Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute).

Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse 'Peter Cat' which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo with his wife. His first job was at a record store, which is where one of his main characters, Toru Watanabe in Norwegian Wood, works. Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often distinguished from other Japanese writers by his Western influences.

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'. She remembers being a lamprey in a former life and misses the profound silence of the sea floor.Murakami Haruki (Japanese: 村上春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. In “Scheherazade,” the standout of the collection, a man who can never be outside for unexplained reasons develops a bond with his in-home caretaker, who tells him stories after they have sex. For instance, the narrator of “An Independent Organ” can never use a squash racket the plastic surgeon left him: the lightness reminds him of his frail, dying body. Although the plotting can be repetitive, Murakami’s ability to center the stories on sentimental but precise details creates a long-lasting resonance. In “An Independent Organ,” a plastic surgeon who lives a contrived life of well-managed affairs descends into depression and starves himself to death after falling in (unrequited) love with one of his liaisons. In “Yesterday,” a man who works at a coffee shop convinces a coworker to date his girlfriend while he works to pass his university entrance exams. Between rehearsing lines and listening to classic rock, the normally reticent widower begins to chat with the young driver, eventually revealing a friendship he formed with one of his former wife’s lovers. In “Drive My Car,” a stage actor hires a new driver, his first female chauffeur. In this collection of new stories, Murakami ( 1Q84) returns to familiar themes of youthful regrets, untenable romantic triangles, strange manifestations of sexual frustration, and inexplicable, often otherworldly happenings while dipping into the lives of seven middle-aged men, each caught up in the passions of a mysterious woman.

Men without women