The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997 in English)
4.5 Stars out of 5
Haruki Murakami (translated by Jay Rubin)
613 pages
With thirteen books to his name, Haruki Murakami is the
widest sold novelist in Japan. The genre he operates in defies definition: from
pop culture to crime to the anti-establishmentarian/existential likes of Don
Delilo or the Joycean realm of Thomas Pynchon. He is also a novelist that
frustrates many modern Japanese critics. He writes about the Japanese and their
lives but sprinkles his books with a very heavy flavoring of Western pop
culture, and (presumably even worse to some critics) his writing style and
themes are heavily influenced by Western writers, notably Franz Kafka in
addition to Delilo and Pynchon. “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, his novel
published in 1995 in Japanese and beautifully translated by Jay Rubin in 1997 is
not in many ways an exception to the previous characterization. And yet it is
an exception in that this book is clearly a work of art; perhaps slightly flawed art,
but art nevertheless. Unlike some novels that achieve commercial success
and only strive for critical success, Murakami actually achieves both with “The
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”. This book is wild mixture of styles and themes, some
like the Russo-Japanese battles in Manchukuo during WWII will be new to most
Americans, but the deeper stories of spousal alienation, free will and a sense
of purpose in modern life will be highly relatable to anyone that ponders such
topics.
Like a typical Murakami novel, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”
tells the tale of a Japanese male that seems to differ markedly from the
prototypical Japanese male. Toru Okada is unemployed, supported by his hard
working wife, and quite content with the situation. To make the contrast all
that much clearer, Kumiko, Toru’s wife, has a brother that is Toru’s near
opposite: the most alpha of alpha males. The book begins with a missing cat. As
Toru searches for Noboru Wataya the cat named for Kumiko’s domineering politician
brother, Toru finds an abandoned house on an alley; an alley with both ends
blocked to through traffic. He meets also a fellow slacker in the form of
sixteen year old May Kasahara. May is out of school following a near fatal
motorcycle accident, an accident she caused. Following the first of many
quixotic conversations with the death-obsessed May, Toru turns for help in
finding the cat to a psychic recommended to Kumiko by her brother, Noboru.
Into the picture in physical and dream form come the Kano
sisters, Creta the medium and her sister the former prostitute, Malta. The
sisters named for two of the islands in the Mediterranean start Toru on his
journey out of everyday Japan into an altered reality involving a Kafkaesque hotel,
a mysterious woman and her tormentor. As the book progresses, the wall that
separates Toru from “reality” and the hotel’s meta-reality becomes thinner each
time Toru makes the passage. Indeed, one significant theme of “The Wind-up Bird
Chronicle” is the blurring of the definition of what is real and what is not;
and even whether there is any significance to the question of their difference.
Aiding Toru in his passage between these alternate realities is the discovery
by Toru that if he spends time in an abandoned dry well on the property of the
empty house on the alley, he can enter his dream state with less effort; less
effort, but not without a kind of price. For upon the completion of his first
experience in the well, Toru emerges from the well with a black mark on his
face. The symbologies of his facial mark, sitting in the depths of the well, a
trapped woman/”Kumiko”, and a demonic adversary/”Noboru” are also themes that
appear in various forms throughout the book.
A significant consequence of the mark on his face for Toru
is that he meets yet another woman, Nutmeg Akasaka. Nutmeg is a wealthy woman
that like Creta makes her living by helping people (always wealthy, influential
women), though in Nutmeg’s case, she does it by absorbing their pain. Nutmeg is
losing this ability when she meets Toru and deduces the significance of Toru’s
mark is not that of Cain, but quite the contrary. Like Nutmeg, Toru can now via
his new mark (which warms with each encounter) take on Nutmeg’s former role as
a healer.
These various scenes from Toru’s reality-based and
dream-based life are mixed with several realistic tales from Japan’s invasion
and subjugation of Manchuria during WWII. The connection between the WWII
scenes and the contemporary ones involve the facial marks, dry wells, family
connections, and the contrast between the hyper-realism of a vicious war with
Toru’s waning sense of reality. In all likelihood, this novel’s depiction of
the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, their subjugation of the native Chinese, the
eventual Russian victory over the Japanese, and their post-war treatment of the
captured Japanese soldiers must be especially germane and painful to the modern
Japanese. More to the point though, the stories from China lay the groundwork
for Murakami’s position on how political machinations can result in incredible
pain, and even more so on how such events can shape a nation’s personality. Is
the modern Japanese a latent soldier as he works to exhaustion each work day, a
kind of robot in the original sense introduced in K.
Čapek's play R.U.R. ‘Rossum's Universal Robots’ (1920); that is forced
labor; or as the title of the book suggest, wind-up bird. Toru’s slacker vision
for himself offers an alternative way in life.
In terms of literary style, the surrealistic hotel and the
odd way Toru responds to May’s commentary hearken strongly of Kafka (see “The
Castle”, 1926; or “The Trial”, 1925). The most memorable strengths of this book
are the beautiful spare language that blends so well with the concept of
humanity as little more than automatons; that is wind-up toys/birds. Murakami introduces
the wind-up bird via the fact that the sound of a wind-up bird being wound is
only heard by a gifted (cursed?) individual such as Toru, and only just before
some pending tragedy. The wind-up bird motif is clearly more than just an ill
omen, it is a metaphor for each of us as we move through life. Are we merely
robots operating according to someone else’s (a politician/demon) programming? Murakmi
also explores the concept of language/programming via Nutmeg’s son, Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is a brilliant but mute young man who does many things for his mother,
including programming her computer. His character serves as yet another
metaphor, this one for a sentient being that operates without language and as a
kind of introduction to the analogous concept of controlling via a program.
Having moved through these various ideas of political
manipulation of the people, of what a real man is supposed to be in terms of
free will, Murakami brings the various disparate parts of his book together with
a final confrontation in Hotel Kafka between Toru and his adversary/”Noboru”.
It is not much of a spoiler to say, that Toru physically confronts his foe. He
is able to “free” the woman/”Kumiko” but loses her in the process. The point
is, Toru has found a path to himself by finding a way of defining himself not
as being a particular part of society, a wind-up bird doing what it is
programmed to do by social convention, but rather as a man defined by his
values.
Murakami’s depiction of Man in “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle”
is a brilliant but challenging discussion of the question, what is Man. The one
potential weakness is that it is possible he utilizes too wide a variety of
stories and means to move through this philosophical territory, and that
finding a link amongst all of them to his conclusion is somewhat obscured by
the process. As for me, I found the effort to be difficult, but worth making; a
kind of strength rather than a weakness.
I highly recommend this book.
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