村上春樹『騎士団長殺し』に描かれた記憶 - 音楽的観点を中心に -

Abstract

In this article, we analyze Haruki Murakami’s latest novel Killing Commendatore from the perspective of music. “Killing Commendatore” is a picture portrayed by Tomohiko Ameda based on Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Mozart’s worldview, which is described through Don Giovanni, is reflected in not only pictures but also the world of the novel. The main character “I” sees the picture “Killing Commendatore,” sharing the space where the great painter stayed and inheriting Ameda’s violent memory. At the same time, while depicting a portray of Wataru Menshiki, “I” is aware of his lurking violence. Killing Commendatore can be regarded as a work which expresses Haruki Murakami’s sense of conflict which he has felt as a post-war writer, such as historical violence like wars and individual violence. As in the cases of characters that have been described in his previous works, the main character of the present novel is described as an individual who possesses violence and a conflict about it as well as otherworldly trips. In Killing Commendatore, however, a child of the main character is introduced, unlike Murakami’s previous works. In this article, we analyse the way in which the concept of music, a distinctive feature of Murakami’s works, is connected to the aforementioned change and it affects the main character