Disclaimer : I've tried not to disclose any spoilers; but read at your discretion.
I recently read my first book by Haruki Murakami : The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (WUBC), as part of my September book club reading. I read the English translation by Jay Rubin. The original Japanese edition was released in three parts, which make up the three "books" of the single volume English language version (published in 1997). Hence, WUBC is a rather thick tome of 600+ pages! For this novel, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award.
The plot
The genre is Magical Realism. Through the adventures of the protagonist, the book takes the reader on a magical self exploration. Armed with eclectic characters, inappropriate phone calls, strange occurrences full of symbolism, references to Japan’s role in the World War II and its horrors, pain inflicted by human beings on fellow humans and innocent creatures; it questions the existence of “free will”.
The narrative starts off fairly simply: A Japanese couple’s cat goes missing in the city of Tokyo. The husband, Toru Okada, has recently quit his dead-end job as a “professional gofer” at a law firm and embraces household chores as a full time occupation. His wife of six years, Kumiko, is an editor at a health magazine and earns a decent income. Her brother, Noboru Wataya, is an academician turned politician, who is the media’s pet but hated profusely by his brother-in-law, Toru. One fine morning, while Toru is cooking spaghetti, he gets propositioned by a strange woman on the phone. He is curiously unmoved by her seduction. Meanwhile, he looks for the missing cat in an alley behind their home, comes across an intriguing house with an abandoned well (the cursed Miyakawi House), and exchanges some bizarre conversations with a 16-year old high school drop out from the neighbourhood, May Kasahara.
The plot thickens slowly, as Toru’s mundane life is rocked by unanticipated events and unknown people. He often hears an unseen bird making a sound like the winding of a toy, as if to spur the toy into action. He compares himself to that bird, calling it the Wind-Up Bird, that puts dormant things into motion. His wife gradually grows distant from him, his brother-in-law recruits a woman by the name of Malta Kano to help track down their cat, and he is left a mysterious keepsake from his wife’s elderly family clairvoyant, Mr. Honda, after his death. The latter is delivered to his home by the late Mr. Honda’s senior from the army - a Lieutenant Mamiya, who was a mapmaker in the Kwangtung Army during World War II. The recurring appearance of a “prostitute of the mind” - Creta Kano (Malta’s sister), introduces elements of sex, intrigue and pain to the mix.
As he continues to perform household chores, ad hoc guests drop in unannounced at his place, and he becomes embroiled in several surreal experiences. We learn that Toru has been given the house by his wealthy uncle at a subsidised rent. Through him, he hears of folklore about some previous neighbours, including former residents at the abandoned Miyawaki house. When his wife disappears one fine day without any of her belongings, he suspects that she may have fled with another man. Without showing any signs of a deranged husband, he seeks to calmly get her back despite receiving a letter from her requesting a divorce. Taking a leaf out of Lt. Mamiya’s book, he climbs down to the empty dry well at back of the Miyawaki house, and ruminates in the darkness for three days. He obtains specific insights through visions in the darkness of the well, along with a curious blue scar on his right cheek. His uncle advises him to meet with the local real estate agent for more gossip, as well as to roam the streets of Shinjinku, to seek answers for his dilemma. Toru follows this with remarkable persistence. This brings yet another interesting character : Nutmeg, into his newly expanding social life. The talented yet taciturn lady, along with her stubbornly silent son : Cinnamon, change the course of Toru’s fortunes.
Multiple parallel threads, running at a rapid pace, keep the reader hooked. They begin to converge toward the end, providing clues to the eccentric behaviour of some of the characters. However, not all the jigsaw puzzles pieces fit neatly together at the end; some gaping holes are left to the interpretation of the reader.
Does the cat return? Is Toru united with his wife? What about the wind up bird? Read the book to find out!
The Characters
A few characters are the total antithesis of each other, e.g. Toru and his brother-in-law, Noboru Wataya. Toru is an unambitious house-husband, refusing to live a “mechanical” existence; whereas Noboru is a go-getter chameleon, who determinedly pulls the strings of everyone around him, wielding his obnoxious power.
Kumiko is a tortured soul, who becomes “tainted” by her own admission, and removes herself from Toru’s world to spare him. Creta’s character has a complex relationship with pain. She undergoes a difficult childhood and early adulthood, until she eventually finds her calling as a medium. Malta Kano’s obsession with water, the “flow” of life, and the missing cat, is a forewarning of the impending challenges in Toru’s life. The whistling waiter probably represents Mr. Honda as he is shown to be carrying the Cutty Sark bottle to the hotel room - 208. Cinnamon is the boy who foresees the violent death of his own father at the hands of Noboru; helped along by his man Friday - Ushikawa. Cinnamon and Toru are thus bonded in their antagonism towards Noboru. May Kasahara is full of contradictions - her morbid talk about death, her fascination with wigs, and ambiguous ethics, provide the necessary support and periodic lessons to Toru. Nutmeg’s memories of her repatriation to Japan on board a ship, toward the end of World War II, hold the key to her association with Toru. Her enterprise of designing garments, and the serendipitous gift of ‘healing’ people, is quite the original touch! Lt. Mamiya’s accounts of the war, and his blood-curdling tale regarding Boris the Manskinner, highlight the atrocities of war, and raise an ethical dilemma regarding the World War II.
Each of these people enter Toru’s life for a reason, and help him at a critical juncture.
I had not been aware of Japan's expansionist policies in the early twentieth century, and its invasion of Manchuria (Manchukuo), in northeast China. The elaborate story of the Zoo attack in Hsin-ching, in August 1945, was mind-numbing. The book enlightened me on the history of political tensions between Japan, Russia, China and Mongolia.
Music
Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music. Each of the three books contained in WUBC mention famous classical music pieces-
- The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera),
- Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and
- The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute).
In the book, there is a brief appearance by a guitar player, the protagonist listens to classical music while cooking, and also “sees” a waiter in a hotel whistling to the tune of Rossini’s “The Thieving Magpie". This is my first Murakami book, and I was not aware of these pieces of music either; but it seemed to me that he cleverly uses Music to convey certain moods.
My Observations
The prose of this book is clearly its strength. It evokes a vivid imagery in one’s mind - be it of landscapes, brutality, pain, or day-to-day chores. The author's rich imagination shines through the original and eccentric characters he has come up with. The various letters and newspaper articles progress the story forward. The dialogue is shocking and unexpected at times.
Toru is shown to be cooking various dishes throughout the book, but the cuisine is always American, no mention of Japanese food (say sushi) anywhere. A baseball bat shows up in various phases of the book. Clearly, Murakami is inspired by the American flavour. There is an underlying theme of cleanliness, organization and a preoccupation with sartorial finesse - Toru and Cinnamon's OCD, and Nutmeg's fixation with appropriate clothing and accessories. Ushikawa is clearly their antithesis.
Murakami has attempted to present Toru as a modern, slightly emasculated version of the Japanese male; whereas his women are more of mediums through which men learn valuable lessons.
Quotes
Some of the quotes are so powerful and relevant even today!
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“I used to wonder if he could hear what the spirits said to him if he was so hard of hearing. But maybe it worked the other way: the worse your ears, the better you could hear the words of the spirits.”
“To say that their reception of me was cool would be an understatement. The doors of all the world’s refrigerators seemed to have been thrown open at once.”
“Nothing so consumes a person as meaningless exertion.”
“He had mastered the art of delivering the fatal blow with a purr and a smile.”
“Going out to work can be tough, not something sweet and peaceful like picking the prettiest rose in your garden for your sick grandmother and spending the day with her, two streets away. Sometimes you have to do unpleasant things with unpleasant people, and the chance to call home never comes up.”
“I sensed the darkness around me increasing in density, much as the evening tide comes to fullness without a sound.”
“Once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult thing in the world to shake off.”
“All I do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. I don’t have to think at all. It’s like I just put my brain in a locker before I start work and pick it up on the way home.”
“On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was meant to.“
