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Yôko Ogawa's "Cristallisation secrete" was published almost ten years later than Murakami's novel, in 1994.
The main character, a woman who is like most inhabitants of the island. She is incapable of remembering the things lost. She is forgetting more and more items, as they continue to disappear. She is a writer and has hidden her friend (and editor) in her house in order to protect him from the same fate as her mother, who was made to disappear. He is one of the few, like her mother, who remembers even those things that no longer exist. The few who can remember are made to suffer the same fate as the disappeared items. No one ever sees them again.
She feels that the loss of her memories is creating dark empty spaces in her heart and mind. She asks the editor :
"--What is that like to have the heart intact, to never lose anything deep inside? …Is it hard on the heart, does it tighten the heart in a way that is painful?
--No, you must not worry about that…The heart has no contour, no actual depth. That's why it has an infinite depth for absorbing whatever comes its way. Any amount of memories.
--All the things that have disappeared from the island stay complete in your memory?
--Completely? I don't know. Because memories do not just grow and grow inside you, they change with time. Sometimes, we do forget. But in a fundamentally different way from the drastic erasure which happens with you with each disappearance… My memories are not definitively destroyed like a tree uprooted… A tremor, pain, joy, tears, some small bits rest.. do you understand?
…---I imagine sometimes what it would be like if i could take your heart in my hands to look at it, I said. It would fit in my palm and have something like the consistence of unformed gelatin. It threatens to break apart if I hold it too tightly, but it might slip through my fingers if I don't hold it tightly enough … Then, the feeling of things forgotten would come back to me slowly. I could feel in my palms the sentiments that rest in you…Wouldn't that be so lovely?"
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Why Haruki Murakami reminds me of Yôko Ogawa (or why Ogawa reminds me of Murakami)
--continuation, Yôko Ogawa's novel "Cristallisation secrète"
In 1985, Murakami's novel "Hard-boiled Wonderland at the End of the World" was published (original title Sekai no owari to hâdo boirudo wandârando) (La Fin des Temps).
The main character has an alternate reality that we visit periodically throughout the story. His other "consciousness" is a newcomer in a city where people have forgotten many basic things. His job is "reader of dreams" (liseur des rêves) from the skulls of past inhabitants. He does not write anything. He just receives their stories. Then, the skulls are quiet.
"I stayed a long time contemplating her face without saying a word. It seemed to me that her face was trying to make me remember something. Something about her gently agitated some small memories, some buried sediment of shipwrecked sweetness in the depths of my consciousness. But I had no idea what that could mean, and words were hidden in far dark corners…
She made an effort to try to look in her memories for some link to me, but finally she gave up..
--As you know, in this city, the memories are extremely vague, uncertain. There are things one can recall, and others, no. It seems that you have reached a category of remembrances lost. I am sorry…"
"Je restai longtemps à contempler son visage sans dire un mot. Il me semblait que son visage cherchait à me rappeler de quelque chose. Quelque chose en elle agitait doucement des sédiments de tendresse naufragés au plus profond de ma conscience. Mais je n'avais aucune idée de ce que cela signifiait, et les mots étaient enfouis dans de lointaines ténèbres…
elle sembla essayer de chercher dans ses souvenirs un lien avec moi mais finalement elle abandonna…
--Comme vous le savez, dans cette ville les souvenirs sont extrêmement vagues et incertains. Il y a des choses qu'on peut se remémorer, et d'autres non. Il semble que vous rentriez dans la catégorie des souvenirs perdus. Je suis désolée…"
In Murakami's novel : one day, an older man, a longtime inhabitant of the city, tells the newcomer that the girl whose face is so familiar cannot love him in return because she, like all the longtime inhabitants, no longer has a heart. She has lost that with much of her memories. The girl's mother was chased from the city as being one of the few who managed to keep her heart along with her memories.*
*In Yôko Ogawa's "Cristallisation secrete", the woman's mother was "disappeared" for being one of the people who could still retain memories of the things lost.
"--There are no hearts here, says the older man. Even yours will finally disappear. When your heart has finally disappeared, you will no no longer have a feelings of privation nor of desperation…
--That's strange, I said. I still have a heart, but from time to time, i no longer know where it is, nor can feel it…"
"Incapable of knowing my own heart and feelings, I put myself to the task of deciphering the old dreams (of others)…While I concentrated on reading dreams, I could forget this inner emptiness…
I did not achieve an interpretation of these messages that the old dreams sent me…It was like reading, day after day, incomprehensible phrases…
--You read the dreams as if you were haunted by something. Why? (says the girl)… There is something about you that is closed to others…It's as if your heart was hermetically sealed."
After the Reader of Dreams finishes with each set of dreams, or skull, the skulls become ordinary, quiet. They are now impossible to read, even if the Reader has achieved no true comprehension.
"--Il n'y a pas de coeur, dit le vieillard. Même le tien va finir par disparaître. Quand ton coeur aura disparu, tu n'auras plus de sentiment de privation, ni de désespoir…
--C'est étrange, dis-je. Moi j'ai toujours un coeur, mais de temps en temps il m'arrive de ne plus savoir où il est…"
"Incapable de lire au fond de mon propre coeur, je me remis à la tâche pour déchiffrer les vieux rêves…Pendant que je me concentrais sur sur les lecture des rêves, je pouvais…oublier cette sensation intérieure de manquer…
je ne parvenais pas à interpréter les messages que m'envoyaient des vieux rêves…C'était comme lire un jour après jour des phrases qu'on ne comprend pas le sens…
--Pourtant tu lis les rêves comme tu es hanté par quelque chose. Je me demande pourquoi? (dit la fille)..Je pensais que tu dois ouvrir davantage ton coeur … j'ai l'impression que le tien est hermétiquement close."