Men Without Women

by Haruki Murakami

AN INDEPENDENT ORGAN THERE ARE PEOPLE in the world who—thanks to a lack of intellectual acuity—live a life that is surprisingly artificial. I haven’t run across all that many, but there are certainly a few. And Dr. Tokai was one of them. 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. I’d like to record everything that I learned about this man named Tokai. Most of it originates from things he told me directly, though certain parts are based on information that people close to him told me, people he trusted. Admittedly, a certain amount is also conjecture, based on my own observations of things I thought might be true. Like soft pâté nicely filling in the gaps between one fact and another. In other words, the portrait that follows is not based entirely on fact. As the writer of this account, I cannot recommend that the reader tr...

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Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.