The Japanese novelist and short story writer Haruki Murakami, who was raised in Kobe, explores the penetration of the Kobe earthquake into the lives of a variety of characters, none of them residents of the city, in his collection of short stories After the Quake (2000).

The stories deal with the spiritual aftershock emanating from the physical disaster. Most of them involve recognitions that lead to, or anticipate, recoveries in the form of renewed entries into life. In "Thailand," a female research scientist from Kyoto takes a holiday, shortly after the quake, at a remote, luxurious Thailand resort. Her guide brings her to an old village seer who sees in her eyes the hatred she harbors for her ex-husband. The former husband lives in Kobe, and the woman has been carrying within her the wish that he and his new family have been killed in the quake. The woman comes to see the connection between that feeling and the death of the woman's father when she was young. In "UFO in Kushiro," a wife deserts her husband after she has spent five days mesmerized by the television coverage of the disaster. She leaves a note, telling him, "You have nothing inside you." A friend sends the distraught husband on a trip, bearing a package, contents unknown. On arrival, he discovers the connection between himself and his package. In the book's longest story, "Honey Pie," set in Tokyo, a four-year-old girl's recurrent nightmare of being visited by "Mr. Earthquake" triggers a seismic shift in the relations of her parents and their mutual best friend, a short-story writer, alienated from his parents, who are living in Kobe. The interaction between the little girl and the writer may remind readers of some of the stories of J. D. Salinger.

Many of these tales bear the characteristic mark of Murakami's fiction--frequent references to Western culture, popular and classical, particularly to American jazz. Two of the stories make important references to the Errol Garner album Concert by the Sea. He also invokes fantastic and surrealistic effects in the manner of many Western postmodern novelists. In this respect, Murakami's work, which has made him among the most popular and respected Japanese novelists at home and abroad, represents what some see as an extreme form of the westernizing trend in Japanese culture. But After the Quake and Murakami's nonfictional account of the subway terrorist attack, Underground (1997), testify to his continuing attachment to his Japanese roots.

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