Murakami Haruki’s most well-known character-type is without doubt the lonesome protagonist—the male narrator who tells his stories through the male pronoun ‘boku’ (‘I’). The few available literary analyses of gender representations in Murakami’s work have generally led to two critical conclusions about his character construction. First, that his fiction mirrors Japanese patriarchy and second, that he positions female characters traditionally as objects for male subjectivities and sexualities. But is this criticism complete? His works also portray female main characters, protagonists and narrators that act as subjects in their own worlds, using their own language and first person pronoun (‘watashi’) to convey stories of their own. Dr. Hansen will female character development that mirrors women’s shifting position and paradoxical empowerment in contemporary Japanese society and feminist thought.