A Wild Sheep Chase was incredibly hard for me to follow. I have never been the best reader and this was a test of my cognitive reading abilities. One thing that did stand out for me was how different/similar a Japanese author is than your average western one. One thing that made it different was the assumptions made by the author.
The first and probably most prominent assumption made by the novels main character, is the meaningless of life. The character, who doesn't even have a name, lives a seemingly meaningless existence. The way he sees himself and the world around him is that little of interest can be found. I do not know if this is the way many Japanese people see their own existence but it is definitely not something you would normally see in a protagonist from a western novel. There is nothing heroic, tragic or detestable about the books characters... they just exist.
Later in the novel, the characters definitely become more interesting but only when the author is able to move past the concrete elements of the book's reality and delve into the metaphysical world. The importance of the world in A Wild Sheep Chase lies in the big picture that is going on behind the scenes of the events and people of the book. This could show another assumption about what Japanese culture finds most important and perhaps the things that western culture put more importance on, Japanese culture finds trivial.
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