TW: Sexual Assault and Rape

I do not give out one stars lightly. I think that in my lifetime, or at least in the time that I have been recording my ratings of books (so for the past six years or so), I have only given out three one star ratings. This book will become my forth. At this point, I’m not quite sure that I can put my thoughts into words, but I sure am going to try because I have a lot to say. There are many reasons why I did not like this book and I really hope that I will be able to voice my problems clearly.

The first thing I realized about this book is the fact that I didn’t really like any of these characters. Especially the main character Toru. He was sexist, misogynistic and he didn’t really care about anyone around him. He thought that he cared for the people around him, but the way that he cared for people was hurting them. All of the other characters bugged me as well. Most of the men seemed to be worse than Toru when it came to their treatment of people and the women seemed to be written as vessels for Toru to play with. (Even thinking about it makes me so mad.) Any time that I thought one of the female characters was doing well for themselves, they somehow got mixed up with Toru again. I was like “TORU IS AWFUL WHYYYYY?!?!?!” In the end I was left so mad with these characters that I just couldn’t.

The main thing that bugged me in this story was the uncomfortable aura and presence of rape culture and sexual assault. Toru made nonchalant jokes about rape and raping people. Like this one:

Spoiler

“I’m not kidding, I might end up forcing you [to have sex with me]”.

THIS IS NOT OKAY. There were a few moments where Toru talked about sexual encounters he had once had that, in my eyes, were rape. Like this one

Spoiler

"The first girl put up a terrific struggle when I tried to get her undressed and into a hotel bed…”.

AND, some of the other characters would joke about rape like it was nothing. Like this

Spoiler

"If you feel like raping anybody in the middle of the night, don’t get the wrong one.”

IS STILL NOT OKAY. In reality, almost every sexual encounter that occurred or was talked about in this book was sexual assault in one way or another. It was absolutely appalling for me to read. The fact that none of this was touched upon or acknowledged in this book really just left me with a really gross feeling after reading.

I was not drawn to this story at all by the end of this book. The only reasons I finished reading was because I wanted to see what was going to happen. I wanted to see if all of the horrible things that were happening in the book were going to be remedied at all. (Surprise Surprise) They were not. I was left in the end trying to figure out what this book was supposed to be about. I think that Murakami was hoping to make an interesting coming of age story that touched on mental illness, however, this story ended up showing me how prevalent rape culture is. Very disappointing.