As the title says, I recently read 'Norwegian Wood' and I don't know how to feel about certain aspects of it. This was my first time reading Murakami's fiction (I'd read his book on running before) and was kind of disappointed. Maybe, disappointed is the wrong word as I did find it fascinating throughout but something about the dialogue spoken by the female characters seemed a little male-gazey and to have been born out of male fantasy. Did something maybe get lost in translation or was this how it was supposed to feel and sound? Is there a better gateway to Murakami's work?
Edit: Sorry this is the umpteenth post about Murakami on this sub. I really hadn't come across any and wanted to know if any of his other books would work for me. Thanks for the replies.
by prisonmike2003
28 Comments
I read all his books in two languages (not Japanese though), and in my opinion yes the female dialogue in most of his books tend towards male-gazey
Honestly it doesn’t get much better the more you read his books. Kafka on the Shore was pretty much the same male-gazey vibes with additional incestuous vibes and Sputnik Sweetheart treated a lesbian relationship as addiction fodder for the male main character
I only read Men Without Women, a collection of short stories and he portrays women terribly. Actually got mad while reading.
I feel the same. It was the first book of his I read and will be the last. Disappointed by his writing. Too much ado about nothing. An uninteresting and over sexualized story. That’s just my opinion.
Yeah. I first read Sputnik Sweetheart, at the end I could only think “WTF?”, then I decided to give Norwegian Wood a chance and had the same feeling as you. Murakami’s female characters are frequently hot, mysterious, crazy and will die for a man. 😒
I’ve read a couple Murakami books and really liked some of them, but the recurring theme and the one thing I dislike so much about his work is how he talks about women and girls. It’s a problem in every novel I’ve read by him. He’ll write about a weird relationship between an older male character and a young girl, constantly comment on the bodies of female characters (no matter the age), and always portray female characters as troublesome and kind of unhinged.
Its honestly his most atypical work. And boring af in my opinion as a huge murakami fan. I recommend not giving up on him and trying to read “Kafka on the shore” or “after dark” to get a better feel for what hes about.
And yes, he is often critizized for the way he writes women. Thats pretty much the same over all his works/languages.
I read Norwegian Wood a while ago and loved it however the style and content is not typical of his other fiction books.
Most of them are written from a slightly hopeless male POV however so that ‘male gaze’ is quite consistent.
Norwegian Wood is my least favorite Murakami book in part because it doesn’t have the touches of surrealism he does so well. A Wild Sheep Chase would be another good one to try, or Kafka on the Shore.
I have read Norwegian Woods and the IQ84 trilogy and had the same vibe. The pattern of mental illness affected female leads is quite disturbing.
He’s known for being shitty in this aspect. I remember reading Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, and while I enjoyed it most of the time, the revelation about what the friend group’s problem with the protagonist was gave me the ick. It was very >!Crazy Bitches Lie About Rape and Ruin Men’s Lives.!<
I read Norwegian Wood when the manic pixie girl trope was having its heyday so I didn’t notice it, but you make a good point. I’d say a lot of his work involves this trope.
My entry point was his short story collection *After the Quake* (I believe that’s the title, can’t check rn). There may have been less of that in the collection, but it was a long time ago that I read it. I don’t remember too well.
I dropped the book when I was around a third through cause I couldn’t handle it lmao. It really does seem like another self-insert story for losers about a pathetic man who inexplicably has a harem of girls willing to lose everything just to have a chance in bed with him.
All of his works are male-gazey. I try to kinda look past that and am able to enjoy his works quite a bit. I can definitely see how that can be a turn off for a lot of people though.
Everything I’ve read by Murakami has questionable writing when women are the focus. It’s very predatory and voyeuristic where women (sometimes even minors) are portrayed as these sexual beings who exist solely to satisfy the uncharacteristic male lead’s singularly unhappening life.
I am almost sure i read norwegian wood, and though i only have vague snippets of memory of what happened, i am positive that i decided not to read any more Murakami after that. Reading the title gave me goosebumps and a bad feeling in my stomach.
Colourless Tzukuru and South of (something something) atleast has to some tonal characters. However, the latter one description of cold sex. It’s just…so cold… looking back, he describes sex scenes being so less “sexy” than a man just ejaculating… It used to be SO painful to read. I would just wonder why the hell would these women want to sleep with the male lead like that..?💀 (this is coming from a former Murakami avid reader.)
Edit. Grammar
Unassuming mediocre man wows the women of Japan with his magical member.
It has been ~~1~~ **0** days since someone last complained about Murakami on /r/books.
I once had a girl. Or should I say she once had me?
It’s not just you. Murakami cannot write a single book that does not reference the first person’s veiny, rock hard penis. Even in Sputnik Sweetheart, in which the main character is a lesbian woman, he finds a way to make it about the narrator’s rock hard penis. My biggest criticism of Norwegian wood is his lack of care/knowledge surrounding mental illness. He tries to make it into something it’s not, and I’m saying this as someone who has studied psychology. And his only solution to everyone’s unhappiness is suicide. He wrote the same thing in his short story collection. It’s like suicide is the wildest thing he can imagine, and the only way he can write the character arc of (mostly) female characters. it’s like he thinks a woman exists for a single man and if that man isn’t there she must die. Also, he can only write one story: aimless and lost, sexually frustrated male meets female, they must have sex, for better or for worse. Also, also. It’s clear that Murakami did poorly in university since he feels the need to emphasize in as many works as he can that university is a waste of time and resources. I find it sad that he cannot make his stories be about anything but his ego. He puts his great writing skill to shame.
I’m writing this as someone who read every single book of Murakami. I hate read most of them, but it’s mostly the author that I hate, not his stories. I enjoy them in spite of all their flaws.
Sadly, Japanese society is still deeply male chauvinist and Murakami’s attitude is still normalized in society for the most part.
It’s only just beginning to change in the workplace. Only just.
So I’d say Murakami’s attitude towards women is considered normal within Japan for the most part. It fits within the range of normal male attitudes for the society Murakami represents.
Don’t worry, it isn’t the translation. Kinda creepy in Japanese too.
He is famously awful at women. I even will cop to enjoying his work but man, it’s annoying to read any female characters or “romance”
The part in the novel where Reiko describes what happened with the student always felt like an unnecessary touch. Especially describing what happened sexually between them. Reiko is an unreliable narrator who seems to be at odds with herself, but using THAT to dive deeper into her character was an odd choice to say the least. Especially considering her student was a girl who was only 13 when it went down.
Female characters in his novels are there mostly to accommodate the male protagonist and drive the narrative forward, but that seems a shortcoming of a lot of Japanese media and literature in general. Not to talk about the sexualisation and archetypes. The Madonna-whore complex is real.
This is my mistake too for picking this book as the introduction to the author. And then I tried to read 1Q84 wich is worse i ended up DNFing.
Murakami is a perspective, an imperfect one for sure, but a unique and incredibly interesting perspective (to some) nonetheless.
I am increasingly mystified by the idea that a work of fiction must feature only characters and perspectives that are all morally pure in order to be a worthwhile read.
Time for the weekly ‘Murakami doesn’t know how to write women’ thread.