Ideological Conflict and Perpetrators’ Trauma in the Works of Haruki Murakami

PITS (Perpetration-induced Trauma Stress) or perpetrator trauma is a form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a subject of debate in trauma discourse, where it is regarded as an unwelcome ghost that carries a heavy load of moral and ethical ambiguity. The issue arises from the question of how one can experience traumatic stress when one wilfully commits immoral or unlawful acts. In this sense, it must be remembered that perpetrators are not always willful murderers, especially in the case of a war when young men are drafted against their will. The Japanese invasion of China is one such example where a large number of Japanese undergrad students were unwilling draftees, conscripted to advance the state’s militaristic ideology. In his fiction, Haruki Murakami tackles this particular issue by introducing characters like the innocent Japanese youths who were forced to join the war and commit mass atrocities. Because they were not seduced by imperial ideology and its violent ethos, they were unwilling perpetrators of horrific crimes that would come to haunt them upon their return home, causing deep psychological traumas. Their condition was aggravated all the more when their society did not acknowledge their trauma and considered it a weakness. What’s more, those who revealed their psychological condition were regarded as traitors to the nation, thus becoming victims in their own right. This paper analyses the perpetrators’ victim/victimiser duality that brings about the PITS condition. For this purpose, the paper shall analyse the fiction of Haruki Murakami, with special reference to two of his novels: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (1994) and Killing Commendatore (2017).