Murakami’s writing is undeniably creative and interesting, but the way he writes women undermines the whole thing and I find it weird he gets a pass for that so much.
I would suggest take him as he is, including his flaws.
A reader who is engaging critically with a Murakami book can't help but be creeped out and shocked by the dreamlike scenarios, including, as you mentioned, women that don't seem real, but also, most characters don't feel real. Intimate scenes are empty, unemotional, disconnected from reality.
They are expressions of deep self obsession, where the whole world bends for a character. The result is disconnection and boredom. Characters that feel silly, dumb, unwise, ego obsessed.
Still damn good books. The fact that they discuss this aspect is fascinating. I'd much rather have this aspect of humanity expressed, no matter how difficult it is, than to pretend it is not there.
As someone else said in this thread, it is your time, and if you decide to not waste it on Murakami, that's fair. But if you ever decide to give it a second shot, I'd say don't expect any bars to be met. Just engage with it as it is.
There are authors who are famous for being great at everything except endings. One of them has let me down a couple of times and I won’t start a book of theirs if reviewers say anything about a bad ending.
He's got some very unique ideas and I like unique.
But that dude's got some weird thing going on with women.
(Exception for Hard-boiled Wonderland, which doesn't have enough women to be weird, and also was accidentally plagiarized or something by the nearly identical anime Haibane Renmei.)
His backstory of just deciding to open a jazz club in Tokyo as a college undergrad is… a lot more possible in Japan than the US, but is still a pretty boomer life story.
Strangely, this doesn't stop people from assuming he's going to win a Nobel someday.