South of the Border, West of the Sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun

1st edition (Japanese)
Author	Haruki Murakami
Original title	国境の南、太陽の西 Kokkyō no minami, taiyō no nishi'
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre	Novel
Publisher	Kodansha
Publication date	1992
Published in English	1999
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	192 pages
ISBN	0-09-944857-2
OCLC	51106989

South of the Border, West of the Sun (国境の南、太陽の西, Kokkyō no minami, taiyō no nishi) is a short, melancholic novel written by the popular Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, in 1992 while he was a visiting scholar at the Princeton University in the United States. The English translation by Philip Gabriel was released in 1999. Part of the title, 'South of the Border,' refers to the song as sung by Nat King Cole. However, there is no evidence that Nat King Cole actually ever recorded this song. The other half refers to an Inuit syndrome called Piblokto or Arctic (or Siberian) hysteria.

In the novel, Murakami defines Arctic hysteria as follows:

"Imagine this. You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep.

And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana."

The novel tells the story of Hajime, starting from his childhood in a small town in Japan. Here he meets a girl, Shimamoto, who is also an only child and suffers from polio, which causes her to drag her leg as she walks. They spend most of their time together talking about their interests in life and listening to records on Shimamoto's stereo. They join different high schools and grow apart. They are reunited again at the age of 36, Hajime now the father of two children and owner of two successful jazz bars in Aoyama, the trendy part of Tokyo. With Shimamoto never giving any detail as to her own life and appearing only at random intervals, she haunts him as a constant 'what if'. Despite his current situation, meeting Shimamoto again sets off a chain of events that eventually forces Hajime to choose between his wife and family or attempting to recapture the magic of the past.