I wonder if the western cultural references are part of the attraction to Japanese readers, the same way I am attracted to reading a book with a Japanese setting.
He used to be an English-to-Japanese translator, so his books tend to read like they were translated from English. That might be another reason they're so popular outside the country.
In fact they're so popular that everyone seems to have the idea he's going to get a Nobel Prize someday, but I don't see why they'd give a prize to a novelist who only writes "women are so mysterious, truly men will never understand them" novels like him.
