Daria answers “Has anybody got any ideas about why none...”

Steve Fouse asked this question about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World:

Has anybody got any ideas about why none the characters have names? The narrator is never named, and there are the chubby girl, the librarian(s), the Gatekeeper, and others. It may be a way of making the story's themes apply universally rather than just to specific people, but the characters are described in detail, and seem too real to be just nameless, non-specific persons.

Daria I join everybody who thinks that without names it's easier to "travel" between two worlds in this book, but I also want to add something I strongly be…moreI join everybody who thinks that without names it's easier to "travel" between two worlds in this book, but I also want to add something I strongly believe in.
I think that in every book Murakami tells us a new story, but with the same heroes. They might seem a bit different but the "ideas" of them travel from one book to another. The main character, the Rat, the wives, the girlfriends of theirs, the mediators between the worlds in different books - Hard-Boiled Wonderland has the same heroes as Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball 1973 etc (and even beyond the Rat trilogy, including Kafka on the Shore, foe example). But since in some of those books the names of the characters are different, Hard-Boiled Wonderland has no names at all so that we don't mix all the characters in our head. They have clear presence, clear characters, they are recognisable, that's why they don't need names.(less)

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