Tokai, with a perfect life who had been a bachelor until he was fifty-two years old.

Tanimura said that he once knew a successful plastic surgeon, Dr. “An Independent Organ” is also narrated by a character named Tanimura, though it is not clear if it is the same narrator. He was now travelling the world and working as a sushi chef, and she was a single career girl. Sixteen years later, Tanimura ran into Erika and found out that she had slept with the other boy and Kitaru had found out. A few days later, Kitaru quit the coffee shop and disappeared. He found out that she was already seeing someone, but did not tell Kitaru. One day he asked Tanimura to take her out so that she would not go out with anyone else, and Tanimura did as asked. Kitaru had been a strange boy who had failed the entrance exam into college twice and so was unable to take his girlfriend, Erika, out on dates. Tanimura had worked in a college coffee shop in college, and while he was there he had met his friend Kitaru. The next story, “Yesterday,” is narrated by Tanimura. Misaki suggested that Kafuku’s wife had slept with Takatsuki for reasons of her own that had nothing to do with Kafuku. Kafuku and Takatsuki became drinking pals, but Kafuku never found out why his wife had slept with him. After she died, however, he became obsessed with the reasons behind her infidelity, so much so that he befriended the last lover, Takatsuki, she had before getting sick. He had always known about her affairs, but he had never confronted her about them or asked why she had done it. He was married to an actress who died of ovarian cancer. As Kafuku slowly began to become comfortable with Misaki, he started to open up to her about his past. He had not had a woman in his car since his wife had died, and having Misaki drive him around town made him think of his wife more often than usual. The first story in Murakami’s collection is “Drive My Car.” This story is about a stage actor, Kafuku, who hired a strange, ugly young girl named Misaki to be his chauffeur.

The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Murakami, Haruki.

Men and women murakami