Why You Should Read Murakami Chronologically

The case for reading each of his books as they were written.

I’m a member of several Haruki Murakami fan groups online and one of the most common comments in these groups is something like this:

I just read 1Q84 and want to know what I should read next. Any advice?

Of course, people jump in with different suggestions. Mainly, it’s either their favourite Murakami novel or something thematically similar to the one mentioned.

However, my suggestion is always the same – read Murakami chronologically!

I get that this isn’t for everyone and if you’ve only read one book then maybe you don’t want to commit to reading them all. Still, I think that this is the best way.

Personally, I read a random Murakami book and loved it, then hopped from one book to the next for several years. I sort of enjoyed them but I accidentally re-read the start to several books because I’d forgotten the names. It was annoying and tedious and for a while I had that same complaint that people often give:

Murakami just writes about the same stuff again and again!

In my case, I was just reading the same books over and over, but reading them out of order can be a little dull.

Years later, I committed to reading them chronologically, and I loved it! I gained so much insight into Murakami as a writer and found much more to appreciate in his books. I want to explain why below. I will give three basic reasons:

1. Plot and characters

2. Subtle connections

3. Authorial development

Plot and Characters

This might be obvious to some, but Murakami’s first books actually form a trilogy, with the plot and characters reprised later in what arguably becomes a tetralogy.

These books are:

• Hear the Wing Sing

• Pinball, 1973

• A Wild Shape Chase

• Dance Dance Dance

In each of these books, we have an unnamed male protagonist (who we’ll call Boku, which is the pronoun he uses) and we get to see his various adventures. For the first three books, there is also the Rat and there are references to several female characters who appear in some of these books.

Do you need to read the earlier works to understand A Wild Shape Chase or Dance Dance Dance? No, but you will enjoy them much more if you have read everything!

Murakami is famously reluctant to have his first two books translated and published because he feels that they are weak, but they are fascinating examples of his early authorial vision. They also introduce us to Boku and the Rat, as well as the wider Murakamian Universe.

If you don’t read these, then you may enjoy the weirdness of A Wild Shape Chase, but I think you’ll gain more from it by understanding Boku’s past – specifically, his personal traumas, including the loss of an ex-girlfriend to suicide and the failure of the zenkyoto student movement.

Likewise, Dance Dance Dance could be read as a mostly self-contained novel, but readers will appreciate it much more having already met the Sheep Man from A Wild Shape Chase.

There are fewer connections between his later books but for different reasons I firmly believe in reading them chronologically.

Subtle Connections

Murakami is not just a great writer but a funny one, too. He is clever and subtle and self-deprecating. His books contain numerous references to himself and his propensity for writing long, weird books with ambiguous endings.

He isn’t just laughing at himself or being clever, though. He is leaving subtle clues for his reader. I personally believe this is partly to remind them that they are in the Murakamian Universe, a fictional world that he has created, which contains everything from Hear the Wind Sing to Killing Commendatore.

When you read his books chronologically, you will start to appreciate these subtle links. Usually he refers back to the novel immediately before the present one, but sometimes he goes further.

Characters eat and drink the same things (Perrier water, lemon drops, Cutty Sark, etc) and one gets the feeling they are versions of each other. The character of May Kasahara from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, for example, appears to be a composite of Shimamoto from South of the Border, West of the Sun and Yuki from Dance Dance Dance.

What is the significance of this?

Well, that is debatable and one could put forth a half dozen good arguments, but if nothing else it is another fascinating layer that makes one sit and wonder what Murakami intended… and isn’t that the fun of reading almost any of his books?

Murakami has even hinted that there are subtle connections that give his books “flow”:

the works I’ve written so far are all separate and independent texts, but the sequence - or the flow - of one text to another is rather meaningful.

Authorial Development

This may not interest everyone but personally I love reading authors’ books chronologically just to see how they mature and how their interests change.

In my book, Murakamian Magical Realism and Psychological Trauma, I broke Murakami’s career into two phases: detachment and commitment. (Actually, I borrowed these terms from Murakami himself.) I postulated that his first seven novels were primarily about individual trauma and specifically Murakami’s own issues and that the second seven were about larger-scale traumas, with the author settling into a role as a sort of elder-brother figure to his readers.

Certainly, one can see in his early books an obsession with processing grief, social alienation, familial estrangement, and the loss of youth. The zenkyoto movement and its sudden failure is also a major factor.

Halfway through his career, he switched to looking at much bigger issues, as well as issues that affect others. He took on war and cults, race and sex, and much more. His character became more diverse alongside his interests.

It’s kind of interesting, too, to see how he started with very similar stories, then began really testing himself with totally new ideas, then went back to his old characters before launching into strange new spaces. I love thinking about his creative process and aspirations at these junctures.

We can also see his writing style grow. His first two books were incredibly derivative of Brautigan and Vonnegut but he quickly forged his own voice. Although he’s often accused of being too similar from one book to the next, he’s continued to shape this voice in different ways. About halfway through his career, he began to experiment with perspective, switching from first to third.

We can also see ideas about names changing. His early novels feature almost no names but later he was putting names into the titles of his books!

Altogether, I strongly recommend reading Murakami chronologically. It’s not the only way to read him… but I think people will get real value from doing it. I certainly did. I also tried to read as many of his short stories as possible, sprinkling them through his novels at approximately the times they were written.

Here are all his novels along with the Japanese and English publication dates. Note that his books are often released in instalments in Japan, so there are sometimes multiple years given.

The last one is his latest title, so far only available in Japanese. It should be released in the English-speaking world next year.