His writing has become rather uneven release to release since the 2000s started. Had all of his works been of the same quality and had he avoided much of the tacky and embarrassing stuff he’s released since then he likely could have won under the right Academy makeup. He’s just been far too uneven though.
I thought Kafka on the Shore and After Dark were simplistic and childish, at times he seemed to actively be shooting for a much younger audience. Kafka on the Shore I find especially grating.
After the Quake, Blind Willow, 1Q84, and Colorless were all quality and contained some of his best writing. Had he continued on after Colorless in 2013 releasing works of equal quality he’d have had a better shot. Instead he started crapping out bad nonfiction works like On Music and his T Shirt collection book, and several uneven short story collections like Men Without Women and First Person Singular. This slip into commercialism (selling merchandise and Uniqlo collections) can’t help his case.
His last novel could have been great but it seemed like he actively dumbed it down with Google and Facebook references and by neutering the ending. The entire novel seems like it’s leading towards his protagonist literally entering Nazi Germany during the war and confronting Japan’s past but instead he chops off this plot thread and just ties up the ending of the novel sloppily. I think it’s less so the case that he doesn’t write on social or political topics, it’s that he flirts with them half-heartedly but never fully commits.
Someone like Modiano is able to do this (aside from his first few works which fully commit to tackling anti-semitism) because his works nearly all exist in a sort of noir-esque pseudo-political haze where France’s wrong-doing during the war and the author’s own Jewishness are constantly alluded to but rarely ever the sole purpose of the novel. Murakami however just seems to randomly sprinkle in bits of these sorts of things in his works here and there and often times it seems very out of place and slapped together. In The Wind Up Bird Chronicle this approach works despite how messy it is. The only time I really find him doing it well however is his exploration into cults in 1Q84.
It’ll be interesting to see what if any change the recent releases of near universally lauded films based on his works will have. Currently Drive My Car is the best reviewed film of 2021 and is likely to win a Best International Film Oscar. It’ll likely also pick up a Best Picture nomination. Burning in 2018 also received many accolades and extremely high reviews. I doubt it’ll win him a Nobel but if Drive My Car pulls off a surprise Best Picture win it’ll catapult Murakami back into good graces amongst westerners that seem to have alluded him the last few years.
I normally take these sorts of things with a grain of salt but film adaptions may have helped boost Ishiguro and Jelinek. That last Margaret Atwood novel likely wouldn’t exist or have won a Booker without the successful TV adaption The Handmaid’s Tale had.
. I´m going to look for their books. The truth is, I have read only some of Murakami´s short stories and I missed the film Burning so I can't argue with full knowledge of his fiction. But his style in these short stories (The elephant vanishes) strikes me as something new and original.