7/2/2022 Book review "Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami

The book ”Men Without Women" by Haruki Murakami became famous after the movie "Drive My Car" was premiered. Since the movie is composed of three short stories from "Men Without Women" we read these three of his works at the Book Club.

<Stories>

1. Drive My Car

The main character, Kafuku, is an actor and his late wife, an actress, died more than 10 years ago. The story starts with the main character, Kafuku, is recommended to hire a young female driver, Misaki, because of his glaucoma. Misaki silently drives Kafuku's yellow Saab 900 Convertible. One day, when Misaki asks Kafuku "Don't you make friends," Kafuku answers “I happened to meet Takatsuki who had affairs with my late wife, and had drinks with him at a bar called Kino. Then I often met him and talked with him at the bar. I haven't had any friends since then because what Takatsuki told me touched my heart."

2. Scheherazade

A housewife having affairs with an office worker comes to be called by a nickname, "Scheherazade", taken from the “One Thousand and One Nights” story as each time when the woman meets the man, she tells a peculiar fantasy story such as "a high school girl enters a burglary in her classmate's house."

3. Kino

When the wife of the main character named Kino had an affair with a colleague of his became known, Kino retires from the company, divorces his wife, and then opens a jazz bar. Eventually, his former wife comes to apologize to him. After that, a stray cat starts coming to his bar. In the fall, the cat disappears, and then snakes begin to show up.

<Discussions at the Book Club>

・In "Drive My Car," that is the center of the movie story, the main character, Kafuku, seems to escape from the reality even after his wife's death. Kafuku who did not ask his late wife the reasons of her repeated affairs, explains why he did not. "It is because I am an actor, when my wife's affairs cross my head, I play a different role." Rather, it seems to me that Kafuku cannot tolerate his wife's affairs and cannot accept the fact that his wife's life is hers and that is different from his. I also think that he cannot perhaps possibly face the reality, i.e., his late wife’s affairs, as his male ego gets involved.

・I thought that the description of the housewife that a male office worker meets in "Scheherazade" is too terrible. Murakami endlessly writes the reason middle-aged women are unattractive is the way Murakami sees women as "things" rather than “women or humans.” In Murakami's books, there are many explanations that the depiction when a woman appears is similar to the way written in a trashy romance novel.

・The story of "Kino" takes to a different dimension unique to Haruki Murakami. Although the snakes cross my head all the time, I haven't concluded as to what it symbolizes.

・The story of "Kino" ends unexpectedly. A member of the Book Club expressed her keen opinion about "how lowly Haruki Murakami perceives women", a new and interesting concept that has never come to my mind.

・Haruki Murakami is not one of my favorite writers. Great writers give readers an opportunity to notice the taste of life and something important to life in their works (as it is the case among the previously read authors at the Book Club, including Orwell, Mauriac, Joyce and Ishiguro). I could predict that the stories in Murakami's literature would not be remembered, and I felt that he is not at the same level writer as the Nobel Prize-winning authors (although he was once a candidate for it, he was not perhaps even aiming for it either).

Also, despite relatively recent publications of books by Murakami, there are many passages that made me wonder if the portrayal of a woman was written during the old-fashioned “bubble era” in Japan. Thus, I'm still a little surprised that his books sell well to the contemporaries. However, I think Murakami's "Underground" dealing with the Sarin case is certainly a masterpiece.

Lastly, I was driving a Saab around 2000, not a good car that has many breakdowns, but the fact that the main character Kafuku driving a yellow Saab 900 convertible, especially in Japan, makes me wonder how showy the character is. I think that this work was better done in the movie than in the original book by Murakami.