A Slow Boat to China is about a man who recalls his relationships with three main Chinese people living in Japan. The first was a proctor he met in school. The second, a girl whom he worked with during a part-time job. Many years later, he bumped into the third, a salesman who sells encyclopedias to the Chinese in Tokyo.
The best way to describe the thirteenth story of The Elephant Vanishes is by saying it's impressionistic. As an artist, Murakami is striking with his brush of a pen the canvas of paper events from the protagonist's life. They seem unrelated and hazy, so hazy, in fact, that readers are left to wonder what is it that the story is trying to communicate.
I'm not an expert when it comes to subtlety, but I can't help but notice the undertow of the theme of memory.
'What is memory' The story seems to ask. 'How does it define our humanity? Why do some people retain so much of their memories? Why the others can retain so little? Is it because of bad genes or biology or the work of selective amnesia based on carelessness or selfishness?
This story has become personal. For a long time, I've been struggling with 'overlooking' details. I'm not talking here about trivia, but about details that define one's life, details about childhood for example. Thankfully, it's not something medical. Still, it's a bit of a nuisance, if not depressing. It's like when I meet one of my childhood friends and he starts recalling stuff I don't even remember living through. It brings me down, making me think that I'm a selfish person who cares only about himself, not paying attention to those around him. That's why I can relate to the protagonist. He's like a helpless leaf caught in the wind. He's simply a man drifting through life, a man with an impressionistic idea about the past. A man living in the moment with no prospects for the future.
The protagonist is torn by the outcome his life has arrived at. He's beating himself to remember all those tiny details that forever derailed his life, details like 'when was it the year he met his first Chinese?' or why 'he's terrible with (remembering) people's faces'. Everything adds to the jigsaw puzzle of why he never met that Chinese coworker again after he put her on the wrong train and then accidentally threw away the matchbox with her number written on it. But was his 'carelessness' to blame? Why didn't he ask the Chinese old friend about her, or ask him to track her down? He's a salesman specializing in selling encyclopedias to the Chinese in Tokyo by 'going through the Tokyo directory picking out Chinese names, making a list and going through the list one by one'. Why didn't—couldn't he?
Maybe he didn't have an interest in the girl in the first place. Maybe he felt obligated to meet again and then subconsciously sent her away because 'he tends to forget about the past'.
So many 'maybe's. So many ifs. So few answers. But that's Murakami for you.
To encapsulate A Slow Boat to China, I thought of a metaphor. Here it goes:
Let's suppose that intergalactic travel is possible and that humans have managed to build independent civilizations across the galaxy. Passengers can meet at stations, right? But due to the relative nature of the hypothetical reaching-the-speed-of-light, the chances for two people to meet again is highly infinitesimal. [Don't judge me. I might be wrong. This is my understanding of the theory.] Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that Tokyo is a big, big city, and because of the busy life of such a big city, people might not come across each other, again, if they don't find interest in each other. They're simply busy running their humdrum lives. And if they don't take the initiative or will it enough to be attached to one of them, s/he will be 'another China', a China that isn't China, a China for all those lost opportunities and possibilities, a China that is uncharted and unknown.
A Slow Boat to China is a story about missed opportunities, about what makes someone unforgettable, about loss and regret. It's a story about life.
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