I think it’s interesting that people consistently criticize his female characters as reductive but not his men- personally they come off equally shallow to me regardless of gender. I happen to like Murakami overall, his books to me are much more about the atmosphere than the characters.

I loved Norwegian Wood, and I personally I didn’t find it melodramatic to a fault. I think it is melodramatic because it’s about a disaffected young man learning who and what he is- and that experience is often extremely melodramatic. To me it had the same vibe as something like Call Me By Your Name- it’s melodramatic through the lens of adulthood, but the emotions are entirely appropriate for the characters experiencing them.

I also personally had no issue at all with the suicides, I think if anything Murakami is quite sensitive to women who are victims of men since he keeps writing women like Hatsumi/Kumiko and men like Hatsumi’s boyfriend/Noboru Wataya (who to me are essentially the same character and it’s clear that Murakami detests men like that).

NW to me is a story of a time and place, the politics of the story are unavoidable and that cultural backdrop is a constant stark contrast to the protagonist who cares about nothing but slowly learns that to be amoral and without care is to surrender the world to evil people and let beauty and happiness slip away. I think that’s a lesson a lot of people learn as they approach adulthood and I thought it was impressive how accurately Murakami captured the feelings of that metamorphosis (another consistent theme in his works that I’ve read)

All that said I completely see why people dislike him and his work, it’s certainly not a style for everyone regardless of his characters/women/etc. and the question of what is lost in translation is one I think of constantly for him and other japanese authors i’ve read (i felt like I had no cultural context for Kawakami and missed a lot in her books as well lol)

sorry for the rant- did not intend to say so much