Men Without Women

by Haruki Murakami

There were times he thought it would have been far better to never have known. Yet he continued to return to his core principle: that, in every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong.

Our actions aren’t based on specifics like that—we can’t pinpoint why we do what we do. Relationships between people, especially between men and women, operate on—what should I say—a more general level. More vague, more self-centered, more pathetic.”

But he doubted the dead could think or feel anything. In his opinion, that was one of the great things about dying.

But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind.

Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt.

THERE ARE PEOPLE in the world who—thanks to a lack of intellectual acuity—live a life that is surprisingly artificial.

In order for these so-called principled souls to survive in this warped world, these sort of people need to carefully adjust every day, though in most cases they’re not consciously aware of the tiresome level of finesse necessary to do so. They’re thoroughly convinced that they’re perfectly guileless people who live honest lives devoid of ulterior motives or artifice. And when, by some chance, a special light shines on them, revealing how artificial and unreal the inner workings of their lives really are, circumstances can take a tragic, or in some cases comic, turn. Of course, there are many such people—we can call them blessed—who never encounter that light, or who see it but come away unfazed.

They selfishly were convinced that everyone else in the world should be obliged to suffer the way they did.

“I’ve been out with lots of woman who are much prettier than her, better built, with better taste, and more intelligent. But those comparisons are meaningless. Because to me she is someone special. A ‘complete presence,’ I guess you could call it. All of her qualities are tightly bound into one core. You can’t separate each individual quality to measure and analyze it, to say it’s better or worse than the same quality in someone else. It’s what’s in her core that attracts me so strongly. Like a powerful magnet. It’s beyond logic.”

Women are all born with a special, independent organ that allows them to lie.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.”

How could they? I can barely recall it myself. How much did I suffer? How much pain did I go through? I wish there was a machine that could accurately measure sadness, and display it in numbers that you could record. And it would be great if that machine could fit in the palm of your hand.

Suddenly one day you become Men Without Women. That day comes to you completely out of the blue, without the faintest of warnings or hints beforehand. No premonitions or foreboding, no knocks or clearing of throats. Turn a corner and you know you’re already there. But by then there’s no going back. Once you round that bend, that is the only world you can possibly inhabit. In that world you are called “Men Without Women.” Always a relentlessly frigid plural. Only Men Without Women can comprehend how painful, how heartbreaking, it is to become one.