Reading the stories assigned for today after having read the interview was a very different experience than I expected. I have to say, I was not particularly impressed with Murakami's self-reflection on his representation of women in literature and found his views to be, in my own terms, a big ol "nothing-burger." What I mean by this is that I did not feel that he truly engaged with Kawakami's critiques, instead retiring to a weak idea of "writing human characters." This de-legitimizes his portrayal of women to me as it ignores a dimension of his writing that is so often to his thought process. Whilst one is free to think however they may, I find it almost slightly disingenuous to say that one writes without taking gender into account and then make constant reference to the "role" of men and women and their complementary nature. I do find it interesting that Murakami described the woman as being scary in the story about the green monster entering her home, finding the comment to be somewhat vindictive towards women. To me, whilst what happened in the story is somewhat gruesome, it was less about being scary and more about a woman's agency. Potentially even linking to ideas of rape and consent. In the end, I believe that Murakami may have been a bit dismissive of Kawakami's comments.
Overall, whilst I like Murakami from a literary perspective and find him to be a great writer, I do tend to prefer authors with a bit more gender and theme sensitivity like Banana Yoshimoto and Kawakami.
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