"What is he like? Is he a kind man?" I was asked by an anxious administrator who had been assigned to guide me through Tokyo's Aoyama neighborhood to Haruki Murakami's office, which was in a discreet, unmarked building on a side street. She visibly deflated when Murakami's assistant answered the door, accepted delivery of me, and sent her off to wait out our lunch meeting at a nearby train station. It was 2010, and in Japan, at that point, Murakami was a celebrity of a magnitude unrivaled in the literary world...