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In the 1980s in Japan, attitudes around zoos were changing, as Japan became part of an organization called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. The public became more aware of the issues of endangered species. Their attitudes toward zoos, which often brought animals from overseas, shifted in a negative direction. One of the species which faced threatened extinction during this decade was African elephants, like the one in “The Elephant Vanishes.” Thus, in Japan and all around the world, from 1979 until around 1989, elephant poaching in Africa was a major concern. The presence of humans, who coveted the ivory in elephant tusks, was harming elephants and causing their population to rapidly decrease. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which Japan was a part, banned the ivory trade in 1989 and was able to help grow the elephants’ numbers. This real-life imbalance between humans and animals which threatened to erase African elephants from existence, as well as the shifting attitudes of citizens toward endangered animals, could have inspired Murakami’s bizarre story of an elephant vanishing into thin air, as the story was published in 1991.

The story also draws upon Japan’s cultural history, especially the idea of wa or “unity.” While individualism has historically been celebrated in Japan, there is also a sense of collectivism, where people are seen as groups with bonds between them. Unity within communities, like families, the workplace, or society in general, is valued by the Japanese. This unity can also extend to humans living in harmony with nature. The valuing of unity can be seen all throughout “The Elephant Vanishes,” as the narrator explains that people desire unity in their kitchens and in the world around them. When the elephant disappears in the story and there is a subsequent imbalance in the narrator’s worldview, Murakami seems to suggest that when nature is imbalanced (or, endangered), society suffers from the disunity.

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