japanese for "grilled meat"; a style of cooking bite-sized meat and vegetables on gridirons or griddles over charcoal flames or gas or electric grills. Often cooked by diners on grills built into tables several pieces at a time during the course of a meal at a restaurant, and dipped in sauces.
• Adroit: Clever or skillful in using the hands or mind.
• Occam's Razor: Seemingly a rhetorical tool of conjuring a solution. According to this rule, the solution is obtained by eliminating all unnecessary factors, reduce the dilemma to one logical line, and then appraise the situation
• Human Chorionic Gonadotropin: A chemical found in the human body, especially around the uterus of a female, that prevents menstruation. Significant traces of it in the bloodstream typically indicate that conception has occurred.
• the Asahi, the Yomiuri, the Mainichi, the Nikkei: four major Japanese newspapers

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• The two moons: Describe this theme.
• Aomame's baby

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Haruki Murakami (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Jay Rubin (Translator)
2. Philip Gabriel (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Kirkus Star
• Man Asian Literary Prize (Finalist, 2011, Longlist)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Contains graphic depictions of sex, incest and references to masturbation. Also contains adult themes, and descriptions of murder.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › Japanese

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Wikipedia
• Haruki Murakami: The author's website
• Random House Haruki Murakami: The publisher's website for Haruki Murakami
• Facebook Haruki Murakami: The facebook page dedicated to Haruki Murakami

Movie Connections edit see section history

• On the Beach (IMDb): The movie is mentioned in chapter 11.

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history