This statement leads us back to the beginning of the article and its stated goals. While it might seem that Murakami’s talking monkey renders Mizuki’s lamentable condition absurd, it is the most salient feature of the story for the purposes of this article. Mrs. Sakaki and Mizuki were definitely onto something by finding and speaking to the Shinagawa monkey. Not only is he controlled by uncontrollable urges (159), but he is also a masked character. He hides in the sewers (159), in the dark recesses of the mind. Furthermore, the appearance of the monkey is significant, because it is an animal, as opposed to another human. Animals often serve as a source of comfort, like a teddy we clutch in our arms in the absence of our mother. We humanize animals and ask them to make sense of our emotional experiences, precisely because they have sophisticated sensorial powers and seem, therefore, to be in touch with basic emotions. In addition, their emotions do not seem to be burdened by reason. Animals’ emotions seem to flow naturally from impulses. Thus, the monkey leads Mizuki to a more primitive mental state, where a suppression of emotion due to trauma can no longer occur. Ironically, it is by encountering an animal that she is able to become more human, as to be human is to feel emotions, as primary and primitive those might be.
How might such a conclusion help those who suffer from this condition? The Shinagawa monkey provokes us to ask ourselves whether we might be suffering from an atrophy of the imagination. Mrs. Sakaki knew that Mizuki’s treatment was all about reaching the part of her client’s mind that was still intact, and it was in the unconscious realm where Mizuki’s primary and primitive urges found a talking monkey to care for her. This obviously is neither a universal model nor a perfect method of care. Mrs. Sakaki employs a practice of care and empathy to treat Mizuki’s pseudodementia and crib fatigue, by inviting us to consider sufferers of dementia and psychic numbing as nothing less than human, by practicing an etiquette of warmth and therapies that take us to other realms of imaginative experience. Above all, she inspires us to use another part of our mind to communicate with those who suffer from the ill consequences of trauma. A talking monkey takes over when Namenda and Prozac wear off.
Finally, if we are going to define literature in reference to medical practice, then we might say that the act of reading literature is a therapeutic treatment. It is about changing the reader into a creative creature who imagines talking monkeys. Perhaps more significantly, it is about a transformation of a rational creature into a feeling one who cries over a character’s crib shock and is rocked by the music of language and the images that come to life in the cradle of her mind.