After reading this, I'm left wondering, did Murakami kick off the cats in Japanese fiction motif? Or is he just another practitioner? (He is not mentioned in this article.)

In Tumultuous Times, Readers Turn to ‘Healing Fiction’ - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/07/books/healing-fiction-japan-korea-before-the-coffee-gets-cold.html