After
the Quake is a collection of short stories by Japanese author Haruki
Murakami. First published in 2000, it was released in English as after
the quake in 2002 (translator Jay Rubin notes that Murakami "insisted"
the title "should be all lower-case").
The stories were written in
response to Japan's 1995 Kobe earthquake, and each story is affected
peripherally by the disaster. Along with Underground, a collection of
interviews and essays about the 1995 Tokyo gas attacks, and The Wind-Up
Bird Chronicle, a complex exploration of Japan's modern history, after
the quake represents part of an effort on the part of Murakami to adopt a
more purposeful exploration of the Japanese national conscience.
The stories in after the quake
repeat motifs, themes, and elements common in much of Murakami's earlier
short stories and novels, but also present some notable stylistic
changes. All six stories are told in the third person, as opposed to
Murakami's much more familiar first person narrative established in his
previous work. Additionally, only one of the stories contains clear
supernatural elements, which are present in the majority of Murakami's
stories. All of the stories are set in February 1995, the month between
the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attacks. Translator Jay Rubin says
of the collection, "The central characters in after the quake live far
from the physical devastation, which they witness only on TV or in the
papers, but for each of them the massive destruction unleashed by the
earth itself becomes a turning point in their lives. They are forced to
confront an emptiness they have borne inside them for years."
