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Interesting. Like Paola, I didn't notice it consciously, but I think it was bugging me sub-consciously. I can quite understand the pervasive nature of American culture in particular, which of course is here in Australia too. But apart from the Japanese names, there didn't seem to be anything purely Japanese in the stories - though of course it may be there and I just don't recognise it.
Historically the Japanese certainly seemed to throw out many of their traditional ways of life when they "westernised" themselves in a generation at the end of the 19th century, and that must have left a sort of spiritual hollowness, which Murakami is perhaps expressing in these stories and in his other books.
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