Upon reading Mieko Kawakami’s interview with Murakami and the comments under the blog post, I realized that there are 2 discussions that really linger in my mind whenever I read his works. The first is Murakami’s denial of intentionally applying a particular lens in creating his characters. The second is the nature of this lens and its reception. Since I am new to Murakami’s writing, a lot of the descriptions and character behaviors in A Wild Sheep Chase were surprising to me, as we were reading unsuppressed thoughts in the main character’s mind. It wasn’t until Norwegian Wood that I considered myself a bit startled by his focus on certain topics. It appears that the “Feminist Critique” isn’t much of a critique at all—Kawakami doesn’t push on some of the more uncomfortable topics that many readers bring up. I got the feeling that maybe she didn’t want to antagonize him too much. And Murakami’s claim that “any pattern is probably coincidental” doesn’t seem justified with how often we see the patterns with his female characters or his fixation on women. Despite him acknowledging the possibility of a story to “work out that way, on a purely unconscious level”, this just seems like a way of avoiding any confrontation on his writing. He doesn’t completely respond to the repetition of “how women are sacrificed for the sake of men’s self-realization or sexual desire” in his novels. Some other examples brought up by the readers of the interview are also a little disturbing in their own respects. That being said, I’m not completely qualified to give my opinion on this topic (for example, the differing reception to Jane Austen’s joke on miscarriage), so I would like to defer to others as to how they look past these elements or even appreciate it.
River
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