But no! Instead the point is that he's apparently the only human still able to concentrate properly. Oh well.
Reading this several times (and I will again) gives me the feeling that I am alive, in the most distinct, poetic way without too much sadness nor too much happiness. This book does something very special. I'm so glad it exists.
And how do you feel about Murakami's works compared to other authors who focus on magical realism? Borges, maybe Gaiman? The genre can sometimes be heavy-handed in leaning on mythology as a narrative shorthand.
Second, Asian literature often seems to follow a "Life continues with or without you" path and the characters may not learn anything and may have been completely bound to their (generally doomed) trajectory from the very start and just resign themselves to their fate.
Some call that deep and meaningful--I call it crap. YMMV.
I apparently am so completely steeped in Aristotelian tradition that I can't stand those kinds of stories. Ted Chiang, in spite of being an American, somehow channels this, and I found I had to force myself through his writing. I have held off on reading Liú Cíxīn because I'm terrified I'm going to bump into the same problem.
In my personal experience being a native speaker of both languages and having read some of his books in both languages, the translators take great care to preserve the reader's experience. I have great respect for their work.
(source: Murakami wrote a couple of essays on his writing career)
I can only recommend these books, among the best I ever read.
Murakami is known for writing in Japanese as-if he was translating himself from English.
He's also the author whose fans most want him to win a Nobel even though his books aren't good enough. He's the ultimate boomer - as a teen real estate prices were so low he somehow ran a jazz bar while in college, and now he writes books about how it's impossible to understand the minds of women.
In my personal opinion he's fairly strong at driving a narrative, but I never get to what end. Like a painter that works extremely hard at a masterpiece to finally pour some gasoline and set it on fire. Compared to an all star like Tolstoy for example he's just not cutting it even a bit.
But I do think too much of his writing is about the narrator meeting a series of mysterious women, not paying them enough attention and then pretending it's an ineffable mystery when they leave him. My favorite of his books is Hard-boiled Wonderland, where this doesn't happen. (There's an anime called Haibane Renmei whose plot is 100% plagiarized from that book.)
Some call that deep and meaningful--I call it crap.
You don't know anything about Asian literature or literature in general.
I am a Bengali, and there are so much deep and profoundly interesting works in Bengali literature alone- I am afraid I am going to have to die before reading all the good stuff.
Although Bengali is 1200 years old, the modern Bengali literature only started about 200 years ago, and due to invasions and political unrest during 1200-1757, there are mot much volume of work of note.
Japan has had political unrest in its history, but it is a more continued (for the lack of a better word) culture. There must be 3x-10x more works in Japanese than Bengali.
And I have left out modern and medieval Urdu literature, and whole of China out of this comment.
The fact that you are putting all of the works- literally tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands pieces of literary art into "Asian literature" bucket and trying to generalize them foolishly shows your utter and complete ignorance in these matters.