The following thesis is the culmination of three years of studying the fiction of the Japanese writer Murakami Haruki (1949- ) and various theories of modernism, postmodernism, and paramodernism of both Japanese and Western origin. In this thesis I map out both prewar and postwar Japanese modernism and how Murakami fits or does not fit into their parameters, map out how Murakami creates his own personal history in postmodern Japan, and how he acts as a paramodernist filter between East and West.