The strangeness of Murakami's stories

What a surprise to see a Haruki Murakami story, UFO in Kushiro, in the current New Yorker, and even more of a surprise to realize I'd read it before, in the New Yorker - is this the first time they've ever repeated a story? Kudos to the New Yorker for doing a timely, themed issue, with an incredibly moving cover image, but in the whole world there wasn't another story you could publish that hadn't already been in the magazine? The UFO story does make a beautiful and sad commentary on the Japan earthquake, as it was in part a reflection on the aftermath of a quake in the '90s - somewhat less severe, but mostly an event that occurred before the presence of all-pervasive instant and social media, which brought the 2011 quake to our lives like no other natural disaster in history. The story is a good window on Murakami's late style, too. He has been one of my favorite writers, his stories even more than his novels, and he always is able to capture the alienation of young, worldly Japanese in a society on the one hand bound by traditions and repressions and on the other hand living in a global culture: his protagonists generally love jazz, drink coffee (not tea), eat spaghetti (not ramen). His stories seem like noirish mysteries - in this one, the protag investigates the sudden disappearance of his wife, evidently suffering from some kind of posttraumatic stress, but they also touch on mysticism and the bizarre - in this one, the protag delivers a mysterious box to Hokkaido, and is met by two odd women. His earlier stories acknowledged the conventions of plot and tried, to some degree, to resolve riddles and mysteries, but his more recent stories - this being an example - the leave mysterious events open and unresolved - at times this is disappointing, but in another way his works are strangeness themselves, like Magritte painting.