Challenging boundaries of reality is an abiding endeavor of Haruki Murakami, Honolulu's temporary resident literary superstar (he gave a reading and talk at the University of Hawai'i last month). But his latest, compact novel elevates this pet exploration by linking it directly to the ramifications of pure observation.

From the start of "After Dark," an unidentified "we" narrator uses its eyes to "mark the shape of the city," acting as a self-conscious camera, filming, zooming, and rendering select contours of Tokyo's amusement district just before midnight. In disarming and unusually minimalist prose, this viewpoint initially attempts only to reveal the "what," but eventually can't help but probe the "why": the experiences and motivations beneath the surface of people and events.

Among the first to be captured in its sights are Mari, a young Chinese-language student hiding in an "anonymous and interchangeable" Denny's restaurant, and her sister Eri in bed at home, whose unusual slumber the narrator likewise tracks: "We allow ourselves to become a single point of view, and we observe her for a time. Perhaps it should be said that we are peeping in on her. Our viewpoint takes the form of a midair camera that can move freely about the room."

In a chance meeting typical of Murakami but nonetheless enigmatic, Mari's anonymity is soon disturbed when Takahashi, a schoolmate of her younger sister, discovers her. Then, upon his recommendation, Kaoru, the proprietor of the Alphaville love hotel (also the title of a Godard film) asks Mari to come and translate for a Chinese prostitute who has been beaten and robbed in one of the rooms. Throughout, the camera moves unrestricted between Mari and Takahashi, Eri asleep and "groping uncertainly for the meaning of her own flesh," and the man who abused the prostitute, who has once again donned his corporate mask and is working into the night, but as the narrator's film reveals, is also inexplicably connected to Eri's somnambulant escape.

This filmic device is pervasive, mirrored by direct references to other films like "Bladerunner," and supported by a cast of corporate brands, from 7-Eleven to Camel, Perrier to Swatch. Each symbolizes the octopuslike grasp of structured society, whose rules increase the imagined distance characters perceive and perpetuate between themselves and others. Their resulting robotic, corporate motions are mimicked by the novel's detached prose, including dialogue that takes on the appearance of a film script, and descriptions that read like stage directions. Other times the rhythm simply hums almost in deference to the anonymity of the city as a whole: "Even at a time like this, the street is bright enough and filled with people coming and going — people with places to go and people with no place to go; people with a purpose and people with no purpose; people trying to hold time back and people trying to urge it forward."

But by "filming" the seemingly separate worlds of each character, Murakami actually knits them together, and in this way offers a vision of humanity counter to that of "Bladerunner," and an alternative to the rule-driven society of "Alphaville," run by the logic of the system and absent of emotion or love. We may think we're separate, that we aren't connected, but Murakami subtly realigns our perception with the ability to establish connection instead of just observing from a distance.

For Takahashi's appearance sucks Mari out of her internal world of family expectations and her suspended commercial "anywhere" space, and she gains entry into another with people who likewise don't fit into daytime, corporate existence. The love hotel ironically fosters emotional bonding, where Mari develops trust with Kaoru and the workers, and feels much more connected to the young prostitute than any other person she's met, even though ordinarily their lives would not have touched.

Each character has his or her own battlefield, as Takahashi says to Mari, and each explores dual spaces that offer escape and relief. Only Takahashi appears largely free from duality, save his nighttime music rehearsals, and it is he who articulates Murakami's design. Lest we "turn into signs, into numbers," we must all shed the masks that prevent others from seeing, let alone imagining, what emotions and thoughts lie within. Following this path, we might begin to apprehend, as Takahashi does, that "there really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine," and re-enter the world of light again a fraction changed.

Christine Thomas's criticism appears in the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and Miami Herald.