Title: Men Without Women
Author: Haruki Murakami
Narration: Mostly First-person omniscient
Original Language: Japanese (translated into English by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen)
Publication: 2014
My Rating: 4.5/5
Genre: Fiction
Significant Characters: Kafuku, Misaki Watari, Tanimura, Kitaru, Dr. Tokai, Habara, Katsura, Scheherazade, Kino, Kamita, Gregor Samsa
Brief Overview of Men Without Women
I was expecting something extraordinary when I opened Men without Women, (probably due to the hype of the author), but as I read, I found nothing extraordinary there.
It was a book based on real emotions and situations, depicted realistically through fictional characters. No doubt, it was an amazing read!
Quiet, subtle, sad, and very realistic!
What Is in The Novel?
Men Without Women is a collection of seven short stories that explore the different faces of male loneliness. Each story usually follows a man, in some way, who has lost touch with the women who once gave his life meaning or happiness. The theme is highlighted through distance, emotional misunderstanding, or death. Murakami portrays these absences not as dramatic or grand tragedies but as subtle, ordinary, and lingering voices that determine how his characters move through everyday life. His settings are ordinary, such as bars, cars, and apartments, yet within them, he captures the subtle stillness of people who are unable to bridge the gap between themselves and others.
Review of Men Without Women
The book consists of seven stories: “Drive My Car,” “Yesterday,” “An Independent Organ,” “Scheherazade,” “Kino,” “Samsa in Love,” and the title story “Men Without Women.” All these stories are formally distinct but are linked thematically. I loved the transition. Also, when you move from one story to another, it feels like traveling. For example, the first story takes place in a car chauffeuring across Tokyo to a small jazz bar to a suddenly altered, Kafka-tinged interior that gives the collection variety while keeping its focus on absence and deprivition. It’s like stopping at different places, absorbing its beauty and flaws, and then moving on.
Murakami also pinpoints sad realities in the human world, the fragility of the human spirit, and the uncertainty of human emotions. For example, Dr. Tokai, who is painted as an emotionally distant man, suddenly gets consumed by his emotions. Similarly, men confessing that they are hurt, sad, and lonely makes you a bit sad. Then, the loneliness is made apparent through physical landscape, such as empty rooms, bars, and the quiet moments after intimacy.
Murakami takes a single human condition, i.e., being without a woman, and then skilfully probes its many emotional forms: numbness, obsessive remembering, self-punishment, bewildered curiosity. In “Drive My Car,” for instance, the widowed actor Kafuku recalls his wife’s infidelities and then confronts the “blind spots” in his knowledge behind her actions. So, the story turns into a study of how curiosity, limited knowledge, and grief can coexist in reality without any resolution.
Almost all characters are realists with an uncanny undercurrent (for example, the storyteller in “Scheherazade”). Others are grounded almost wholly in a single man’s memory (“An Independent Organ”).
“So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.”
–Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women
As the name of the book indicates, this is not the work that idealizes men. Rather, it scrutinizes how men react and live when the structures that once defined them, such as social rituals, relationships, and sexual assurances are abolished. For instance, some characters respond with resignation, others with passive destructiveness, such as in “An Independent Organ,” where the doctor slips toward slow refusal of life after a love affair. There are others who react with a strangely tender curiosity and suppressed emotions toward the women who have abandoned or cheated on them. Murakami lets these reactions stand without any authorial judgment, which can feel raw, honest, and frustrating.
Murakami’s prose in this book is deceptively plain: restrained, conversational, and quietly observant. He often uses first-person or third person, which compels you to see the world from the perceptive of a single man. The curiosity built into each narrative makes you anxious as well.
Lastly, Men Without Women is a thoughtful, often haunting exploration of solitude and the traces people leave behind. To me, the collection is not a corrective to questions about gender perspectives. Instead, it gives you a sustained, emotionally honest portrait of men learning, sometimes beautifully and sometimes painfully, what it means to be left.
Writing Style
If you appreciate clean, easy, and unornamented prose that opens into metaphoric or speculative spaces, Murakami’s collection should be on your list.
Recommendation
For those interested in contemporary short fiction that privileges feelings and emotions over adorned explanation, this book can be a treat.
