The City and Its Uncertain Walls

M** is a teenage boy who spends his days in the library. He is neurodivergent and struggles to find a role for himself in the town, leading to his desire to enter the walled-in city, where he believes he will more easily fit in. He cannot attend school, but reads as much as he can, absorbing books at an astounding rate in the library. At first, the protagonist cannot understand the boy or his intentions, as the boy rarely speaks and his actions are so extraordinary. M** is defined by his relationship to reading, which appears to be a pursuit of accumulating knowledge, even if there are no signs of him intending to apply it: “He insatiably crammed in knowledge, but it never was enough, since the world overflowed with an outrageous amount of information. Even with his special abilities, of course, there had to be a limit to one individual’s capacity” (275). M**’s primary goal is to read every book he can, something he believes he will be better able to accomplish in the walled-in town. He is lonely, like the protagonist, and decides that even if he remains lonely in the walled-in town, his skills will finally make sense and have a definite purpose.

In the walled-in town, M** transforms into Yellow Submarine Boy. The character is the same, but as the real protagonist never meets M** in the real world, he does not know him and identifies him by his parka. M** is right about his prospects in the walled-in town: He is exceptionally gifted at reading dreams, but he is unable to wake the dreams in order to access them. To fulfill his destiny as the Dream Reader, he must merge with the protagonist so that the protagonist can wake the dreams for him to read. The world changes around M** to better suit him, and so too does M** change. He can speak freely with the protagonist and express himself verbally in ways he could not in reality. The walled-in town gives Yellow Submarine Boy the life he wants, and he believes himself and the town to be integral to the other’s existence: “I need this town, and the town needs me. The town isn’t workable without a Dream Reader. There’s no way they would drive me away. The town, and the wall, will change ever so slightly to fit in with me” (440). The walled-in town is the perfect world for Yellow Submarine Boy, and he finally finds a place where he belongs. His dream-reading abilities help the town to function, and he believes that the town will transform to better fit him, as the real world failed to do. His skills, objectives, and values never change over the course of the novel, but the reality he exists in does change to better suit him. Though he changes, he is the same boy, just in a reality that understands him better.

Mr. Koyasu is the ghost who haunts the local library. He is the former director and used his own money from the sale of his family’s sake brewery to establish the library. He plays many roles in the novel despite his infrequent appearances. The first is that of an empathetic listener to the protagonist. Like the protagonist, he experiences heartbreak after the loss of his wife and son. However, Mr. Koyasu proves to be a foil to the protagonist because of how he reacts to this devastation. Though neither fully recovers, Mr. Koyasu approaches the remainder of his life with a daring confidence in what he wants: “[A]t a certain point I started wearing this skirt. And in a conservative rural town like this nobody’s crazy enough to try to set up a woman with a man who walks around town dressed so weirdly” (260). Mr. Koyasu does not want to have another relationship with a woman, and he wears a skirt to deter any attention. The protagonist, after the disappearance of his teenage girlfriend, is unsure of what to do, and though he tries to move on, he cannot. He floats through life, not forming attachments but not completely closing himself off to them. While Mr. Koyasu takes measures to craft the life he wants, the protagonist waits for his girlfriend to return.

The other role that Mr. Koyasu plays in The City and Its Uncertain Walls is that of a guide and advisor for the protagonist. He uses his own experiences to help the protagonist understand his heartbreak as well as his experiences in the walled-in town. By speaking with the protagonist, sharing his own experiences of heartbreak and hypotheses about the walled-in town, Mr. Koyasu builds a trusting relationship with the protagonist. Before he disappears, Mr. Koyasu transfers the role of guide to the protagonist, instructing him to help M**: “He’ll find his own way to get there. He will no doubt need your assistance in doing so, but what form that assistance takes is also something he has to find on his own. There’s no need for you to decide a thing” (342). Mr. Koyasu prepares the protagonist to help M** in his journey to the walled-in town while also assuaging the protagonist’s fears about the ethics of doing so. He reminds the protagonist of the personal nature of such a journey, and that he has no bearing on what M** decides to do. This helps the protagonist accept his role in helping M**, and prepares him to become for M** what Mr. Koyasu is for him.

The protagonist’s girlfriend is his first love interest and a consequential influence in his life. This girlfriend introduces the protagonist to the walled-in town, and along with him, helps construct it on the page and in his mind. She lives between reality and illusion, often confusing the real world for her dreams. This kind of attitude toward reality is a precursor for the protagonist’s experiences nearly 20 years later. For this girl, dreams fuel her and make her who she is: “For you, dreams were almost on the same level as events in the real world. Not something that you’d easily forget or something that would vanish so easily. Dreams were like a crucial water source, nurturing your heart, conveying something vital” (22). The protagonist’s teenage girlfriend is very sensitive to other realities, particularly that of the walled-in town. In fact, she tells the protagonist that her real self is in the town, and that she is merely a shadow: “My real self—the real me—is in a town far away, living a completely different life […]. The me that lives there doesn’t have dreams, and doesn’t weep” (63). This description of her other self as detached from emotions foreshadows the protagonists later suspicion that this other, supposedly real self is the shadow, while the form that exists in the material world is the real self. The girlfriend does not reappear later in the novel, and though he does meet her other self in the walled-in city, he quickly learns that the two girls have little in common beyond their appearances. Her experiences foreshadow those of the protagonist as he ventures to the town and back, eventually learning that his shadow exists out in the real world.

The protagonist’s girlfriend exists in two worlds. In the walled-in town, she does not age and remains 16. Her job is to work in the library and help the Dream Reader heal his eyes and read dreams. She reflects the girl the protagonist knew, and when he finds his way to the walled-in town and meets this girl, he hopes that she is the same girl he knew. It becomes apparent quickly that she is not the same girl, and though they foster a relationship, it is different from that in the real world. She is aware that her shadow exists elsewhere, but asserts that she shares no real connection to it: “I’m not the fifteen-year-old girl you were in love with. We might have been one originally, but my shadow was cut away from me when I was little, and we were separated. We became separate beings” (109). The girl from the library is confident that she and her shadow are no longer connected, and she encourages the protagonist not to view them as the same. Just as the protagonist’s girlfriend foreshadows the protagonist’s experiences in the walled-in town, the girl from the library foreshadows his shadow’s role. For much of the novel, both the shadow and the protagonist see the shadow as a mere appendage to him, not its own individual being. At the end of the novel, the protagonist learns that his shadow exists independently, apart from him, just as the girl in the library said she and her shadow do.

The coffee shop woman is a love interest of the protagonist and one of the few people the protagonist builds a meaningful relationship with in The City and Its Uncertain Walls. Like the protagonist, she is a young, single transplant to the small town. She is a mirror to the protagonist, reflecting his own identity back at him in a different form. When they first begin spending time together, they bond over their mutual loneliness. She introduces him to her solitary routines, and he immediately grasps their value: “My own secret ceremony. Each day one menthol cigarette and one glass of single malt. Or sometimes wine […]. Single people need those kind of modest rituals in their lives. To get through each day” (366). The coffee shop woman smokes a cigarette and drinks whiskey to unwind, and the protagonist understands her reasoning. As a longtime single person, the protagonist knows the importance of rituals in a lonely day. Through their shared identity as single people, the coffee shop woman and the protagonist become less lonely.

As the protagonist and coffee shop woman grow closer, the coffee shop woman helps the protagonist to heal from past pain. The protagonist never recovers from the disappearance of his teenage girlfriend, too afraid of love. However, his bond with the coffee shop woman strengthens over time, and though she is closed off physically, his care for her is meaningful. By the end of Part 2, the coffee shop woman becomes a person on whom the protagonist can rely, and her ability to comfort and heal him opens him up to the possibility of love again: “After she gently stroked it, the pain in my ear—the faint vestiges of the dream—vanished without a trace. Like morning dew dispelled in the fresh sunlight” (387). The protagonist feels immense pain after the doll of M** bites his earlobe in his dream. When the coffee shop woman touches it, the pain is gone. This strange moment demonstrates to the protagonist that he has a real connection to her. The simile that Haruki Murakami uses to describe this moment positions the coffee shop woman as the sun, and her light as the healing force that dispels the protagonist’s pain. She is a new beginning for him.

The protagonist’s shadow reflects the protagonist, being the same in form and sharing memories and experiences. In Part 1, in which the shadow is separate from the protagonist in the walled-in town, it shows no individual identity or drive. It acts as an extension of the protagonist, deferring to his decisions, though it does attempt to inform his decision about leaving the town. At this stage in the novel, the shadow is merely attached to the protagonist: “I’m a mere appendage. I don’t have any great wisdom, nor any real role to play. Yet if I totally vanish, it will cause some inconvenience. I don’t want to sound conceited, but I haven’t been with you all this time for no reason” (71). The shadow wants to leave the town, and is confident in doing so, and does leave alone. However, its deferral to the protagonist shows a lack of identity and self-confidence. Its inability to act independently makes it a stagnant, secondary character throughout Part 1.

The shadow leaves the walled-in town through the pool by the south gate, and its fate is unknown for most of the novel. In Part 3, however, Yellow Submarine Boy reveals that he knows the protagonist’s shadow in the real world. This means that the protagonist in Part 2 is the shadow, and that the original protagonist remains in the walled-in town. Through this revelation, the shadow becomes a dynamic character. The shadow becomes the protagonist in the real world, and makes its own decisions, living the life of the protagonist: “Sometimes the shadow and the real person trade places, and trade roles. But whether you’re the real you or your shadow, either way you’re you. […] It might be best to think how each is the vital other self to the other” (439). The shadow continues to reflect the protagonist, but by the end of the novel is an essential piece of the protagonist’s identity and not a meaningless extension. It lives as the protagonist and has its own life. When the protagonist leaves the walled-in town, he will be reunited as one with the shadow, who is now as much an individual as the protagonist.