56 pages 1 hour read

Haruki Murakami

The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1993

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“Lederhosen”

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Lederhosen” Summary

A female friend of the narrator’s wife tells him about how her parents split up over a pair of lederhosen. When she went to visit her sister in Germany years earlier, the woman’s mother went to a shop to buy her husband a pair of souvenir lederhosen (this was the only souvenir her husband had requested). But the shop attendant, concerned about their reputation, would not sell her lederhosen without her husband present, saying they needed him there for a proper fitting. After some bargaining, the mother and the shop attendant reached a compromise: If the mother returned with a man her husband’s size and build, they could use him for the fitting and sell her the lederhosen. The mother found a man the size of her husband, and during the fitting decided she wanted a divorce.

“Lederhosen” Analysis

Lederhosen continues the collection’s engagement with Internality and Social Relationships and the ways they are viewed and constructed. Murakami employs a dual perspective to tell the story of the woman buying lederhosen for her husband: The first is the perspective of the woman’s daughter (a friend of the narrator’s wife), while the second perspective is that of the narrator himself.