Because Mieko Kawakami’s novels "look squarely at the times she is living through, with an emphasis on gender and class"...

... the NYT Magazine writer thinks "Western readers may once more be ready for contemporary Japanese fiction that embraces the magic of realism itself."

I'm reading "'Breasts and Eggs' Made Her a Feminist Icon. She Has Other Ambitions. Will the Japanese novelist Mieko Kawakami’s stark explorations of class translate to American readers?" by Joshua Hunt.

What is meant by "once more"? Did something happen to us "Western readers" that alienated us from realism when it comes to work by Japanese writers? Well, that's actually the article writer's idea:

For nearly three decades, [the] chief emissary [of contemporary Japanese literature in translation] abroad has been Haruki Murakami, whose American influences and penchant for late-20th-century nostalgia and magical realism obscure whatever genuine insights he might offer foreign readers about life in Japan today. 

The middle-class malaise of Murakami’s protagonists, who are more likely to speak with cats than to have uncomfortable conversations about late rent with their landlord’s wife, is largely absent from Kawakami’s work. That she has found success abroad through novels that look squarely at the times she is living through, with an emphasis on gender and class, suggests that Western readers may once more be ready for contemporary Japanese fiction that embraces the magic of realism itself.... 

Personally, I find the idea of more "emphasis on gender and class" tiresome. This is the refreshing new approach?! And then gratuitously kicking Murakami around? Is that really necessary? There's no reason why one person needs to occupy a position called Japanese "emissary." Anyone can read whatever books they want written by authors from anywhere.

One writer's use of fantasy doesn't prevent another writer from sticking to what is (supposedly) realistic. (Is it "realism" to use the gender-and-class template?)

It's certainly not realism to suggest that Murakami always uses fantasy. I know the article writer hedges by saying "more likely to speak with cats," etc., and I think that's because he knows Murakami's most popular book — "Norwegian Wood" — doesn't have fantasy elements. 

Toward the end of the review, there's also this about Murakami:

Among Kawakami’s more surprising influences is the work of Haruki Murakami, who has praised her work as “breathtaking” and called her a “genius” and his favorite young author but has also been criticized for writing women as one-dimensional characters who can seem as though they exist for no reason beyond advancing the plot.

What an awkward statement! The article-writer has it in for Murakami. 

For Kawakami, though, his novels provided a model for how to think about the individual. “No parents, no family, no soporific preaching, none of the self-conscious struggles or triumphs so common in literature,” she would later write in an essay. “For me, bogged down by situations and circumstances I had never opted into, Murakami’s individualism was shocking.”

This isn’t to say that Kawakami does not differ from Murakami in terms of how she thinks about female characters.

Perplexing double negative there.  

When he made himself available for a series of rare public appearances with Kawakami, including a 2017 Q. and A., she broached the obvious incongruity of their mutual admiration by telling him, “It’s common for my female friends to say to me, ‘If you love Haruki Murakami’s work so much, how do you justify his portrayal of women?’” 

Kawakami chose to highlight an example from his 2017 novel, “Killing Commendatore,” in which a woman introduces herself to the narrator by asking what he thinks of her breasts. Murakami responded by saying this was the woman’s way of suggesting that she viewed the narrator as a kind of eunuch; for Kawakami, though, it seemed like a way of fashioning herself into a sexual object for no obvious reason or benefit.

It's a 500-page novel, but let's fixate on the woman's breasts and try to figure out what they mean. Look squarely!