Mura-calm me!

I'm reading Murakami at the moment. Norwegian Wood. It's beautiful written, he's very precise with his words, it's well crafted, has no unnecessary words cluttering his sentences, but I am a little worried about the characterisation. Everyone seems so unpleasant! The women are paradoxically submissive and demanding; turning a blind eye to cheating, as long as they are kept in expensive trinkets and the men sleep around and stumble through disconnected relationships with girls they don't particularly like and who they ruin with misuse, their only regret displayed by a shrug of 'I shouldn't have done that to her, but what else could I do?'. In some parts it's quite outrageous (for a conservative like me).

I'm not sure if this is a microcosm of all Japanese life or just a small minority. I get the impression it's the latter, but there is an element of smugness in the tone of writing that makes me think Murakami thinks these people are above the normal throng. That might just be because he bases them on himself, in both central characters I've read have been only children and have obsessions with jazz. I am assuming that Murakami fits that description too.

I do hope it is just a picture of him and not the natives generally, if that is the best Japan has to offer, I may end up being an awful Brit abroad: regular fry-ups at the Queen Vic; a copy of yesterday's Daily Mail tucked under my arm (which hopefully won't clash with my Brits on the piss t-shirt); ex-pat get-togethers and tutting that you can't get 'real' tea anywhere.

I am looking forward to Japan proving me wrong (it would take a whole country to achieve such a thing.).