mind. Slowly the story is established with a combination of the present time-frame and this collection of memories. The epiphany at the end of ‘Matchsticks’ is very much inspired by that at the end of ‘Araby’ (“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself…”), but, just like in ‘Araby’, is not necessarily fully and completely understood by the story’s young voice. However, this epiphany represents a moment in which the scales fall from the character’s eyes: “That same smile; it whispered in the breezes... it was everywhere....” The idea of superficiality and forged reality is emphasised by the story’s reference to the theatre - which is a process of creating a fantasy that suspends an audience’s disbelief. When the lead actress smiles at Leonard, she remains an actress.This introduces a metafictive element (something that is utilised frequently by Murakami - the use of clear cinematic elements labelled with shot numbers or the entire narrative of ‘The Kangaroo Comuniqué’ being revealed to be a tape recording): here is a girl playing herself playing an actress playing the lead role in the school play. Leonard is surrounded by forms of acting and of concealment; even his own expression of sorrow before, upon and after his epiphany is “deliberate”, “calculated” and “planned”. This is the great irony of the story: Leonard claims to have grasped that around him there is a continual dance of deceit, meaningless smiles, of houses that all look the same; yet his actions continue to be deceptive. His act of sadness - sitting in the rainstorm on the pavement - is designed to win him sympathy.The smile of the lead actress is no different from the forgery of his own sadness as he sits down - which leads us back to the cyclical quality of the story: Leonard may have already had this epiphany countless times (the girl’s smile crucially “always” ends “... in a dismal, ever surprising sadness”). Leonard is collaborating in the very process he seems to hate; the reader is led to realise that this deceit is all-consuming.
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