“Then, without a word of explanation, she had vanished from Kafuku’s world. The question never ventured, the answer never proffered. He was lost in those thoughts at the crematorium as he plucked her bones from the ashes.”

In this excerpt, Murakami uses descriptive language to capture the depth of Kafuku’s pain and shock at losing his wife. Kafuku never asks his wife about her affairs, and when she suddenly dies, he loses any opportunity to ask her. This leaves him in a sort of limbo, and he must now live with this question hounding him. His fixation on this question is so strong that even as he sifts through the ashes of his wife, his thoughts are on the question. His emotional repression invokes The Relationship Between Masculinity and Emotional Unavailability.

“He, for a time, became a passionate, almost fanatical practitioner of calligraphy. It was as if he felt that the black symbols flowing from his brush onto the pure white paper could somehow lay bare the workings of his hearts.”

When Kafuku recounts his life with his wife, he remembers when they lost their child soon after she was born. Both parents tried to heal in different ways, eventually finding a balance. For Kafuku, he found solace in calligraphy. Murakami uses descriptive language to capture why this was comforting to Kafuku. At a time in his life when confusion and tragedy dominate him, he finds solace in the clear borders of the calligraphy. He hopes that the contrast between the ink and white paper will give him the clear answers he cannot find.

“I didn’t truly understand her—or at least some crucial part of her. And it may well end that way now that she’s dead and gone. Like a small, locked safe lying at the bottom of the ocean. It hurts a lot.”

Murakami often uses similes in his work to make a connection between his characters’ unique perspectives and complex emotions. In this excerpt, Kafuku laments how he did not truly know his wife, and that now, after her death, he will never have the opportunity to remedy this. Murakami compares this to a locked safe at the bottom of the ocean. Just as the safe is unreachable, so too is the part of Kafuku’s wife that he did not understand, reflecting The Persistence of Loneliness in Love.

“Then back to the stage, and the acting. The bright lights, the rehearsed lines. The applause, the falling curtain. Leaving who one was for a brief time, then returning. But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind.”

Kafuku is an actor, and through acting, he finds that he can briefly adopt a new identity before returning to himself. This practice helps him to process his emotions and grow, believing that with each switch in identity, he changes. The time he spends away from himself allows him to gain perspective on what he feels and does. Due to this, he feels like a new person every time he returns to himself after inhabiting a role.

“When I moved from Kansai to Tokyo to start college, I spent the whole bullet-train ride mentally reviewing my eighteen years and realized that almost everything that had happened to me was pretty embarrassing. I’m not exaggerating. I didn’t want to remember any of it—it was so pathetic.”

In “Yesterday,” both Tanimura and Kitaru try to reinvent themselves as they enter adulthood. Their attempts cast them as foils, however, as Tanimura tries to escape his upbringing and adopt a more refined identity in Tokyo. Kitaru, meanwhile, learns a whole new dialect to try to shed his Tokyo identity. For Tanimura, the urge to change himself stems from his perception of what his younger life was like. He found its simplicity embarrassing and wishes to erase it, which speaks to The Relationship Between Masculinity and Emotional Unavailability.

“But the moment he opened his mouth, this overall positive effect collapsed like a sand castle under an exuberant Labrador retriever.”

Kitaru’s character is largely defined by his use of the Kansai dialect, which he learns to better fit in with the fans of his favorite baseball team. As Tanimura describes him, he highlights the contrast between the way Kitaru looks and how he sounds. Any charm that Kitaru possesses evaporates when he begins speaking, his voice and dialect unexpected and distracting. To capture this, Murakami uses a simile, comparing this moment to the collapse of a sandcastle.

“But once he got to junior high his grades started to slide. He was a bit of a child prodigy—his personality just isn’t suited to the daily grind of studying. He’d rather go off and do crazy things on his own. I’m the exact opposite. I’m not all that bright, but I always buckle down and get the job done.”

When Tanimura meets Kitaru’s former girlfriend, Erika, he sees their relationship as a partnership of opposites. Kitaru and Erika are lifelong friends, but as they mature, they move in different directions. While Kitaru is adventurous, Erika is serious. While Erika takes her schoolwork seriously, Kitaru shrugs it off. This plants the seeds of their eventual breakup, as their academic performances help Erika attend university and prevent Kitaru from joining her.

“It’s a beautiful dream. Always eight inches thick. The bottom half is sunk down in the sea. I’m leaning against Aki-kun, the moon shines beautifully, it’s just the two of us, the waves lapping gently outside. But every time I wake up I feel unbearably sad. That moon made of ice is nowhere to be found.”

Many of Murakami’s works belong to the genre of magical realism. Even in a collection such as this, in which the more fantastical elements of his writing are left out, certain qualities persist. The moon is a frequent motif of Murakami’s writing, representing the division between reality and unreality. In this short story, the moon once again plays a role in defining the lines of reality and unreality. In her dreams, Erika sees an alternate moon, and her recurring presence in this dream makes it seem as though she is living in another world.

“If, for some reason, the ominous dark clouds of impending friction appeared on the horizon, he knew how to skillfully back out of the relationship, careful not to aggravate things, and also careful not to hurt the woman. He did this swiftly and naturally, like a shadow drawn up into the gathering twilight.”

Dr. Tokai’s approach to relationships is defined by comfort. When he senses his partner working up to break it off, he withdraws. Murakami describes Tokai as sensing this moment, the friction as a dark cloud on the horizon. This comparison to a storm approaching captures Tokai’s perspective of a breakup as impending doom. His effortless disentanglement from these relationships is compared to that of a shadow. The comparison to a shadow casts Tokai as a man who can ease in and out of relationships because of a lack of emotional attachment.

“At Tokai’s clinic he had an accomplished male secretary who had worked for him for years. This man coordinated Tokai’s complicated schedule like a veteran air traffic controller.”

Tokai’s relationships are an important part of his life, and to reflect this, even his secretary is involved in these romances. Tokai’s secretary coordinates his schedule for both his personal and professional lives. Murakami describes his skill in doing so by comparing the secretary’s skill to that of a veteran air traffic controller. Air traffic controllers are essential to safe and timely air travel. This simile, therefore, casts the secretary in a similar light. Without him, Tokai’s life would fall apart.

“But maybe it would have been better if I’d experienced this while I was still young […] Then I would have developed love antibodies.”

When Tokai falls in love, he does so swiftly and in a devastating manner. He becomes obsessed with this woman, unable to focus on anything but her. Even as he tries to find her flaws, his love grows. He describes these feelings as a sickness and wishes that he had encountered them when he was younger, as the feelings are harder to face later in life. Tokai thus experiences The Persistence of Loneliness in Love for the first time.

“It feels like somehow our hearts have become intertwined. Like when she feels something, my heart moves in tandem. Like we’re two boats tied together with rope. Even if you want to cut the rope, there’s no knife sharp enough to do it.”

Tokai believes that his heart is connected to the heart of his love. Anything she does, says, or feels impacts him, like two boats tied together with no way of separating. This reflects Tokai’s belief that his life and happiness depend on this woman, deepening his experience of The Persistence of Loneliness in Love.

“She barely spoke during their lovemaking, either, performing each act as if completing an assignment.”

The relationship between Habara and Scheherazade is a mysterious one. Scheherazade cares for Habara, bringing him groceries, telling him stories, and working as a liaison for him as he remains inside. Habara wonders if their sex life is also a part of her job, as there is no real sense of passion. Scheherazade’s emotional reserve and Habara’s detachment add more nuance to the depiction of The Relationship Between Masculinity and Emotional Unavailability, as a female character like Scheherazade can be similarly emotionally unavailable.

“I saw a really big snapping turtle once, too, a humongous black shape drifting past, like the evil spaceship in Star Wars. And big white birds with long, sharp beaks that targeted the fish like gangs of assassins; from below, they looked like white clouds floating across the blue sky.”

When Scheherazade shares her former life as a lamprey with Habara, she uses figurative language to help characterize the animal world around her. She compares a snapping turtle to a cruiser in Star Wars. This creates an association between the turtle and its shadow and the ominous appearance of these ships. Every time they enter a scene, they cast an intimidating shadow and are accompanied by threatening music. She even describes the birds as assassins, creating a dissonance between how she and Habara may see these animals as humans compared to how other animals see them.

“I scribbled random things in my notebook with his pencil. I sniffed it, kissed it, rubbed my cheek with it, rolled it between my fingers. Sometimes I even stuck it in my mouth and sucked on it. Of course, it pained me that the more I wrote the shorter it got, but I couldn’t help myself.”

When Scheherazade steals a pencil from her crush’s house, the pencil becomes a symbolic representation of him. The pencil embodies the boy, and Scheherazade treats it as though it were him. She shows it affection as she would the boy, and laments losing the pencil the more she uses it. Scheherazade’s treatment of the pencil represents the power of love to turn everyday objects into symbols of The Persistence of Loneliness in Love. Scheherazade can possess the pencil, but the lover she wishes for still eludes her.

“Basically, she seemed intent on keeping them from growing too enthusiastic. Just as a driving instructor would not want his students to show too much enthusiasm about their driving.”

In this excerpt, Scheherazade’s participation in sex with Habara is once again described as being duty-like. In this instance, Murakami uses a simile to compare Habara to a driving instructor who curtails students’ excitement. Scheherazade takes her work seriously and tries not to let it grow into something else, maintaining the emotional barriers between them and never challenging The Relationship Between Masculinity and Emotional Unavailability in Habara’s life.

“He slowly got up from his seat, too, and Kino found himself face-to-face with both of them. The men had apparently decided to use this opportunity to call a halt to their quarrel and jointly confront Kino. They were perfectly coordinated, almost as if they had secretly been waiting for this very situation to arise.”

Though there are not many violent antagonists in the stories of this collection, the businessmen in Kino’s bar seek it out. When Kino asks them to stop arguing, they grow angry and confront him. Murakami describes their sudden alliance against Kino as a coordinated effort. Their attitude suggests that they wanted to confront someone and waited for Kino to step in. The friendship between these two men is a contrast to that of Kino’s relationship with his wife. While they united despite their differences, Kino separates from his wife with no effort to remedy the rift between them.

“Just below her white bra clasp he saw an irregular sprinkling of small marks the color of faded charcoal, like bruises. They reminded him of constellations in the winter sky. A dark row of depleted stars. It may have been the trace of a rash from a contagious disease. Or scars.”

When the woman from the bar undresses, Kino sees cigarette burn scars all over her body. He struggles to understand how someone could do this or stay with someone who did it to them. Kino compares the scars to stars. However, they do not shine bright, as they are described as fading, like stars in a winter sky. Both of these descriptions suggest images of dying light and harsh conditions, matching the sadness he feels for the woman.

“He couldn’t think of anywhere he wanted to go. The world was a vast ocean with no landmarks, Kino a little boat that had lost its chart and its anchor.”

Kino feels lost throughout “Kino,” particularly when he must leave his bar and venture out by himself. Murakami captures his attitude with a metaphor, comparing the world to an ocean and Kino to a small boat. Not only is Kino a boat, but he is one without an anchor or chart. He therefore has no means of knowing where he is going, and no way to stop himself. This description captures his sense of disconnection after his wife’s betrayal. He floats, unmoored, with little direction or purpose, struggling with The Relationship Between Masculinity and Emotional Unavailability.

“This ravenous desire for food was new to him, or at least he had no memory of experiencing anything like it. It was as if he had not had a bit to eat for a week. As if the center of his body were now a cavernous void. His bones creaked; his muscles clenched; his organs twitched.”

In “Samsa in Love,” the protagonist wakes as Gregor Samsa. This is the protagonist’s first time as a human, and he must therefore learn about this new body and how it functions. When he finally figures out how to move, he feels an intense hunger. Murakami describes this hunger as though there is a void within the protagonist’s body.

“Again she writhed. Her arms rotated as if she were a swimmer practicing a new stroke. He found the action mesmerizing and very exciting.”

Samsa is awed by the woman who comes to fix the lock on his door. She has a hunched back, and she often makes strange movements, which Samsa learns are attempts to fix her uncomfortable bra. Everything is new in Samsa’s eyes, and he cannot look away from the woman. Murakami uses a simile to capture Samsa’s impression of the woman, writing that her movements look like those of someone learning to swim. This comparison reflects Samsa’s ignorance of the world around him and the people in it.

“She reminded him of a water strider that had left the water to scamper about on dry land. As far as he could tell, walking the way she did make a lot more sense than wobbling around upright on two legs.”

“Samsa in Love” is a reimagining of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which a man becomes a bug. The inversion that Murakami employs suggests that the story follows a bug recently transformed into a human, Gregor Samsa. Therefore, so much of Samsa’s opinions of the world around him stem from an insect perspective. He finds that the woman reminds him of a bug, with the way that she walks. He also believes that this is a better way to move than regular humans, believing that insects are better evolved, physically, than humans.

“Like a deep hole in the middle of the road that the two of us were staring into from opposite sides. Then, without a word, as if he were gently placing a fragile piece of artwork on the floor, the man hung up.”

When the narrator of “Men Without Women” wakes in the middle of the night to his phone ringing, he discovers that a former partner of his is dead. The woman’s husband tells him, and the two remain on the phone in silence. Using a simile, Murakami describes this moment as the two men looking into a deep hole from opposite sides. This description captures the relationship these men have in this moment. Both experience this loss and look into the hole, though they stand opposed, each having a different relationship to the deceased and facing The Conflicting Nature of Memory After Loss.