Connections between Murakami protagonists

     In high school, me and my friend had a joke that Kurt Vonnegut only ever writes one type of protagonist, that being a kind of surly, unassuming middle class man who smokes a lot and gets himself into unusual situations which he takes in stride. Basically it seemed like Vonnegut mainly wrote someone who seemed rather similar to himself. After reading A Wind up Bird Chronicles, Hardboiled Wonderland and A Wild Sheep Chase I thought that could also be said about Murakami.

    Now, of course, in reality that statement isn't true of either author, especially not Murakami who wrote books like After Dark and Kafka on The Shore, but my takeaway from the joke is that there are certain types of characters that authors like to write from the perspective of, and that seems worthy of further consideration. 

    In the books with the figurative "character" of Boku, he is often a man in his thirties who's long term romantic endeavors are failures, and yet he also usually has a girlfriend or at least is flirted with by strangers despite having very little going for him. This could be explained by saying Murakami needed to introduce characters for his narrator to bounce off of, but there are many ways of doing that and he chooses this specific, bachelor life style for most of them. I would say it is possible this is the way he sees the world, but Murakami met his wife in college according to wikipedia, so that does not seem correct. One could think of it as Murakami preferring to write characters who experience brief moments of intimacy, but those moments only serve to deepen the solitude felt in the time between them, as he certainly likes writing stories about loneliness. If the protagonist had a wife, that supposedly would lessen the loneliness and take away from the theme.

    These first person characters all have a rather relaxed personality, acting in the cool, Chandler-esque style we have been discussing. One reason Murakami might like this protagonist is that having a straight-man character who doesn't necessarily react to the fantastical elements in the way one might expect him to adds a bit to the surreal circumstances they are facing, making the book that much more interesting. We also know he just likes Chandler, so he might just want to write about Chandler-type protagonists because he thinks they're cool, which they are.

    I am aware this next similarity is more a personal gripe with the storytelling, but Murakami protagonists often have to take time off of work, or simply don't have a job, yet they rarely worry about money, which wouldn't be a problem for me, but they always buy the weirdest things. For example: Kafka ran away from home, but he still buys some time at a gym with the limited money he has, and the protagonist in Wind Up Bird is unemployed for a few months at least, but he just goes walking around in his tennis shoes and buying donuts like its no problem.

    From what I have seen, the one true uniting factor for Haruki Murakami characters is that they all own tennis shoes, and if I am being honest I don't know what tennis shoes are. - Luke Ptak