The characters of Men Without Women face many personal challenges across the seven stories. A unifying aspect of these challenges is how the men confront loneliness that is a direct result of their misfortunes in love. Whether they persevere or crumble, each man faces the persistence of loneliness in love. 

Of the different characters in the collection, Tokai (“An Independent Organ”) suffers the most from loneliness, due to losing the elusive love he never thought he would have. Tokai is a perennial bachelor, dating multiple women, most often those already in relationships, approaching romance without conviction. When he finally does find a woman who makes him experience love, he suffers. The emotions overwhelm him, and despite his many efforts, he cannot stop himself from becoming obsessed with her. When she leaves him, Tokai wastes away: “Maybe he wanted to erase himself. Otherwise, a normal person couldn’t stand the pain of starvation like that. Perhaps the joy of the body shrinking to nothing won out over the pain” (106). As the narrator of the story considers why Tokai would so suddenly fall ill and die, he considers how the man’s loneliness impacts him. The narrator considers that the pain of starvation outweighed the pain of loneliness, and therefore, Tokai actually found joy in wasting away to nothing.

While Tokai’s loneliness stems from finding love and losing it, other characters experience loneliness while actively being in a relationship. In the story “Kino,” the narrator Kino conducts a brief affair with one of his bar’s customers. The woman frequently visits the bar with a man, her partner, though Kino suspects that something is uneasy between the lovers. When the woman visits without her partner, she and Kino have sex, and as she undresses, the woman reveals cigarette burns all over her body. Kino sees these scars as a sign that both the woman and her partner feel alone in their relationship, and despite the violence and abuse, stay together: “He couldn’t understand, nor did he want to understand, the mind of a man who would do something so cruel, or of a woman who would willingly endure it. It was a savage scene from a barren planet, light-years away from where Kino lived” (165). Not only does Murakami capture a sense of loneliness by exploring Kino’s confusion of how two people involved in such violence could stay together, but also with his choice of language. By describing her body as a “scene from a barren planet, light-years away,” Murakami creates an image of loneliness, disconnection, and isolation despite their physical intimacy.

In both instances, loneliness dominates the experiences of characters, demonstrating how strongly linked the experience of isolation is to love. In Tokai’s experience, loneliness is a product of lost love, the experience of that joy too revelatory to lose. Kino, however, sees how loneliness can even manifest between those who should be in love. That loneliness not only isolates them within their own partnership, but also keeps them connected, too scared to explore any alternatives.