Relativeness and the Historical Shifts within the Full-length Works of Haruki MURAKAMI Using Quantitative Analysis

Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to scientifically verify the stylistic changes of one author of novels. The target data consist of the twelve full-length works of Haruki MURAKAMIas a representative of modern Japanese literature. We measured vocabulary distributions for the textsextracted feature vectors from them using classifications in terms of both word-class and semantic categoriesand conducted clustering analyses on the data in order to identify groupings based on style within his twelve full-length works. The analysis based on word-class yielded clusters that reflect a diachronic division, indicating that MURAKAMI's style has shifted over time. In contrast, the analysis based on semantic categories yielded clusters that reflect the themes and the contents of the novels, indicating that MURAKAMI's interest has shifted from the individual to society.