After I finished reading all of Haruki Murakami’s long fictional works (novels and novellas) I decided to slowly finish his short story collection so that I don’t run out of his fictional works.
I read one short story collection last year. This year the plan was the same, to read only one collection. But then this year destroyed all kinds of plans for everyone. I strongly felt I deserved a treat for surviving the year (although few hours are left and one never knows).
Yada yada yada I finished last unread book by him, Men without Women, and now I don’t know what to do with my life anymore.
Now I should tone down the drama and be on the book.
Men without Women is a collection of 7 short stories. The book was published in original Japanese in the year 2014. The English version was published in 2017. The book is translated from Japanese to English by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen.
Lately there have been posts in Internet about how “problematic” Murakami’s works are. To put it bluntly, some SJWs feel Murakami’s works are anti-women. There seems to be two reasons for this.
One is mistreatment of women in many of his books. I would like to say to this point, his works are full of gory violence against men, women, and animals. There is even depiction of rape of a man (Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage). There are instances of minor boy sleeping with older women (Kafka on the Shore). So basically all his works are PC minefield or maybe JUST maybe reflection of real life.
Second “problem” is that his leads are never women. Males are leads and women have been used as plot devices. I can give two instances here, in 1Q84 Aomame is as much as the lead as Tengo Kawana. In Sputnik Sweetheart the narrator maybe a male but the story is about Sumire. Apart from these instances, there are many novels and shortstories with solid female presence. Moreover, I feel if someone is comfortable with writing about a gender then they should have freedom to write. I personally can relate to emotions of all genders as I strongly feel emotions are gender fluid. So for me it never has been a problem to relate to emotions of a person of another gender.
In view of all these developments it is interesting to read this book, which is broadly about role of women in lives of men.
As the title suggests, the common thread among the stories is about men who have love and lost women. Here again leads are men but most of the stories are about women.
1. Drive My Car
In this story Murakami has used one of his methods of using a physical deformity in literal sense and also as a metaphor.
Actor Kafuku is in his 50s and he has to hire a young girl Misaki Watari as his driver when he is diagnosed with blind spot.
Misaki’s mother always made her conscious of her not being attractive. But she has now grown out of those abuses. The memories don’t affect her.
Along driving Kafuku, she also becomes a non-judgmental listener to Kafuku.
Kafuku can’t understand why his late wife had an affair when they had a perfect relationship. He in fact developed a friendship with one of her lovers to understand.
Misaki explains him there is a blind spot in every man’s brain so far as understanding women goes.
Is Murakami here also talking about his own blind spot as man to write from women’s point of view in most sincere terms? He at least has wondered about the general outlook towards women
Certainly there were good and bad male drivers too. Yet in most cases their driving didn’t create the same charged atmosphere.
One of the themes of the story is acting. One never stops acting in their life, onstage or offstage hardly matters.
Are the adultery is one of the hobbies of married people to cope with things? After a tragedy a married person may go for calligraphy or an affair.
2. Yesterday
This is about a young man, whom society would call “weird”. In spite of being intelligent Kitaru does not feel like going to college. He wants to gain his own wisdom and pursues whatever he feels like doing. He can’t be a socially defined mature adult because
“The rate at which time progresses might be a little ‘off’, depending on the person,”
But on the positive side, as a man he has the freedom to rebel against society (in this case mostly his parents) to travel around the world and pursue his interests. But is not it unfair on his childhood sweetheart Erika? She has been always devoted to him.
She dreams of this ice moon, which would melt as Sun comes up. The dream is so poignantly narrated that I could feel her sadness.
3. An Independent Organ
Here Murakami has used his another method where he narrates the story through a narrator who himself is a writer. So meta!
Dr. Tokai is typical Murakami lead – neat, well read, well brought up, well mannered etc etc. Apart from all these he is master at seducing women, especially women in committed relation. He has understood the simple thing about what women want, which most men assume to be unfathomable. Women want a good dinner with invigorating conversation.
After decades of casual affairs, in his 50’s Dr. Tokai badly fell in love with a married woman.
He feels women can lie easily without feeling any guilt because they have a different organ out of their bodies especially dedicated to lie.
I personally feel men can lie without feeling guilty too. Even if Dr. Tokai is right then maybe it is an evolutionary method of survival. Women develop a talent to combat physically stronger men.
But the narrator feels something else. He feels Dr. Tokai gets affected by the love so much because he loves with an independent organ.
Another Murakamian technique in the story can be seen, it is the mention of a historical event and drawing parallel with the story. Here the historical event is Jewish people trapped in concentration camp. After losing their external belongings and public image, all they are left is the essence of their identity. But what is this “essence”. As Dr. Tokai wants to know
Who am I?
One thing I realised reading this story is, in spite of being a man Murakami understands the importance of household chores so much. No narration is complete without mentioning the person’s household chores. The person can be man or woman, but mostly man as pointed by the group declaring Murakami’s works problematic. But the thing is Murakami and his male characters understand the importance of chores and the males do it. It is quite a big step for feminism according to this Indian woman.
4. Scheherazade
Here the narration starts with Murakamian formula of older married woman in affair with a younger man. But later things become more complex. Habara is confounded inside his flat and he can’t go out. The reason is not given in the story. A woman is employed to bring his supplies. She sleeps with him. He does not know sex is part of her job description or not. He does not know her name but calls her Scheherazade because like the mythical Scheherazade she tells him stories in installments every time she comes. She has many strange tales to say about her past lives (as in previous births) and past of her current life.
“I was a lamprey eel in a former life”
Scheherazade’s stories can be too dramatic to seem real but –
The scene seemed somehow divorced from reality, although reality, he knew, at times be terribly unreal.
Spending some time in complete solitude can be like a meditation or a path of journey inside mind. Maybe that is why women crave for complete solitude. They want to travel somewhere else.
5. Kino
Some time when we face deep sadness we block our heart and mind to escape from that heartbreaking experience. It may provide temporary relief but in long run it makes us physically and emotionally sick.
Kino’s wife cheats on him. He does not accept the hurt and the heartbreak. He lives in denial. He changes place and starts a bar. He meets few strange costumers.
He thinks he has moved on. But has he? Because the hurt exists somewhere even if he has emptied it from his heart. So can he really move on without confronting his feelings? Does wiping out all memories help?
Memories can be useful
Murakami has used brilliant metaphors (where his expertise lies) to narrate this mental health issue.
As fellow readers know, he has tackled mental health issues in many of his works.
6. Samsa in Love
This is Murakami’s tribute to his favourite writer Franz Kafka again. Here the reverse “Metamorphosis” happens. Samsa turns into human from something else, most probably from an insect.
He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa.
Gregor Samsa turns into human from something else, most probably from an insect. He hates to be a human until he meets a hunchback woman and falls for her. Then he wants to be a human more than anything.
In many of Murakami’s works, his male leads fall for women with weight on higher side or women with physical deformity. There is no feeling of fetish but only a true love, which turns every deformity into an endearing characteristic.
The story is set up in Prague in the backdrop of some rioting. Samsa does not know about the riot nor he knows about the people living in the house he discovered himself in.
7. Men Without Women
Like the first story, in this story too two men are connected by the common woman they love.
This book is a little more surreal compared to the other stories in the book. It is about the regret of the narrator after losing the woman, how things could have been better had the time and circumstances were different.
M is the woman I should have fallen in love with when I was fourteen. But it was only much later that I fell in love with her., and by then, sadly, she was fourteen no more. We were mistaken about the time when we should have met. Like forgetting when you’re supposed to meet someone. You get the time of day and place, but miscalculate the day.
The story sums up the topic of the book by elaborating on men without women.
After she left, no one knows how wretched I felt, how deep the abyss. How could they? I can barely recall myself. How much did I suffer? How much pain did I go through? I wish there was a machine that could accurately measure sadness, and display it in numbers that you could record.
They have and lost the woman to other men or to death. Men without women are unicorn, eternally alone. Because no one has seen pictures of unicorn couple.
The narrator mourns as well as thinks about sorrow of the other man.
The story has a beautiful bittersweet nostalgic quality, which would take the readers on a trip back in time and would remind the innocent and pure emotions of early youth.
My Two Pennies
Generally I am not big fan of Murakami’s short stories because many times I feel the stories don’t culminate into completeness. I am not talking about open ending here. I am talking about something not reaching at its finale.
Secondly in his short story collection all stories are not consistent quality-wise.
But I just loved each story in this book. Each story reaches its natural finale and thus giving a fulfillment to readers. Each plot and each character are crafted brilliantly.
In the stories the men are not very young. They are in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s. So they are mature and experienced enough to realise what exactly it means to lose their women.
A format followed in many stories in the book is, the narration shifts from first person to third person as we readers travel to past and witness the events with the narrator.
The stories are not extremely surreal so I would strongly recommend this book to first time Murakami readers.
About this particular copy of book (Penguin Random House UK), I have to add one thing. I loved reading the copy because there are ample spaces in the margin to scribble as much as I wanted to.
I made my reading experience fun by playing a Murakami Bingo game while reading the book. As I have written in The World of Haruki Murakami, there are recurring themes in fictional works of Murakami such as cats, ears, underground, sudden disappearances, grocery shopping, cooking, jazz, reading etc. Same themes come up in this book too. The moment I spot any of these I get a Bingo! One can use the same format to play Murakami drinking game too.
Life After Murakami
Now I have 3 choices.
Praying for a new book by Murakami coming soon (if I ever pray)
Second choice is to read his nonfictional works. But I am not going to read it in near future because in my mind it would break the illusion of Murakamian world and make everything real and boring. Maybe it really won’t be that damaging which I would realise in distant future and read them then.
Final choice and which I am really going to do in 2021. I will reread some of his books. Especially Wind/Pinball and Kafka on the Shore are on the agenda.
Musings 
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