Something that stuck out to me at first was Hirano's description of Japanese composition as "almost circular", preferring subtlety and implication, dancing around what is really being said - compared to English's linear, direct, logical flow. She emphasizes how Japanese literature relies on and assumes readers' emotion to get a message across, allowing them to use their imaginations to create their own interpretations and understanding of the storyline.
I never thought about this, but in hindsight it seems quite clear. Of the varieties of English literature that I've read, I've assumed that being told the character's thoughts, emotions, and reasoning is the norm, and that leaving it out could otherwise lead to a choppy and nonsensical plot. Reading Murakami, however, I'm met with vivid descriptions of the setting with simple recounting of what our protagonist does, letting me place my own logical reasoning and interpretation of the plot along a backdrop I can easily picture and connect with.
Along the same line, I found it enlightening that much of the time, translation deals more with conveying the emotional impact and 'feel' of the scene rather than finding equivalents for every word written. In the examples Hirano gives, many lines of dialogue and accompanying phrases are reorganized with additional adjectives or adverbs inserted in, and sometimes even deleted, and how the need to explain cultural topics like juku or Tokugawa Ieyasu, in order to maintain that emotional connection, involves adding to the translation what wasn't originally there, or just changing the phrase completely.
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