Line #17 Literature/OneQEightyFour


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/1q84.png]]
2	-->''I'd better give an appropriate name to this new situation in which I find myself. There's a need, too, for a special name in order to distinguish between this present world and the former world... [...] Even cats and dogs need names. A newly changed world must need one, too.''\
3	''1Q84—that's what I'll call this new world'', Aomame decided.\
4	''Q is for "question mark." A world that bears a question.''
5	Aomame is an athletic woman who works full time as a fitness instructor, and part time as an assassin for the dowager. Unlike most assassins, her targets aren't political figures but abusive men with too much legal and monetary backing to get them out of their wives' lives through legitimate means. Aomame is essentially the dowager's last resort when all other options fail, and so far the dowager's careful planning and Aomame's unique murder method have helped keep Aomame and the dowager from rousing suspicion. This may change, though, with Aomame's newest target: the head of the religious organization, Sakigake, referred to only as Leader. There's clear evidence that Leader has been raping underage girls and Sakigake's isolation has proven difficult- if not impossible- to crack. Thankfully, Aomame's talent for muscle therapy gives them the in they've been seeking.
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7	Tengo Kawana is a mathematically gifted man who works as a cram school instructor most days. During his free time, he mainly works on his literary ambitions, but so far nothing concrete has come out of it. This is why when his editor friend, Komatsu, offers him the chance to rewrite ''Air Chrysalis''- an amazing short novel hampered by its incredibly awkward prose- Tengo ultimately accepts. Before the rewrite can truly start, Tengo meets Fuka-Eri, the novel's enigmatic author.
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9	Little do Aomame and Tengo know where their tasks will take them: a world with two moons and actual air chrysalises, a species of incomprehensible beings called the Little People, one dimension opened and another closed off. As each of them progress through this strange world, their feelings for each other might finally be the key to their long awaited reunion and escape from the two-moon world.
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11	''1Q84'' (いちきゅうはちよん, ''Ichi-Kyū-Hachi-Yon'') is a science fantasy novel by Creator/HarukiMurakami. It was originally released in Japan in three separate parts with Books 1 and 2 being released in May 2009 and the third and final one being published in April 2010. The English translation combined all three volumes into one big book, being released in October 2011. Jay Rubin translated the first two books while Philip Gabriel translated the third.
12	----
13	!! This novel contains examples of:
14	* AboveGoodAndEvil: The Little People are a species of otherworldly beings whose actions cannot be judged by humanity's moral standards. This is mainly because their own moral values are so wildly different from our own.
15	* AbusiveParents: Tengo's father forced Tengo to come along on his NHK fee collection route every Sunday, even if Tengo was sick. This happened for several years until Tengo finally had had enough and- with the help of a teacher- managed to convince his father to allow him to choose how to spend his Sundays. Even twenty years later, Tengo is still weary of Sundays and shows signs of PTSD symptoms whenever that day of the week of rolls around.
16	* AmoralAttorney: Before being kicked out of the Tokyo Bar Association, Ushikawa was a lawyer that helped the yakuza and other unsavory types get away with money laundering and fraud. He had to take such clients mostly due to the difficulties his ugliness caused in getting normal clients.
17	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking:
18	** The three things Aomame hates the most are abusive men, religious fanaticism, and constipation.
19	** Tamaru describes his gripes with the 20th century as being the Holocaust, the atom bomb, and modern classical music.
20	%%* AsYouKnow: Used often as a means of exposition and summarizing previous events.
21	* AssholeVictim: The men Aomame assassinates are always abusive men with too much power to separate them from their wives in a less murderous way, or would only continue to harass their ex-wives if left alive.
22	%%* BadassNormal: Aomame and Tamaru.
23	* BadMoonRising: A second moon appears in the sky to reinforce the idea that Aomame is no longer in the 1984 she was used to. It also coincidences with her getting involved in Sakigake and the Little People, one of whom is a supremely powerful and tight-knit religious organization and the other is a supernatural species who defy ordinary human comprehension.
24	%%* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: Described as essential by the Leader.
25	* BatterUp: Aomame used a softball bat to smash the objects in the house of her late best friend's abusive husband. In the present, she requests a bat for self defense in case someone from Sakigake should get too close.
26	%%* BlackAndGrayMorality: Aomame is an assassin, but she only kills men who have been abusive and despicable. As goes with the Madame who gives Aomame her assignments. Komatsu displays a more self-serving morality.
27	* CharacterTics: Aomame is described as having beautiful facial features that change so drastically whenever she frowns or grimaces that her new expression will terrify anyone who sees it. She uses this trait as a psychological weapon against men whom she wants to leave her alone.
28	* ChekhovsGun: Aomame is planning to use a gun to either fend off Sakigake's goons or kill herself if she gets captured. After acquiring the gun for her, Tamaru brings up the concept of Chekov's Gun, and both he and Aomame discuss it. The main gist of their conversation is that, even though Aomame has introduced a gun into her story, it doesn't have to go off. [[spoiler:Aomame comes very close to following through on Checkov's principle, but ultimately does not fire the gun at all.]]
29	%%* ChildSupplantsParent: Tengo struggles with his father and is half-convinced that the man isn't his biological father. He overcomes his father by reading to him while he is in a coma, taking on a role-reversal of sorts, but also allowing Tengo to self-reflect. In the same place, Tengo spends the night with one of the nurses, Kumi Adachi. He does not sleep with her, but he does share in some of her hash and has a vivid memory of her luxuriant pubic hair- a sign of maturity. [[spoiler:Later on after Tengo's father passes away, it is hinted that Kumi may be the reincarnation of Tengo's mother.]]
30	* CyanidePill: In response to a request to obtaining a gun for her, Tengo points out to Aomame that a cyanide pill would be far easier to acquire and achieve the same result as suicide by bullet. Aomame, in turn, reminds him that a pill can be easily ripped out of her hands or mouth and you can't exactly threaten the life or lives of one's captors with a single pill.
31	* DividedForPublication: The novel was originally published in Japan as three separate books. While the American release combined all three for the US English publication, the British release also released it in parts (two not three).
32	* {{Doorstopper}}: The Japanese version is 1,600 pages long and the English translation is 1,100 pages with fairly small text.
33	* DownTheRabbitHole: After getting stuck in a traffic jam, Aomame exits the cab she was in and descends the nearby emergency stairway in order to make it to her "appointment" on time. The staircase deposits her into the world of 1Q84, a world with two moons, a religious organization called Sakigake, and the otherworldly beings they venerate, the Little People. [[spoiler:At the end of the novel, Aomame and Tengo get out of the world of 1Q84 by going ''up'' that same stairway.]]
34	%%* EarnYourHappyEnding: It takes about 20 years for Aomame and Tengo to find each other.
35	* EccentricMentor: Komatsu is Tengo's editor who is more respected than liked within the literary scene. One of his habits is calling Tengo very early in the morning despite being told repeatedly not to do that.
36	%%* EldritchAbomination: Despite the name, the Little People have some shades of this too.
37	* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Within Sakigake, the man at the top of the hierarchy is referred to only as Leader. The narrative itself also defaults to Leader even after its clear that he's Tamatsu Fukada, Fuka-Eri's father.
38	* FairCop: Ayumi is a beleaguered cop who is forced to take menial, dull work thanks to her sexist colleges. She's young (around Aomame's age) and is quite attractive.
39	* FirstGirlWins: While Tengo has had dalliances as an adult, he's never been able to forget Aomame. As such, he's never fully given his heart to any of his past girlfriends.
40	* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:Tengo and Aomame make it out of 1Q84, but where they end up is not quite like how Aomame remembers the 1984 she used to know.]]
41	* GenreBusting: ''1Q84'' is mix of many genres; it's mostly a soft sci-fi (the alternate dimension of 1Q84) mixed with magical realism (the supernatural beings called the Little People) and shades of the thriller genre (Aomame's assassination of Sakigake's Leader and their attempts to hunt her down). There's also a bit of romance, what with Aomame and Tengo's undying love for each other and desire to reunite after twenty years apart.
42	* GroinAttack: Aomame is aware that the quickest and best way to taking down a man is to kick them in the groin. As such, part of her self-defense training included teaching women how to do just that with precision, using a mannequin with fake testicles as a target. The male members of the club eventually got uncomfortable with this practice and Aomame was forced to retire the mannequin.
43	* TheGrotesque: Ushikawa's ugliness garners disgust and/or pity, and it's heavily impacted his quality of life.
44	* {{Hypocrite}}: Tengo's girlfriend, Kyoko, warns him that she has a jealous streak, insisting that he be completely monogamous despite being married herself.
45	%%* KickTheDog: The [[TheFairFolk Little People]]'s torture of Tsubasa.
46	* LastMinuteHookup: [[spoiler:The novel ends with Aomame and Tengo escaping 1Q84, renting a room in a hotel, and having sex before looking up at the solitary moon in the sky.]]
47	* LiteraryAllusionTitle: ''1Q84'' is a pun on ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' by George Orwell- "9" in Japanese is pronounced the same as the English letter "Q". Orwell's novel gets referenced a few times through the figure of Big Brother.
48	* MagicRealism: The setting of the novel is firmly grounded in the Japan of 1984, but that slowly stops being wholly true after Aomame exits the expressway through the emergency stairway and Tengo reads ''Air Chrysalis'' and meets its author, Fuka-Eri.
49	* MurderTheHypotenuse: Played with, when [[spoiler:Tengo's girlfriend disappears as Aomame gets closer to finding him. It isn't clear if Kyoko's dead or not, but her husband's statement that she's "irretrievably lost" suggests that she is.]]
50	* MushroomSamba: Tengo has a rather odd drug induced hallucination after partaking in some hash with Nurse Kumi.
51	* MysteriousWaif: Fuka-Eri is a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl who used to be apart of the religious organization, Sakigake. She managed to escape the commune and make a living in the outside world, but her experiences in Sakigake left a permanent mark. She has a peculiar speaking style- short sentences, lack of inflection when asking questions, etc.- and, if she doesn't want to answer a question or inquiry, she'll simply ignore whoever is speaking to her.
52	* NeverSayDie: Aomame refers to her murder victims as "being sent to another world".
53	%%* NotSoDifferentRemark: Ushikawa realizes that he has a lot in common with Tengo.
54	* NotSoStoic: Ushikawa prides himself on being detached from connections with others and emotions, but the narrative makes it clear that he deeply misses his ex-wife and two daughters. [[spoiler:His last thoughts are of when the four of them lived in Chuorinken.]]
55	* NowDoItAgainBackwards: [[spoiler:Aomame and Tengo are able to escape the world of 1Q84 by climbing back up the emergency escape ladder Aomame climbed down at the beginning of the story.]]
56	* {{Omnibus}}: Originally published as three separate volumes, the English release combined all three into one really big book.
57	* ParrotExposition: Fuka-Eri's unique way of talking often leads Tengo to rephrasing her question-markless questions as fully fleshed out questions. These exchanges are usually some form of exposition related to Fuka-Eri and the actions she takes as the story progresses.
58	%%* PostModernism
59	* PowersThatBe: The Little People are a group of otherworldly beings that can only enter this world through specific passageways. Their features are nondescript, they can change their size at will (though they can never be smaller than two inches or taller than four feet), and they possess the ability to make air chrysalises, change the weather, and so on. Their sense of morality- if they even have one- is very different from the average human's and the person they pick as their conduit often suffers slow muscle deterioration.
60	%%* PowerfulPick: Aomame uses a small ice pick to kill her targets. One stab to the brain, leaving a wound hardly bigger than a mosquito bite.
61	* PressurePoint: Aomame can detect a specific nerve at the bottom of the neck. When this spot is stabbed with a thin needle, the victim immediately dies. This method of murder leaves only the tiniest pinprick and the affect looks much like a heart attack, which is how Aomame has been able to murder two men without alerting the authorities.
62	* PunBasedTitle: The title is a play on 1984: in Japanese, the number nine (九) is often pronounced the same as the the English letter "Q" (kyuu). It also doubles as a reference to ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'' by Creator/GeorgeOrwell with that book getting direct shout outs several times throughout this one.
63	* RevolversAreForAmateurs: The cops in the alternate reality carry modern semiautomatic pistols instead of revolvers. Aomame learns that this is because of a highly publicized incident in which several cops lost their lives fighting off cultists, so the department upgraded their weapons to save face.
64	* SadisticChoice: Aomame can either kill Leader, causing the Little People to lose any interest in Tengo but result in Sakigake coming after her, or let him live, in which case the Little People will arrange Tengo's death. Aomame can't imagine a world in which she lives but Tengo dies, so she follows through with the original plan of murdering Leader.
65	%%* ShadowArchetype: Maza and Dohta
66	* ShowWithinAShow:
67	** ''Air Chrysalis'' is a short novel dictated by Eriko Fukada (aka Fuka-Eri) and reworked by Tengo Kawana. It follows a ten-year-old girl who lives in an isolated religious commune. She's tasked with taking care of a sacred blind goat, but when the goat dies, the girl is punished by being locked in a warehouse for ten days with the dead goat's body. After a couple days pass, beings called the Little People enter the world by using the goat's corpse as a passageway. Together with the Little People, the girl weaves an air chrysalis. Once the chrysalis is done and it breaks open, the girl sees a copy of herself sleeping inside. Some time later, the girl manages to escape the commune.
68	** "Town of Cats" is a short story by a German writer that Tengo reads. In it, the protagonist is traveling aimlessly when he stumbles upon a seemingly deserted town. Despite no one living there, there's no signs of it being derelict or otherwise in ruin. Upon nightfall, the protagonist sees why: cats have taken over the town. Aside from their large size, all of them look just like a regular house cats but act similarly to humans. Too amazed by what he's seeing, the protagonist stays for a few days in the town to observe this strange town, hiding out in the tower during the night. One night, the cats notice something off and almost stumble upon the protagonist. After this close shave, the protagonist decides to leave, but finds that the train he'd arrived on isn't making any stops at the town's station; he is essentially trapped in the town of cats forevermore.
69	* SpoilerTitle: [[spoiler:The last chapter of Book 3 names the perspective as being "Tengo and Aomame"'s, revealing that they managed to reunite after twenty years of being a part.]]
70	%%* StarCrossedLovers: Tengo and Aomame
71	* TheStoic: Fuka-Eri never shows emotions. This is because she was separated from her dohta at a young age, a dohta being revealed as the shadow of one's heart. She isn't a shell-of-a-person, zombie-like character in the absence of her shadow; she still has a semblance of personality.
72	* StrangeMindsThinkAlike: While waiting in a taxi, Aomame compares herself to Faye Dunaway in ''Film/{{The Thomas Crown Affair\|1968}}''. Not long after she thinks this, the taxi driver makes the same comparison.
73	%%* ThisIsReality: Tamaru to Aomame, see Chekhov's Gun
74	* ThirdLineSomeWaiting: Book 3 includes POV chapters from Ushikawa's perspective. His story is somewhat separate from Aomame's and Tengo's; Ushikawa is tasked with tracking Aomame down, but- when direct leads dry up and he finds a connection with Tengo- he decides to shadow Tengo instead, thinking that Aomame will eventually try to contact Tengo. [[spoiler:He gets uncomfortably close to finding Aomame once or twice, but gets killed by Tamaru before he can.]]
75	* ThresholdGuardians: The Esso Tiger billboard stands near the entrance to the world of 1Q84. Aomame comes to think of the Tiger as a guardian of sorts, even finding comfort in the mascot.
76	* ToBeLawfulOrGood: Aomame thinks that the illegality of her actions are a trivial detail when compared to the very real harm done by the men she kills.
77	* ViewersAreGoldfish: The novel a habit of repeating information when it isn't necessary. For instances where it's Tengo repeating back something Fuka-Eri said, it makes a certain sense since Fuka-Eri's odd speaking style can be difficult to understand exactly what she means. But descriptions of character appearances are given several times within the same section with seemingly no reason other than to pad out the word count.
78	%%* WellDoneSonGuy: Tengo. What's odd is that he manages to come to an understanding while his father is in a coma.
79	* WellIntentionedExtremist: Aomame and the dowager both had loved ones who were abused by their husbands so badly that they were driven to suicide (a childhood friend and daughter, respectively). This common ground is what eventually led the dowager to utilizing Aomame as something of an assassin. The dowager knows the psychological turmoil that can come with taking a life, so she only requests Aomame's help when all other legal options have failed.
80	* WifeBasherBasher: While the dowager does her best to get battered women away from their abusive husbands and families through any and all legal means, sometimes the man in question is just too powerful or would be too much of a problem if left alive. This is where Aomame comes in, since her particular gift of pinpointing a particular nerve and piercing it just so leaves no obvious traces of murder.

Context Literature / OneQEightyFour