Reading Guide: Norwegian Wood
A look at how Murakami composed a beautiful coming-of-age story.
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From cinema to literature, my favorite stories have always been coming-of-age tales; and Norwegian Wood is the best book that I’ve read in this genre since Catcher in the Rye. Before delving into the book, it’s worth giving a little background about the author, Haruki Murakami, because his own story is as captivating as the ones he writes.
Before becoming a novelist, Murakami owned a small jazz bar, which he fought to keep alive because he was “determined to avoid ‘company life’ at all costs.” One day as he was watching a baseball game, an idea entered his mind from out of the blue: he was capable of writing a book. Over the next six months, he set aside a couple of hours each day outside of work to create his first work: Hear the Wind Sing. The writing proved challenging as he struggled to find his own style, so he decided to try writing in his non-native English and then translate back to Japanese, which resulted in a unique voice that was more sparse. He only had one copy of the manuscript, which he forgot about after sending it to a competition. Murakami writes:
If they hadn’t selected it, it probably would have vanished forever. (Gunzo [the literary journal he sent it to] didn’t return manuscripts. Most likely too, I would have never written another novel. Life is strange.
But they did select it, and he won first place in the competition. This led him to become a full-time author, which eventually led to Norwegian Wood: a story about a student in college and his relationship with two women: Naoko and Midori.
There are a few techniques that Murakami employs to make this book as powerful as it is: the sincere, nostalgic voice; the revealing dialogue; the unforgettable imagery; and the compelling, complex characters. Let’s examine these one by one.
Voice / Story
In the first chapter, Murakami gives us the background of a wistful narrator reflecting on the past. He amplifies the feeling of nostalgia by starting sentences with a sense of distance. A few examples from the first few pages (emphasis mine):
I was thirty-seven then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to the Hamburg airport.
Eighteen years have gone by, and still I can bring back every detail that day in the meadow.
Once upon a time, many years ago—just twenty years ago, in fact—I was living in a dormitory.
He also evokes a sense of sadness and tragedy by stating his feelings outright rather than letting us discover them:
I straightened up and looked out the plane window at the dark clouds hanging over the North Sea, thinking of what I had lost in the course of my life: times gone forever, friends who had died or disappeared, feelings I would never know again.
The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed then, then thirty, then a full minute—like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.
The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me.
One of the brilliant aspects of the author’s voice is that it comes across as entirely believable, and it feels impossible that these events weren’t real. He does this by adding sincere commentary that isn’t central to the story’s development:
My stories of Storm Trooper always made Naoko laugh. Not many things succeeded in doing that, so I talked about him often, though I was not exactly proud of myself for using him this way. He just happened to be the youngest son in a not-too-wealthy family who had grown up a little too serious for his own good. Making maps was the one small dream of his one small life. Who had the right to make fun of him for that?
And he often adds phrases that make it more believable that this really is just an imperfect reflection:
I can’t seem to recall what we talked about then. Nothing special, I would guess.
From the beginning until the end, Murakami keeps a couple of unresolved questions open that make the reader continue reading. In the first few pages we ask: Who is Naoko? Why was their relationship strained? Where are they and why are they there? As the book progresses, he allows the flame of drama to reduce to a simmer, but before it goes out he adds conflict and creates curiosity that keeps us glued to the page: What’s going to happen with his relationship with Naoko? What will happen with him and Midori? How will Toru (the narrator) turn out?
Dialogue
Murakami makes all of his characters come alive by combining long stretches of dialogue with commentary that amplifies it:
“Where are we?” asked Naoko as if noticing our surroundings for the first time.
“Komagome,” I said. “Didn’t you know? We made this big arc.”
“Why did we come here?”
“You brought us here. I was just following you.”
We went to a shop by the station for a bowl of noodles… I was exhausted from all that walking, and she just sat there with her hands on the table, mulling something over again.
He repeats this formula continuously until we have no choice but to understand that Naoko repeatedly loses herself in the black holes of her mind, and that she is deeply troubled.
While the above is quite simple, much of Murakami’s dialogue is highly dramatic, romantic, and cinematic:
“For example, when I’m really close to you like this, I’m not the least bit scared.”
“I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?”
It is also filled with conflict:
“Tell me how you could say such a thing,” she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know already. ‘Relax your body and the rest of you will lighten up.’ What’s the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I’d fall apart. I’ve always lived like this, and it’s the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I’d never find my way back. I’d go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can’t you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can’t see that?
And it is also—at times—unapologetically casual, which makes it more realistic:
“Gonna put on plays?”
“Nah, just read scripts and do research. Racine, Ionesco, Shakespeare, stuff like that.”
Murakami is a fantastic observer, one who can replicate spoken voices on the page, which breathes life into all of his characters.
Imagery
Though his diction is simple, the author renders unforgettable images that register as if they were made for the big screen. He does this by referencing very specific details in each scene:
We saw only two bright, red birds leap startled from the center of the meadow and dart into the woods.
You could hear the radios playing through open windows, all of which had the same cream-colored curtains that could not be faded by the sun.
These details are wrapped in beautiful pictures: Midori playing the guitar on the roof while a house is burning; Toru releasing a firefly on the roof; Naoko undressing in the moonlight. He communicates each of these simply, but effectively:
Midori brought two floor pillows, four cans of beer and a guitar from downstairs. We drank and watched the black smoke rising. She strummed and sang.
I took my bottled firefly to the roof. No one else was up there. A white vest hung on a clothesline that someone had forgotten to take in, waving in the evening breeze like the discarded shell of some huge insect… The firefly made a faint glow in the bottom of the jar, its light all too weak, its colour all too pale.
A moment later, she brought her hands up and began slowly to undo the buttons of her gown. There were seven in all. I felt as if it were the continuation of my dream as I watched her slim, lovely fingers opening the buttons one by one from top to bottom. Seven small, white buttons: when she had unfastened them all, Naoko slipped the gown from her shoulders and threw it off completely like an insect shedding its skin. She had been wearing nothing under the gown. All she had on was the butterfly hairslide. Naked now, and still kneeling by the bed, she looked at me. Bathed in the soft light of the moon, Naoko’s body had the heartbreaking lustre of newborn flesh.
Characters
Murakami’s writing is employed to detail a deserving cast of characters, all of which are as real as those who we know and touch on a daily basis: Nagasawa is intelligent and charming as well as hedonistic and selfish; Naoko is sensitive and alluring as well as tormented and incapable; Midori is funny and sprightly as well as childish and callous; and Toru is quiet and despondent as well as attractive and caring.
The author gives us enough time with each of the cast so that we get to know them well and experience them in a variety of situations: we know how Nagasawa is with random girls as well as his girlfriend; we know how Naoko is with Toru as well as with Reiko; we know how Midori is when things are going well and when she’s upset; and we know how Toru responds to it all.
Conclusion
The effect of all of this is a novel that you lose yourself in; one that permanently sears certain images into your mind; one that feels as real as any non-fiction memoir; one that is full of emotion, humor, and tragedy. Like other Japanese artists, Murakami is a master of simplicity that elicits depth—someone that aspiring writers can learn a lot from.