Come to think of it, I imagine that this has something to do with my Murakami is so popular with female readers – his females are so vaguely characterized that it encourages audiences to read themselves into the narrative.

shan – If you enjoyed Kafka, then you’ll probably like 1Q84, too. It took me a while to see the societal criticism in his work (actually, I once wrote a whole paper saying he shouldn’t be read politically), but I think you’ll see it eventually.

M-Bone – I generally agree with you, but I see it less as masturbation and more as commentary on how fundamentally solitary human existence is. Sure, we interact with people, but only from our own viewpoint. In any interaction at all, we’re left to interpret a huge amount of information since we don’t know what things are actually like for the other person. I’m convinced Murakami uses 温もり to represent the closest thing to genuine human interaction in a lot of his works, including 1Q84. 温もり isn’t only sex, but I think it is related.

I, however, managed to catch the second last paragraph in your review, and I am just curious to see how would someone’s opinion of Murakami’s work be if his/her first book is Kafka on the Shore (because it was the first book I picked up and ever since have been hooked on his novels =P).

I am reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle now, and the general impression I get from his works is that his stories are so SURREAL. Like totally bizarre things happening to very ordinary people (i’m thinking of Toru Okada, who encounters lotsa weird stuffs ever since his cat disappeared; the Calcutec guy from Hard-Boiled Wonderland who works for this freaky scientist working in a laboratory located in a very strange place; Kafka.. ok maybe Kafka wasn’t THAT ordinary to begin with, but I felt he was definitely more ordinary than Oshima/Ms Saeki; and perhaps even the very ordinary citizens he interviewed in his Underground book, to whom something totally “extra-ordinary” happened the very morning in the subway).

Anyway, I think of myself as a very “shallow” reader =P. I often do not see the cultural reflections/criticisms of the society etc etc etc that appear in his works, be it intentionally or unintentionally. I enjoy his works purely because I find them entertaining and easy to read. I hope this doesn’t mean that I am doing his novels injustice! =P But there’s certainly one theme that I often do not understand in his novels, which is sex. To me, sex scenes in his novels appear almost too abruptly and often leave me thinking: what does this have to do with the story? So far, what I’ve figured is that his characters often suffer from highly pent up emotions that can only be released via intercourse (I need more insights!!).

To end off, I would like to apologize for this long post full of rants. I totally adore Haruki Murakami’s work, but I can’t share the joy/emotions/opinions/thoughts of reading them with anyone else because my friends find his works too “bizarre” for their liking -_____-“ I am looking forward to 1Q84 and will definitely snap it up once the translated version is released! Meanwhile, I still have his other novels to savour as I am still an “amateur Haruki fan” and have yet to finish all his works =P

You should check out Otsuka Eiji’s latest – 物語論で読む村上春樹と宮崎駿. He has some of the same problems with the Big M that I do, but he actually compares “Boku” to Luke Skywalker and asks 「１Q８４」にはなぜ何も書かれていないのか. You should check it out and a response might be an interesting focus for another Neojaponisme essay.