Murakami’s “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” Essay

March 28, 2022 by Essay Writer

The essay will expeditiously deal with Haruki Murakami’s story, On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning. Haruki Murakami was born in post-war Kyoto but spent most of the formative stages of his life in Kobe. His love for western culture was characterized by his literary works. His determination necessitated his early success in life hence his unrivaled popularity in his native Japan, especially after he had published Norwegian Wood. He later embarked on a tour of Europe and the United States, a period during which he wrote three novels. The Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo subway gas attack made him write two literary works that focused on the two events.

The ethical implication in the discussed work of Murakami is that of unfaithfulness and judgment of people based on their outward looks, rather than what is in someone’s heart, which may be noble. I agree with this work as it typically mirrors the modern discriminatory attitude in a majority of the world cultures where people are judged by such outward features as color, masculinity or femininity, and beauty. The encounter of the main character with a woman of his dream is an illustration of the customs existing in attitudes to appearance and charm, hence showing how dreadful the mistaking perception of some people by others can be.

In Murakami (470), Haruki talks of a boy walking past a wholly perfect girl in Tokyo’s Harajuku classy neighborhood. This girl is portrayed as not well endowed with physical beauty. She does not have good looks and has no special features that would attract a would-be suitor to her. The back of her hair is described as out of shape, presumably because she is just out of bed. She is said to be in her thirties and can no longer think of as a young girl.

The society where this boy life thinks beauty is all a girl needs in life and that anybody who is not endowed with physical beauty stands at risk of being lonely in life without marriage. This is a society that thinks age is the gateway to love and that somebody who attains a specific age before getting married is not entitled to be loved and even receiving the attention of the opposite sex becomes almost impossible. It is not very clear why this boy experiences some rumbling in the chest upon seeing the girl. However, his reaction to the perfect girl is clearly positive, making him think of predestination of their meeting and its possible outcomes.

As witnessed in the boy’s sentiments, the society he lives in has its own favorite girl. The typical girl is expected to have slim ankles, big eyes, and graceful fingers. The boy is, however, devious as he does not stick to the society’s set standards.

He says he has a taste for ladies with uniquely shaped noses. The author’s attention to noses is not occasional, as he tries to mock at the superficial attitudes to beauty as only the outward sign in the metaphor of judging people by that part of their bodies. The emphasis is made on nothing extraordinary the girl possesses in her looks, which implies that there are some deeper spiritual criteria for attractiveness.

One of the author’s dominant messages is that it is not right for people to be discriminated against on the basis of their physical appearance because they have no power to influence how they look. It is quite interesting to note that despite the standards set by society, the boy nevertheless loves this lady. It is, however, laughably absurd that the boy should talk of sitting in a restaurant and start staring at ladies whose noses he thinks he likes after he testified that he loved his childhood sweetheart.

The level of unfaithfulness in this society where men ogle at other women despite the fact that they have their legitimate partners to whom they ought to give their all is evident in the discussed work. If not addressed, this could be the beginning of infidelity in a relationship. Though there are no implications thereof in work, the idea of ethical impropriety of such behavior is clearly felt in the main character’s words and reactions.

In a conversation that the boy initiates with an anonymous person where he talks about his experience at the restaurant, ‘someone’ asks him whether the girl was good looking, but he refuses to answer. It is ethically and morally wrong to think of a lady as being perfect based on her looks. The most important thing about a woman should be the perception of her morale and ideas she has about them. Beauty, to me, is superficial. It is also wrong to reward someone based on the beauty, as witnessed when ‘someone tells the boy that he would only like a specific type of ladies- his favorite type.’ In the conversation the boy had with ‘someone,’ he alludes to the desire of having the girl in bed.

This, in particular, is strange because these two are not married, and he talks of having sex with her. There is more to loving someone than just desiring to have sex with them. Love is something that is got in totality, and there are no instances when love can be gotten in percentages like 75 or 85 percent. I find it disturbing when the boy and girl, after shifting between love and life, are talked of as realizing 75 percent or 85 percent love. This is absolutely misleading.

The story highlights the ethical concerns that are contentious, as well as those that are not contentious. The society where the writer resides is wrong in judging the beauty of ladies by their outward appearance and features. In a real sense, outward beauty is superficial, and the real beauty of a person resides in the heart. Features such as slim ankles, big eyes, and graceful fingers cannot be used to judge a ladies’ beauty. The author depicts a romantic, deep-looking individual able to recognize the superficial and limited elements of social perception, the stereotypical invalidity of people’s judgments, and dreams of escaping from them to the ideal world with an ideal girl.

However, his dreams are not to be fulfilled at that moment since he is still bound by the limitations of his society, though he is already in a superior position because of his ability to notice the wrongs present there. Some more effort is necessary to overcome the prejudice embedded in the consciousness and to follow the lead of the spirit wishing more; the author only outlines the way for self-improvement but does not enable his character to accomplish that goal.

Work Cited

Murakami, Haruki. “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning” Madden.

Frank. Exploring Literature: Writing and Arguing about Fiction, Poetry, Drama and the Essay. 4th ed. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009. Print. 470-473.

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