Review of the The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I finished reading 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' yesterday during the day. It was one of my most difficult novels ever to actually finish, in part because the plot, which is established early on, doesn't make an inch of forward progress until the last couple pages. Rather, it makes lateral progress, filling in shadowy stories from the past and revealing more and more about mysterious characters' histories. So the plot moves more like a cyclone that swirls the reader ever closer to its central point–the eye of the storm, but we never exactly reach it. Part of the difficulty is that much of the events in the novel occur in dreams, or in subconscious flights of spirit.

One important point, and one that I haven't seen any other critics mention, is that The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a love story. Toru Okada's wife, Kumiko, has left him. She can't explain why, only that there is something within her that has caused her to "go bad," and no amount of love can redeem her now. So she joins her brother, Noboru Wataya, an aspiring politician who is machine-like in every way; he has no problem making mincemeat of opposing arguments, he can twist his plastic face into a media-friendly smile, but he represents–no, he is–everything that Toru hates. As this story unfolds, so too does the tale of the Japanese campaign in Manchuria during WWII and the bygone Japanese state of Manchukuo. We meet Lieutenants Honda and Mamiya, the former a latter-day psychic who advised Toru and Kumiko when they got married, the latter an aging soldier who was scarred forever from his experiences at war. He, Honda and another soldier named Yamamoto were captured in disputed territory on an espionage mission for Japan. A slim, dark Russian and three Mongolians discovered their camp in the desert outskirts of Mongolia. Honda escaped; Yamamoto was not so lucky. They skinned him alive while Mamiya watched. Then they dumped Hamiya in an abandoned well, urinated on him, and left him there to die a slow death.

Mamiya would have been afraid for his life, had it not been for his meeting the night before with Lt. Honda. Honda had told him, in calm and confident tones, "You will not die here. In fact, of the three of us, you will live the longest." In amazing prose, Murakami describes how Mamiya rotted in the well for almost three days, every waking second spent in pain and misery, save for that one magical moment when the sun would move directly overhead and the well would fill with light. Those moments were like nirvana; Mamiya had never experienced anything like it, and he wouldn't afterward.

Years pass, and Lt. Honda's death causes the paths of Hamiya and Toru Okada to intertwine. It is then that Mamiya relates to Okada how, ever since he was in that well, he has been numb, unable to feel fear and love alike. He fought on the frontlines of the deadly Battle of Nomonhan, hand-carrying a landmine into a Soviet tank; he spent three years in a labor mine in Siberia as a prisoner to the violent and erratic Soviets, but still he could not die. Lt Honda's prophecy was both a blessing and a curse.

Now, in the 1980s, he has lived a solitary life devoid of joy, and his final consolation is to relate his story to Toru Okada, in the form of long letters. But he is not the only one whose life has been defiled. Defilement seems one of the themes of this book, in fact. Creta Kano, a strange psychic and "prostitute of the mind" also has been defiled, but by Noboru Wataya of all people. She describes, in vivid detail, how all her life she felt pain, and not the mental pain that emos whine about all the time, but real, physical pain. On her twentieth birthday, she decided it wasn't worth it anymore and crashed a car into a wall doing one hundred. Miraculously, she survived, and from then on there was only numbness. It was stage two of Creta Kano's personal development. She became a prostitute, a real one. She never once felt pain or pleasure doing this job, and she made good money, more than enough to pay for the wrecked car and her hospital bills. Then she met Noboru Wataya, brother-in-law of Toru Okada. He was s strange customer, preferring only to feel Creta Kano's naked body, much in the manner of a doctor examining a patient. But, for the first time ever, she felt sexual pleasure. And it was intense sexual pleasure, ferocious and frightening. But wrapped up within that pleasure was pain, physical pain. Then, something came out of her. The author doesn't describe what exactly it is, or what Noboru Wataya does with it, but, after that incident, Creta Kano was 'defiled.' It took years of training and conditioning to recover from it, but she does, successfully.

All of this is told to Toru by Creta Kano as they sit together in his kitchen one evening night. Kumiko is gone, without a trace, and Toru is at a loss. Strange things start happening to him. Taking inspiration from Hamiya, he decided to spend some time in a well. Conveniently, there is one located in the backyard of an abandoned house next door. He goes in with a ladder, a luxury that was not afforded to Hamiya (who was luckily rescued by Honda). But May Kashara, yet another strange character, takes the ladder away. She is a 16 year old who lived nearby. She doesn't go to school ever since a motorcycle accident in which she covered up the eyes of the boy driving, and they crashed. He died. She now walks with a limp. A similar impulse seems to have caused May Kashara to remove the ladder in the well, and Toru stays there for almost three days. There, "the darkness within mingled with the physical darkness outside" and Toru was able to propel himself through mysterious subconscious tunnels, travelling to a hotel room where a lady seductively lies in bed, waiting, a bottle of Cutty Sark whiskey, ice and two glasses sitting on the counter. Toru attempts to enter the room when the woman cries out "No, No!" He is thrust through the wall, a jelly-like consistency enveloping him and a warmth hitting his cheek. When he emerges from the well there is a blue-black mark on his cheek. "Things have to begun to move again." he says to himself. Soon after, he find his cat, lost for over a year, mewing at the door, it's fur clumped with mud and grass.

Well, that is about half the book; it's a very long novel and to summarize the whole plot would be ridiculous, but that should give you a good idea of the feel of the novel and the themes involved. I was left with a somewhat bad taste in my mouth after reading the novel, in part because I had to tie myself down and clamp my eyes open to get through certain parts. Towards the middle of the end, the author doesn't do the greatest job of holding the reader's attention. However, now that I'm looking back, fond memories are flooding back to me. This is a very special novel, a supremely original creation, and I recommend it. However, read it in doses. I crammed it all in in a week, and I didn't fully enjoy it. Even Ms. Williams, the esteemed literature teacher, claims she was not able to finish this novel.

'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle' is filled with women who no longer have anything to live or love for: Kumiko, Creta Kano, and the whole host of women that come to "The Residence." The Residence is a small building that is built on the property of the abandoned house with the well. It's a long story, but women – rich, high-profile women – come there and receive therapy from Toru Okada. This therapy consists of (in once instance, at least) the woman licking the blue mark on Toru's cheek. It is my conjecture that Toru has become a "prostitute of the mind" like Creta Kano. Women come in whose consciences are hurt, whose self-esteem is damaged, who need to recharge, they taste of his spirit through that blue-black mark, and leave satisfied. Creta Kano did a similar job, and so did Nutmeg, the woman who found Toru sitting on a bench and knew, just by the mark of his face, that he could succeed her. For years, Nutmeg filled the role of "mind prostitute," healing women, until the time came that they needed "treatment" again. After many years, though, she began to feel drained, as though there was very little left in her to give to these women. So Toru Okada took over the mysterious job. Creta Kano, Toru Okada, Nutmeg. All three "prostitutes of the mind." It has been said that when you have sex with someone, you give a piece of yourself away. This holds true in this scenario as well, although the characters are not so much having sex as they are being conjoined at the spirit. In one passage Nutmeg likens her clients' afflictions to cancer, saying that she can heal them for a time; things can begin to look up, but then it will come back, worse than ever, and divide and conquer. In the end, you cannot win.

Toru Okada, however, refused to accept this, and this goes to the essence of the novel. Kumiko was afflicted by the same "thing" that the other women had. Just what is this thing? I can only conjecture that it is some kind of fatal weakness, a split in the self, with one half settling for a life of easy satisfactions but without and real joy, and the other wanting only happiness. We can characterize each side as using people from the novel, and this opposition is present already. When Kumiko leaves her husband, she goes to her brother, whom she'd hated most of her life, Noboru Wataya. Noboru Wataya represents the dark side of her conscience, the side that Toru will give everything to defeat. He is the thesis, Wataya is the antithesis. And the battle isn't easy. Toru bargains with a goon from Wataya's camp for a conversation with Kumiko. The conversation is short: Kumiko tells him that their separation is for the best, that Toru should finalize the divorce proceedings and "forget the last six years" of their marriage. She tells him she has gone bad, that she can't be helped. But Toru can't accept it, even when she has – with the utmost resoluteness. He vows to rescue her from herself, from that "dark side." He vows to succeed where Nutmeg failed. It's the triumph of love over...defilement?

All of Murakami's novels have a mythic, fable-like quality to them, and in this one he seems to be suggesting that the battle described above is one that is universal, a defining feature of humanity. While I can't agree completely with this view (the view expressed in the novel that all women are basically cursed with some affliction of the spirit that only a man can save them from), Murakami articulates it beautifully throughout the course of the novel. Granted, this is only one interpretation of 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.' I'm sure there are many others, and I'm also sure that there are other themes involved in the novel than the ones I have discussed. For example, there is the running narrative on Japan at the end of World War II, the story of Mamiya, his experiences in the Siberian mine. However, this is my interpretation.

There are some other good interpretations of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on the books Amazon page. Specifically, I agree with much of what reviewer Kevin Salfen has to say.