I felt the author was pretty careful in emphasizing that he's not declaring neither Mizumura nor Murakami is superior over the other, just that translatability

I felt the author was pretty careful in emphasizing that he's not declaring neither Mizumura nor Murakami is superior over the other, just that translatability can be a factor in how works spread. BTW, all three works you mention has been translated into Japanese (including Finnegans Wake!) The translation for Neuromancer is also something to behold; Hisashi Kuroma, the translator, invented a literary "cyberpunk style" which can only be done with an Asian language. Words in Kanji are sprinkled with ruby text [1] which, instead of annotating the pronunciation of the word, fills in the romanized equivalent English neologism, eg. "接続" would be annotated not as "せつぞく" but as "ジャック・イン" (jack in). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character