I don’t remember how I was introduced to Haruki Murakami, but I had read 19 of his novels, short story collections and individually published short stories in The New Yorker by the end of 2015—the year I opened my Goodreads account to start tracking my reading.

It was between graduating from junior college and beginning university. I was not wealthy, and often took to the public library to indulge in my literary cravings. I observed that the pages of Murakami’s books were often yellow, sometimes stained, and usually musty-smelling—signs that he had passed through many hands before mine.

Perhaps due to my youth and hunger to read anything that would allow me some reprieve from the two-year study sprint, I did not consume Murakami’s work critically, but purely, taking his stories and characters at face value and just going along for the ride. His prose was clean and conversational, and even when his plots veered into the surreal–cryptic cats, parallel worlds, complex underground systems–they were delivered in a calm, occasionally muted, and readable voice. It was an escapism that demanded little from me.

My favourite is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. First published in Japanese in 1985 as The End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (世界の終りとハードボイルド・ワンダーランド), the title was reversed in the 1991 English translation. A recent translation by Jay Rubin restores the original order, which is also used for the upcoming stage adaptation at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay.

Reading Murakami with clearer eyes

Murakami said in a 2004 interview with The Paris Review, “My style, what I think of as my style, is very close to Hard-Boiled Wonderland.” At the time, it felt like confirmation that I had instinctively gravitated toward the work that best captured his voice.

That changed when I read snippets of Mieko Kawakami’s interviews with Murakami, whom she is a fan of. The acclaimed author of Breasts and Eggs interrogated Murakami on the portrayal of women in his novels, noting that “it’s not possible for these women to exist on their own.” Murakami himself did not think it was that complex, countering that he focuses more on the “interface” and how these characters “engage with the world” instead of existence.

What struck me was not just Kawakami’s pointed critique, but her willingness to engage Murakami, a writer she admires, so directly. She seemed less interested in dismissing him than in addressing the blind spots in writing she otherwise values. Her questions also opened the floodgates to wider feminist criticism of Murakami’s work; one cannot write honestly about Murakami without acknowledging these arguments.

Crucially, Kawakami’s interrogation of Murakami offers us an alternative to “cancelling” artists who are now deemed problematic. By revisiting flawed writing, we can better understand how certain assumptions about gender—and other demographics—quietly take root in stories.

It became harder for me to call myself a fan when I read Men Without Women in 2020, and it became much clearer just how needy Murakami’s male protagonists were and how often they depended on women to fulfil their sexual desires or guide them through their dilemmas. How it’s obvious these women have vivid interior lives that remain out of sight to readers, because the narrative is centered around the men.

In the spirit of the recent stage adaptation of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (which lands at Esplanade in April), I revisited the novel I used to consider my favourite of all time. This time, the descriptions of the Professor’s “chubby” granddaughter as a “young, beautiful, fat woman” with a “bulbous behind” were much harder to stomach—mostly because I’d also been considered chubby throughout my life. That, and like her I am also obsessed with pink.

This new sensitivity to Murakami’s description of women–a plus-sized one, in the case of Hard-Boiled Wonderland–made it harder to enjoy the novel even as I remained impressed by the creativity of its plot and novelty of  its structure. Beneath its cyberpunk aesthetic, the story is also about memory, identity and the strange comfort of retreating into one’s interior: one world is governed by shadowy systems and encrypted data, while the other offers the eerily utopian promise of a quiet life without memories or pain. This philosophical undercurrent gives the story a depth that lingers long after and far beyond its pages. 

Unsurprisingly, Murakami remains indifferent to feminist criticism of his work. In a 2024 interview with The Guardian, he conceded that Kawakami’s criticism was likely “spot on” while also admitting that he could not recall her specific gripes. His noncommittal attitude towards critics can make him and his work hard to support.

Why Murakami still endures

Despite his flaws in writing about women, it’s natural that readers continue to visit and return to Murakami. He is one of Japan’s most decorated writers, with his works translated into at least 50 languages and selling millions of copies worldwide. Even as Japanese literary critics found his early novels “un-Japanese” and esoteric, the scale of his international reach now means that for many, Murakami is their gateway to Japanese literature.

In the 2010s, his reputation alone was enough to compel me to read a genre I never imagined enjoying and kickstart a literary journey that has taken me from Yukito Ayatsuji’s crime thrillers to Mieko Kawakami’s sharp exploration of gender in Japan, and Japanese healing fiction, cozy narratives that provide emotional solace and calm to readers. I appreciate these writers much more than Murakami now, but suffice to say that without him, I would not have found them.

On the list of things I would not have known about so early without Murakami are also whiskey, jazz, and the idea that there’s anything philosophical to learn from running. Murakami’s fiction is full of solitary men cooking simple meals, listening to old records and pouring themselves careful drinks late at night. His love of jazz runs through novels such as Norwegian Wood and South of the Border, West of the Sun, while his memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running turns the discipline of long-distance running into a rumination on endurance and self-knowledge. “Pain is inevitable,” he writes in the book, “Suffering is optional.”

These are all pleasures (and physical tortures) I continue to indulge in my adult life. One of the activities on my bucket list is to try Cutty Sark, the first whiskey brand I’d ever learned of and which has appeared in at least six of Murakami’s novels.

I no longer read his writing, but I’m curious about how others reimagine his stories. The most striking recent example may be Drive My Car, director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning adaptation of a short story from Men Without Women. Film reviewer Carlos Aguilar rated it four out of five stars on Roger Ebert, describing the film as “tearful and thoughtful”. The use of “tearful” is an interesting one—Murakami has made me pensive, but never tearful—and that alone proves that in others’ hands, Murakami’s work can achieve new emotions.

Scholars have noted that adaptation can fundamentally reshape Murakami’s work. Chuo University professor Takeshi Usami observes that while Murakami’s original short story raises questions about grief and rebirth, Hamaguchi’s film renders those questions more concrete, offering viewers a clearer emotional resolution. “Of course, it is not the only correct answer,” he disclaims, “but it is an important answer that has been approved by a large audience.” In this sense, adaptation goes beyond reproducing Murakami’s work for a different medium, but interpreting and extending it, too.

That’s why I’m hopeful for the upcoming stage production at Esplanade. The production has a stacked cast that includes Tatsuya Fujiwara of Battle Royale and Death Note fame. Equally impressive is its ambition: to show two parallel narratives unfold simultaneously on the same stage. That’s no easy feat, but Takahashi and Philippe Decouflé, who serves as the production’s director and choreographer, have bravely taken on the challenge.

If Murakami’s prose now invites more scrutiny than before, adaptation offers us another way of encountering his ideas. Ideas that are no longer shaped by just one man’s voice, but by the interpretive choices of many other talented creatives. On stage, the audience may now appreciate the rich interior life and fullness of Murakami’s characters—men, women, and everything in-between. 

End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland will be staged at Esplanade Theatre from 3–5 Apr 2026.