Navigating Murakami’s “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”

Book or movie review

There’s no author who occupies the same space in the literary universe that Haruki Murakami does. In every novel he writes Murakami constructs a fictional world that reflects his sympathy for humanity and his intricate imagination. Though his novels are uniquely challenging, readers keep returning to the bookstore for his latest creation. His works are so popular that this year Murakami was selected as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME.

What launched this novelist into the global consciousness was The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, his magnum opus. The book is a challenge: at times it seems to lead the reader on a wild chase through the unknown. It addresses the trauma of WWII in Japan and abroad, loss of self in the modern age and the blurred lines between reality and fantasy—a mixture that can make any story feel convoluted. Yet, the labyrinth of Murakami’s fiction—through dream-like sequences, painful recollections, always with the sound of the ominous wind-up bird in the background—will leave readers connected to a much wider story—the global narrative of pain—in ways that may surprise them.

Toru Okada has recently quit his comfortable job as a “professional gofer,” an overly qualified errand boy, at a law firm. With no clear purpose of what he wants to do with his life, Toru is content to stay home and read novels while his wife Kumiko works for a lifestyle magazine. Toru is the embodiment of passivity. Even after strange things begin to happen around him, it is not until Kumiko vanishes that he finally takes action.

Toru’s mundane routine is reflected in Murakami’s clear and simple style. The tone and words lull the reader into a daze like a small boat on a quiet ocean. Then out of nowhere Murakami inserts something surreal. Juxtaposed with his concise writing is a phantasmagoria of absurd happenings. Surprisingly, the magical effortlessly melds with the mundane as these absurd events force Toru and the reader out of this daze. While making a plate of spaghetti, Toru receives a strange phone call from a woman who challenges his concept of reality. Although events like this seem unconnected at first, they force Toru to encounter colorful characters that are bonded through the cry of an ominous wind-up bird, which only they can hear, and memories of violence and World War II. Toru’s job much like the reader’s is to listen to all these accounts of pain and discover how they relate to Kumiko’s disappearance.

Yet that goal does not even appear on the horizon for a good 200 pages. Instead the reader must push through flashbacks and found documents for the first part of the book before any narrative action takes place. The original Japanese version of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was serialized in the Shinchō literary magazine. Some of the chapters, including a scene where Chinese soldiers are beaten to death with baseball bats, were originally published as short stories in the New Yorker. The first chapter in Murakami’s anthology, The Elephant Vanishes is the origin of the first chapter of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. These chapters can stand alone, reflecting Murakami’s ability as a short story writer, but together they seem fragmented and frustrate the reader.

Just when the reader is ready to give up on this book, Murakami seamlessly brings all of these disjointed babblings, visions, and testimonies together with the thread of pain. Juxtaposed are disclosures of rape, torture and manslaughter as his characters each reveal their own unique connection to trauma and war. Mamiya reveals his role in World War II as a mapmaker during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1937. Another character’s father was a vet in Manchuria at the same time and witnessed a particularly haunting episode of the novel, the messy massacre of zoo animals in Manchuria. The image of the Japanese military slaughtering innocent animals reminds the reader of the innocent lives lost to the unnecessary violence of war.

Murakami explores how trauma in postwar Japan connects a generation. A web of alienation underpins each character and passage, chronicling nightmares of agony. The use of letters, computer conversations, newspaper articles and recounted dreams blurs the line between fantasy and reality in the novel. By the last chapter the reader is unsure how much actually transpired in the novel or in the protagonist’s head. However, at the end of the novel, as in a carefully crafted symphony every anecdote and symbol comes together in an opus of great beauty.

Though Murakami gradually untangles the network of characters in his novel, he never abandons the surreal quality of his style. In Mamiya’s long account of his war experiences—including a man being skinned alive—an epiphany he has in which he’s bathed in a magical light at the bottom of a well stands out in sharp relief. After the light passes over him, Mamiya feels empty and isolated in his own body, a carcass without a soul. Murakami seems to be saying here that light is not just light but is divine, the light of the universe. Once it is gone, Mamiya is no longer in a state of grace. This feeling of separation from nature and reality pervades every character’s narrative. The residue of violence has carved out the human part of each character, leaving them incomplete and searching for purpose in the modern world. This search leads Toru into the dream world where he must find a way to save Kumiko, and everybody else. But who will save Toru from getting trapped in his own dream?

Fans of James Patterson won’t like Murakami. This isn’t a novel to read while waiting to catch a flight. There’s no instant gratification. This novel takes work to get through. It starts off at a slow pace and doesn’t try to rush to get to the end. It makes even the most loyal Murakami fan want to put the novel back on the shelf. Press on. Read further, because in the final chapters it becomes a page-turner. The book is a marathon. But 600 pages won’t seem so long once you make it to the finish line.

By Haruki Murakami

Translated by Jay Rubin

607 pp. Vintage International 1997

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