There’s a Haruki Murakami quote that occasionally surfaces on the internet and is probably the most overtly political statement he’s ever made. Unsurprisingly, it’s an example of highly specific imagery used to make a vague, nebulous point (which isn’t a bad description of Murakami’s fiction either):

Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.

What I didn’t realize until today was the particular context of that comment. Murakami said it while accepting the Jerusalem Prize in 2009, not long after Israel launched a brutal war on Gaza, and did so despite calls from Palestinians to reject the award. Looking back on his full statement now, from the vantage point of 2026, after two and a half years of an active genocide, it’s hard not to notice that his universal message about supporting individuals against “The System” neglects to mention which individuals in the real world might actually need support and solidarity.