By Niall Cotton

Haruki Murakami is one of my favourite authors. Revered worldwide, his oeuvre is extensive, including legendary books such as Norwegian Wood, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and IQ84. His stories are intoxicating, often containing images and motifs that would be otherwise mundane and monotonous if not for his writing. With Murakami weaving his magical realist style of writing into the story with ease, it sets a mysterious and existential tone, making the books have a dreamy effect to them. His writing is truly a pleasure to read. However, there is an aspect in his writing that has always caused a split in my opinion: his portrayal and depiction of women.

Many of his books have female characters, as well as male protagonists, and his books are written from a male perspective, a male gaze. Murakami’s female characters are rarely independently thinking, driven, self-confident women; rather they are broken, frail, and lonely. These women seek out the male protagonist, painting them as creatures whose purpose is given to them by a man. Women are depicted as experiences that open up the male protagonist's mind, the male has sex with these women and reaches an existential apex, an epiphany of his existence and purpose. This was seen in Kafka on the Shore when Kafka Tamura and Miss Saeki get intimate. As said by journalist Chris Kincaid, these women are ‘vessels of liberation for male characters.’ 

Murakami himself also said in an interview in 2004, ‘If the sex is good… your injury will be healed, your imagination will be invigorated… In that sense, in my stories, women are mediums – harbingers of the coming world. That’s why they always come to my protagonist; he doesn’t go to them.’ Murakami’s female characters are not potent, self-governing individuals, but instead, they serve the male protagonist's desires and allow for his development throughout the novel.

The most problematic passages are where male narrators have sex with women in their dreams, without their realisation, not their consent. These dreams happen in Killing Commendatore, Kafka on the Shore and IQ84. The descriptions of the narrator's imagination feel ugly, dirty even. When coupled with this quote, he said, ‘‘Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake… for me, the dream-like is very real,” making these passages incredibly uncomfortable to read. While the points mentioned above are more veiled in their anti-feminist message, there are some directly misogynistic quotes and incidences that paint Murakami in an unforgiving light. Sentences like ‘Very few women can sharpen knives properly.\’ and ‘Women with their clothes off have a frightening similarity’, from Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End Of The World and A Wild-Sheep Chase, respectively, are hard to ignore.

Part of me thinks as fiction, it should be read, enjoyed, and learned from. But should fiction have a responsibility to be socially aware? At what point do authors need to stop writing their books? Murakami is not writing a manifesto spelling out his most profound and most reckless views on women and their role in society. Nor is he saying that those who read these books have to emulate what is done in his stories. Should his seemingly degrading messages of women be taken seriously? 

Fiction is an opportunity to grow. Stories that make you raise your eyebrow at a questionable passage, or make you feel uncomfortable due to the sensitive nature of the book, is why reading is so essential. Novels allow you to recognise social, racial, gender, class inequalities that you can take with you as you develop your character and being. Without exposure to uncomfortable and adverse ideas, we can’t grow as individuals or collectively. 

I found that many of the articles and interviews bashing Murakami were isolated snippets of the story, taken out of context, viewed with a hypercritical lens. In an interview in 2017, Murakami said the following: “…In my case, I can only tackle these complicated questions through fiction. Without demanding it be positive or negative, the best that I can do is approach these stories, as they are, inside of me. I’m not a thinker, critic, or social activist. I’m just a novelist. If someone tells me that my work is flawed when viewed through a particular ism or could have used a bit more thought, all that I can do is offer a sincere apology and say, “I’m sorry.” I’ll be the first guy to apologise.”  

It is important to note that I don’t believe everything Murakami has written is correct or justifiable. Some of the content in his books is distasteful, but that is part of the experience that he has chosen to take readers through via his storytelling. Does the fact Murakami has written about rape and writes with subconscious degradation of women make him a closeted offender and vile sexist? No.