I picked up Murakami's Men Without Women and finished reading "Kino" this weekend ... came to post about it and found you guys have done all the hard work already.
Yeah, fantastic story... It was first published in 2015, so that makes it fairly modern for Murakami. His style and symbolism and main characters remain incredibly constant.
This story almost seems like a best-of mashup of his recurring images and themes. Only lacks for a well.
I can't add much more to analysis already done here, though I don't think anyone mentioned two major events.
I think it is probably important, one, how Kamita's position at the bar is described. He is tall but sits in a cramped space under a staircase. ... no spoilers necessary, that's the first graf of the story. His seat was "the most inconspicuous and the least comfortable."
EDIT: Used quotes, not spoiler tags. Oops. Fixed.
Last edited by ElSapo; 04-22-2019 at 08:58 AM.