Drive My Car

Overview

“Drive My Car” is a short story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, first published in 2014 as part of his collection Men Without Women. It is literary fiction built around character, memory, and emotional change rather than a tightly resolved mystery. A car provides the story’s practical setting and its central image: a confined space in which two people share time while remaining partly unknowable to one another. The story became one of Murakami’s best-known recent short works, and its international profile grew considerably after Ryusuke Hamaguchi adapted it into a feature film released in 2021. The film’s success brought new readers to the original while also inviting comparison between the story’s inward, compressed form and the adaptation’s broader treatment of its characters.

The protagonist, Kafuku, is a middle-aged actor whose wife, Oto, has died. Before her death, he knew that she had been unfaithful, but he never understood what her affairs meant or what she had been seeking. After a minor traffic accident reveals a blind spot in his vision, Kafuku is required to have someone else drive him. He hires Misaki, a young, quiet woman whose skill behind the wheel suits the work. Kafuku prefers routine and solitude, so at first their relationship is defined by practical arrangements and stretches of silence. Their regular journeys gradually become a space in which he can think, remember, and speak.

Kafuku also spends time with Takatsuki, one of Oto’s lovers, hoping that contact with someone who knew her intimately might clarify the life she kept beyond his understanding. The effort does not yield a simple key to Oto’s character. Instead, the story tests the limits of what one person can know about another, especially after death has made questions impossible to ask directly. Misaki, too, carries a painful past of her own. As she and Kafuku talk, their connection develops not as a neat exchange in which one person cures the other, but as a cautious recognition between two people living with loss. The movement of the story is from Kafuku’s fixation on his wife’s secret toward the harder task of acknowledging grief, love, and uncertainty while continuing to live.

Themes and literary background

The car shapes both the action and the emotional logic of the story. Kafuku sits in the passenger seat, no longer fully in control of his movement, while Misaki steers through familiar streets. Their journeys are repetitive and ordinary, yet the shared enclosure makes conversation possible without requiring either character to surrender everything. The blind spot that alters Kafuku’s driving also resonates with his incomplete knowledge of Oto: intimacy does not grant total access to another person. A loved one can remain partly beyond comprehension, and memory cannot supply a definitive explanation for the dead.

The story also considers acting, performance, and the difference between speaking another person’s lines and facing one’s own feelings. Kafuku’s profession gives him experience with roles and speech, but it cannot spare him from the uncertainty of his private life. Murakami’s restrained prose lets pauses, routines, and repeated journeys carry emotional weight. Rather than turning infidelity, mourning, or forgiveness into a simple moral verdict, the narrative asks how someone can go on when the truth is incomplete. Its concerns connect with the larger frame of Men Without Women, whose stories examine men marked by separation, loneliness, or the absence of intimate relationships. The writing background most firmly established for the story is this place within Murakami’s 2014 collection; its distinctive method is the transformation of a commonplace drive into a setting for memory and difficult conversation.

The story’s standing rests on its economical psychological portrait, its memorable driver-and-passenger arrangement, and its refusal to solve grief as if it were a puzzle. Hamaguchi’s internationally prominent 2021 adaptation extended its reach, but the original remains a self-contained work with a quieter scale and room for readers to consider what its characters cannot know. Its lasting appeal lies in the idea that understanding may remain partial, while listening, admitting uncertainty, and accepting the presence of others can still make continued life possible.

About the Author

Haruki Murakami

Early life and education

Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949, in Kyoto, Japan, and grew up in the Kansai region, particularly around Kobe. His father taught Japanese, and books were part of his early environment, although Murakami’s own strongest literary interests came to include Western writing, especially American literature. He was also deeply drawn to jazz, an interest that would remain important throughout his life and work. In 1968 he moved to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, where he studied drama in the university’s First Faculty of Literature. His university years coincided with the era of student activism in Japan, a formative social setting, though his fiction cannot be reduced to a direct record of those movements.

During and after university, Murakami married and, with his wife, ran a small jazz bar called Peter Cat. The business operated for seven years. The combination of music, work, and everyday encounters in an urban setting preceded his full-time literary career. Murakami has often recounted a decisive moment in 1978: while watching a baseball game at Tokyo’s Jingu Stadium, he suddenly thought that he might be able to write a novel. He went home and began writing. The story is often presented as a striking point of origin, but it came after years of reading and alongside a life already shaped by independent work and artistic interests.

Writing career and major works

Murakami’s first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, appeared in 1979 and won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers. He followed it with Pinball, 1973 (1980) and A Wild Sheep Chase (1982); the three books are often grouped as the “Trilogy of the Rat.” A Wild Sheep Chase received the Noma Literary New Face Prize. His 1985 novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World won the Tanizaki Prize and displayed his characteristic ability to place everyday experience beside elaborate, dreamlike or speculative structures. Norwegian Wood (1987), a novel concerned with youth, love, and death, became a major popular success in Japan and introduced his work to a much larger readership abroad.

His later major novels include The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994–95), which won the Yomiuri Literary Prize in 1996; Kafka on the Shore (2002); and 1Q84 (2009–10). Across these works, Murakami often follows isolated protagonists through recognizable contemporary settings that gradually open onto uncanny, symbolic, or surreal dimensions. His uncluttered prose, recurring attention to music and ordinary routines, and interest in loneliness and hidden lives have become widely recognizable features of his writing. He has also published short stories, essays, and memoir-like nonfiction, and is an accomplished translator of American writers, including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver. The 2014 story collection Men Without Women includes “Drive My Car,” a compact exploration of grief and intimacy that later became the basis for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s acclaimed film adaptation.

Reputation and legacy

Murakami’s books have been translated into many languages and have found a substantial readership in Japan and internationally. His literary sensibility brings together Japanese settings, extensive engagement with Western fiction, and a lifelong interest in music. This combination, along with the balance of accessible storytelling and unresolved mystery, has made his work distinctive to readers around the world. His books have also prompted debate, including criticism of aspects of characterization and gender, alongside sustained appreciation for their imaginative reach and carefully controlled prose. He received the Jerusalem Prize in 2009, among other honors. Murakami is living; no date of death applies. His continuing career as a novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and translator has established him as one of the most recognizable and widely discussed Japanese writers of the contemporary period.

StoryFlow

The Passenger Seat Becomes a Witness

This flow follows Kafuku from losing the right to drive to using the passenger seat as a place to revisit his past and speak more openly.

The Marriage Behind the Rehearsals

This flow traces the marriage Kafuku remembers, from deep companionship through betrayal, bereavement, and the questions that survive his wife's death.

From Suspicion to Drinking Companions

This flow follows Kafuku's deliberate approach to Takatsuki, from knowledge of the affair to a real but temporary friendship.

Knowledge Graph

Playing a Role and Returning to Oneself

Knowledge Graph

Storylines

When Kafuku was twenty-nine and thirty

A Marriage of Actors

Kafuku met Kafuku's Wife while they were working on a film. He was a young actor with a small part; she was striking and already playing a major supporting role. He fell deeply in love, and they married when he was thirty. Their careers later shifted in prominence, but they respected each other's work and built a life that seemed, to those around them, unusually compatible. Kafuku remained devoted to her throughout their marriage.

Early in Kafuku's marriage

The Infant's Brief Life

Kafuku's Wife gave birth to a daughter who lived for only three days. The hospital attributed the sudden death to a defective heart, but there was no way for the couple to verify the explanation. They had not yet named her. The loss left Kafuku and Kafuku's Wife suspended in grief. Each year Kafuku remembered the child's birthday in prayer and wondered how old she would have been.

After their daughter's death

A Slow Recovery

Kafuku and Kafuku's Wife withdrew into a period of near-silence. She drank heavily, while he devoted himself almost obsessively to calligraphy, as if the marks of his brush might reveal what he could not say aloud. They gradually returned to daily life by supporting one another and throwing themselves into their work. Kafuku's Wife said she did not want another child, and Kafuku agreed that they would prevent another pregnancy.

After the couple began recovering

The First Affairs

Kafuku later suspected that Kafuku's Wife's affairs began after the loss of their child, though he could never know whether the grief had anything to do with them. Over the years, she had four lovers, each an actor working with her on a film, and each relationship appeared to end when the production was over. Kafuku sensed what was happening from the way she spoke about the men. He loved her and believed their marriage was emotionally and sexually fulfilling, but he never asked what she sought in other relationships.

During the final years of the marriage

The Affair with Takatsuki

Takatsuki was the last of the men Kafuku knew to have been involved with Kafuku's Wife. Their affair lasted several months, and Kafuku understood that she was the one who ended it. Takatsuki, a handsome but limited actor, seems to have become more attached than she was. Kafuku never learned why she chose Takatsuki. The question troubled him in part because he considered him a decent but unremarkable man, someone whose appeal he could not reconcile with Kafuku's Wife's strength and depth.

Near the end of Kafuku's Wife's life

Cancer and Loss

Kafuku's Wife was diagnosed with advanced uterine cancer not long after the affair with Takatsuki ended. As the illness progressed, she saw almost no one beyond close family and medical staff. Takatsuki tried to visit but was refused, and he did not learn the full extent of her illness until shortly before her death. Kafuku watched her decline and later gathered her bones from the ashes at the crematorium. Her death ended their life together without answering the questions he had carried about her affairs.

After Kafuku's Wife's death

The Unasked Question

Kafuku regretted that he had never asked Kafuku's Wife what she had found in the other men or what she had lacked in him. He had come close to asking, but her suffering in the final months made him unable to demand an explanation. The question disappeared with her. He held to the belief that knowledge was preferable to ignorance, even when the truth hurt. Yet in this case, his commitment to facing what he knew left him with an enduring grief and no answer to complete it.

About six months after Kafuku's Wife's death

An Invitation to Takatsuki

Kafuku encountered Takatsuki at a television studio, where Takatsuki offered condolences and recalled having worked with Kafuku's Wife. Knowing that Takatsuki had been her last lover, Kafuku invited him to meet for drinks and talk about her. Takatsuki accepted, apparently relieved that Kafuku did not suspect their past relationship. Kafuku, meanwhile, watched him closely, drawn toward the man even as the memory of his intimacy with Kafuku's Wife remained painfully vivid.

In the months after Kafuku's Wife's death

Drinking Companions

Kafuku and Takatsuki began meeting regularly in bars. They drank whiskey and talked, often returning to stories about Kafuku's Wife. Takatsuki listened intently, still grieving a relationship whose ending and whose final illness he had never fully been allowed to understand. Kafuku liked him despite knowing the past between them. He also learned that Takatsuki drank heavily and was facing a likely divorce, with the possibility of losing easy access to his young son weighing on him.

During one of their later meetings

The Locked Safe

In a conversation about Kafuku's Wife, Kafuku told Takatsuki that the most painful thing was the possibility that he had failed to understand some essential part of her. He described that unknown part as something locked away, beyond his reach even after nearly twenty years together. Takatsuki answered that perfect access to another person's heart was impossible, however much one loved them. He urged Kafuku to look inward first, and to make peace with what he found there. His words seemed to come from a deep and unguarded place.

Over the course of the drinking friendship

The Revenge That Faded

Kafuku later admitted that he had initially befriended Takatsuki with a darker purpose: he wanted to discover a weakness and use it to damage Takatsuki's career and his chance of seeing his son. The thought grew from Kafuku's inability to escape the image of Kafuku's Wife with another man. As the friendship continued, however, the rage that had driven the plan seemed to vanish. Kafuku never acted on it, and he came to feel that the impulse might not have been simple revenge so much as an effort to rid himself of a tormenting presence.

About six months after it began

The Friendship Ends

After roughly half a year of meetings, Kafuku stopped returning Takatsuki's calls and made no effort to contact him. Takatsuki eventually stopped calling too. Kafuku later explained that he no longer needed to keep acting out the friendship, and that the anger beneath it had lost its force. The abrupt ending may have hurt Takatsuki, but Kafuku let the silence stand. The friendship had helped him approach his own grief, though it had never given him the explanation he had wanted.

When Misaki Watari was eight

A Father Leaves

Misaki Watari's father left the family when she was eight and never returned or contacted her. Her mother blamed the departure on Misaki's appearance, telling her that he would not have left if she had been prettier. The accusation became part of Misaki's childhood, though she later recognized that her mother's cruelty surfaced most insistently when she was drinking. Misaki grew up without close friends and learned to keep her feelings guarded.

When Misaki Watari was seventeen

A Drunk-Driving Death

Misaki Watari's mother drove drunk, lost control of the car, and died after it left the road and struck a tree. Misaki said she had expected such an outcome sooner or later because her mother's drinking had been a persistent problem. She was relieved when her mother died, though she did not present that feeling as uncomplicated. The loss and the years of abuse shaped her bluntness and her unwillingness to rely on other people.

Not long before Misaki Watari was hired

A License Suspended

Kafuku had a minor traffic accident after drinking a small amount of alcohol. His license was suspended, and a required eye examination revealed a trace of glaucoma and a blind area in the right side of his vision. The theater could not ignore the danger of his missing a vehicle approaching from that side. Kafuku had to stop driving, at least until further testing could address the problem, even though driving had long been part of his daily life.

Before Kafuku hired a driver

Unease in the Passenger Seat

Kafuku had long believed that women drivers tended to be either too timid or too aggressive. Even when a woman drove expertly, he often felt a tension in the car that made him uncomfortable, though he did not consider himself someone who generally judged people by sex. The suspension of his license forced him to confront that private prejudice. When the mechanic who maintained his car recommended a young woman as a driver, Kafuku was hesitant but willing to meet her because he trusted the mechanic's judgment.

Two days after Kafuku's car was repaired

The Test Drive

Kafuku met Misaki Watari at the garage, where she appeared unsmiling, broad-shouldered, and direct. She said she preferred a manual transmission and needed no navigation system because she had worked as a courier and knew the city. On a test drive through crowded streets, she handled the Yellow Saab 900 convertible with smooth control, parallel-parked easily, and asked for little conversation. Her ease behind the wheel overturned Kafuku's expectations; he hired her after they returned to the garage.

From the day after the test drive

The Daily Drive

Misaki Watari began driving Kafuku from his home to the theater and between his other acting jobs. He rehearsed lines from an adaptation of Uncle Vanya in the car, while their drives home were often accompanied by Beethoven or the popular music of his youth. Her silence and concentration made it possible for Kafuku to rehearse without self-consciousness. He gradually grew accustomed to riding beside her, and sometimes fell asleep in the passenger seat of the Yellow Saab 900 convertible.

About two months into Misaki Watari's employment

The First Long Conversation

During a traffic jam, Misaki Watari asked why Kafuku had become an actor and whether he had ever wanted to remain inside a role rather than return to himself. Kafuku explained that acting let him become someone else while preserving the assurance that he could go back. She also asked why he had no friends. Kafuku said that he had once had many companions but had stopped feeling the need for close friends, especially after marrying Kafuku's Wife. Their exchange opened a more personal channel between the driver and her employer.

During the same conversation

Stories of Loss

Kafuku told Misaki Watari about Takatsuki, the man he had befriended after Kafuku's Wife died, and admitted that Takatsuki had been one of her lovers. Misaki was startled that Kafuku had knowingly spent time with him, but Kafuku said he wanted to understand why Kafuku's Wife had chosen him. Misaki shared that her father had abandoned her and that her mother had blamed her for it. She also described her mother's drinking and death. Neither of them offered easy comfort; their stories instead established a frankness founded on silence, loss, and an acceptance that some motives remain opaque.

Later in their drives together

The Self After Acting

Kafuku described how he had continued meeting Takatsuki even though he could not discover why Kafuku's Wife had slept with him. He compared the friendship to a role that could not be abandoned until its meaning had taken shape, and said that returning from a role never left a person quite where he had started. Misaki listened and connected his account to her own belief that people sometimes act from a kind of sickness rather than from clear logic. Kafuku began to see that her directness could illuminate questions he had circled for years.

Later in the story

The Confession of Revenge

Kafuku told Misaki Watari that he had once wanted to punish Takatsuki for sleeping with Kafuku's Wife. He had planned to win Takatsuki's trust, uncover a fatal weakness, and use it to ruin his reputation and perhaps his chance of seeing his son. Kafuku said the image of Kafuku's Wife with another man had clung to him like a demon, but that the urge to retaliate had finally disappeared. He had never carried out the plan, and Misaki was relieved that he had not seriously harmed anyone.

Near the end of their conversation

A Different Explanation

Kafuku continued to wonder why Kafuku's Wife had chosen Takatsuki, whom he regarded as a weak and ordinary man. Misaki Watari suggested that perhaps Kafuku's Wife had not fallen in love with Takatsuki at all, and that this could be precisely why she had slept with him. The suggestion unsettled Kafuku because it offered no comforting rationale, only another possibility he could not prove. He began to accept that the explanation might lie beyond the kind of specific answer he had been searching for.

At the end of the story

Sleep Before the Stage

As the drive continued, Kafuku settled into the passenger seat and tried to hear the exact moment Misaki Watari changed gears. The shifts were so smooth that he could detect only a faint change in the engine's sound. He decided to sleep before returning to the theater, where the lights, lines, and applause awaited him. In his thoughts, the self that returned after acting could never be exactly the self that had left, and he was grateful for Misaki's quiet presence as he closed his eyes.