An Analysis of My Favorite Writer, Murakami

I've read every Murakami book in sequential order of his writing — from Hear the Wind Sing to The City and Its Uncertain Walls. All of his novels, most of his non-fiction, though not many of the short stories he published in various publications.

What drew me to Murakami was a simple question: how does a person who starts their craft at 29 become one of the world's best? Murakami didn't start writing until he was 29. When I started reading him I was 27 or 28. My heart desperately wanted to start building a venture for others, but was I too old? How do I learn to unravel myself to become the kind of person I need to become?

I didn't want to read a synthesis on Murakami's life's work. I wanted to experience it page by page. Feel his evolution through a lifetime of craftsmanship. It is the only project I have embarked on like this, and it was incredibly rewarding.

What makes Murakami, Murakami?

Music — he loves it, and he incorporates that expertise into the smallest details. Escape — from Japanese social constraints, writing characters who do what he wishes he could. East meets West. High and low brow culture in the same breath. Kanye and Beethoven.

His writing is free flowing — fluid imagination, characters led by feeling. He searches for deeper meaning in ordinary things. The everyday is more important than the extraordinary. Grab attention in the detail. Small is big.

His characters make decisions with seeming randomness. Cold. Wabi-sabi.

The final question he leaves you with: What's your raison d'etre? What things were you supposed to make?

It is difficult for me to express in words a craftsman's life's work. Here is what I've learned personally from Murakami:

1. Find your rhythm.

Murakami often talks about how getting into running helped elevate his craft. You can feel it in his work. There becomes a steady rhythm in his writing that makes the progression of his stories feel almost hypnotic.

Murakami is also famous for waking up at 4am and immediately and furiously writing for 4 hours — then that's it. No more writing for the day. He runs, listens to jazz, goes to a cafe to read. You may think: "well, that's because he's a writer." But no. This is how John D. Rockefeller, Kobe Bryant, and Charles Darwin worked as well. There is a particular magic in finding your personal vibration, tapping into it, riding your wave of inspiration for however long it will carry you for the day — and then recovering. Cal Newport talks a lot about this, and if you're interested in this topic I highly recommend him and Steven Pressfield's War of Art.

2. The darkness inside of you is normal and what makes you beautiful.

Murakami began his career by focusing on the loneliness of the individual. A sort of Toska felt in the Japanese people in the early 80s and mid 90s — and probably felt now. The interesting thing about this statement is that during the early 80s Japan was economically booming. Yet Murakami peered into his soul and found it wanting for more. By wrangling that feeling in himself and expressing it through his characters — most notably in Norwegian Wood — you feel like you're not alone. By being open about the darkness within and sharing it with others, the very darkness that haunts and eats at us becomes the source that sparks the light of hope.

3. Start with the individual, then expand to the whole.

As I mentioned above, Murakami started by exploring the feelings within the individual. But as he aged, his themes expanded to explore the feelings — loneliness, longing, loyalty — of the collective. From my perspective, Murakami had to explore the feelings of the individual first before moving to the collective. In other words: you must know and improve yourself before you can know and improve your community.

4. We all have a sunset.

After reading a few Murakami books I started to see a trend — and it was cool, because it felt like I was catching inside references to his previous books that one would only notice by reading them in order. A few more books in and I felt Murakami became predictable, but delightfully so. Like when you know all of your best friend's stories — when they repeat one, you already know the plot but are happy to take the journey with them.

Towards the end of the collection, however, it felt like I had already read the book before. Quite literally. When I started The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I thought: this is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. It felt monotonous.

I think it is important to call this out. We all have a cycle. We all have a time for our light to rise. We all have a time to shine. And we all have a sunset. This is the natural order of life. And you can feel it in Murakami's works.

5. Your career will hopefully be long — it isn't a sprint.

Murakami was incredibly productive. He wrote a lot of amazing books. While his earlier books are some of my personal favorites — specifically A Wild Sheep Chase — it is his mid-career books that are considered his greatest. Norwegian Wood (1987), his breakout bestseller, was written 8 years after he began his career. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994), which earned him his most prestigious awards, came 15 years in. Kafka on the Shore (2002), his second bestseller, came 23 years in. And 1Q84 (2010) — his massive epic, what I would consider his magnum opus — was concluded 31 years after Murakami began writing.

We're in this game of life for the long run. Stay on your path and keep moving. Some of your best moments may come way later than you initially expect.

— Jay