Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami | 2000-09-12 00:00:00 | Vintage | 298 | Literary
First American Publication

This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to be a literary event.

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated young woman.

A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.



In 1987, when Norwegian Wood was first published in Japan, it promptly sold more than 4 million copies and transformed Haruki Murakami into a pop-culture icon. The horrified author fled his native land for Europe and the United States, returning only in 1995, by which time the celebrity spotlight had found some fresher targets. And now he's finally authorized a translation for the English-speaking audience, turning to the estimable Jay Rubin, who did a fine job with his big-canvas production The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Readers of Murakami's later work will discover an affecting if atypical novel, and while the author himself has denied the book's autobiographical import--"If I had simply written the literal truth of my own life, the novel would have been no more than fifteen pages long"--it's hard not to read as at least a partial portrait of the artist as a young man.

Norwegian Wood is a simple coming-of-age tale, primarily set in 1969-70, when the author was attending university. The political upheavals and student strikes of the period form the novel's backdrop. But the focus here is the young Watanabe's love affairs, and the pain and pleasure and attendant losses of growing up. The collapse of a romance (and this is one among many!) leaves him in a metaphysical shambles:

I read Naoko's letter again and again, and each time I read it I would be filled with the same unbearable sadness I used to feel whenever Naoko stared into my eyes. I had no way to deal with it, no place I could take it to or hide it away. Like the wind passing over my body, it had neither shape nor weight, nor could I wrap myself in it.

This account of a young man's sentimental education sometimes reads like a cross between Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Stephen Vizinczey's In Praise of Older Women. It is less complex and perhaps ultimately less satisfying than Murakami's other, more allegorical work. Still, Norwegian Wood captures the huge expectation of youth--and of this particular time in history--for the future and for the place of love in it. It is also a work saturated with sadness, an emotion that can sometimes cripple a novel but which here merely underscores its youthful poignancy. --Mark Thwaite
Reviews
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami is a novel about a boy in time right after high school to his twenty years old. I want to categorize this book as the second coming of age genre because many characters literally turn to real independent adults in the end. The story begins with the main character, Toro Watanabe, but he meets people around him and tells about their personal stories. Furthermore, the progress of the novel depends on more his people's stories than Watanabe. Also all the people around him are twenty years old, expect Reiko. In other words, through the book, Murakami might want to tell about Japanese young people.

The story begins with introducing Kizuki's death. Naoko and Watanabe have the same bond that Kizuki's death in high school gave them sadness. Both left their home town for their colleges in Tokyo to relieve the bad memories. Watanabe loves her, but she cannot get over his boyfriend's suicidal, even though she has sex with Watanabe. She chooses a mental hospital; that is, she makes a wall by herself to block society.

In the book, Murakami describes many different young Japanese people. For example, Storm Trooper and Nagasawa are very different, but they can be mirrors of Japanese society. Storm Trooper gets up early in the morning and does exercise every single day with the same music. He is neat and clean, and Watanabe makes jokes about him many times. But Storm Trooper's life pattern is very similar to the imagination when people think of Japanese people: neat, clean, and diligent for success. In fact, many Japanese men in good companies do exercise together with music in the morning, but it might be a very weird look for westerners.

On the other hand, Nagasawa has a very different personality. He is a student of one of top universities in Japan seeking for a bright future, unlike Storm Trooper, Murakami focuses on Nagasawa's wanton life. Nagasawa spends money to drink, hangs around to find girls for sex, even though he has a girl friend, Hatsume. She looks patient to her boyfriend's aimless sex with nameless girls, furthermore, she has hope that Nagasawa will stop that and come get her to ask marry. The couple is like exactly high class people in Japan: men to success and women to be patient. But she is ignored by her successful boyfriend and chooses suicidal.

The interesting things in the book are that suicidal and sex. They are the main issues for the characters and these things show over and over. Death and sex can be represented as winter and spring. The kids before twenty years old are dead that means that the human beings, before their real game in life, choose death; in other words, the flowers have never bloom.

Having sex for the characters sometimes are, on the hand, they seek a true love, on the other hand, they do because their physical desire. That is because of their age. The desire for offering for the age from18 to 20 years old people that is natural of human body. Most of the characters start to live by themselves, so they can have their own lives. They have to choose for their lives, to meet people, and to become selected by people. The first thing in independent life of human being is mating, having offering and making a new family.

When Watanabe turns to 20 years old, he goes out of a dorm and have real his own apartment, "The location was not exactly convenient, but it was a house: an independent house" (240). But his spring is not smooth like its character. Spring after cold winter has warm breeze with unexpected wind and harsh rain, like his spring. He gets news from Reiko told that Naoko's suicidal. He wanders here and there meaninglessly for a while. Midori, his friend, wants him to be her boyfriend, but he cannot decide to choose her as his girlfriend because of Naoko, his hoping girl friend. But after he goes through all sufferings, he finds that Midori is a realistic girlfriend. According to him, his spring term is, "This was the beginning of one weird spring" (243). This is true. Spring is a beginning of a transformation for a new year. Like Watanabe says the world around him on the verge great transformation (236).

Change is not only a new one, but it is also destruction of the old one. If one wants to keep an old one, like Naoko cannot get over her boyfriend's memories and chooses to die to stay with him. But Watanabe turns to the real world and chooses Midori.

I read this book about ten years ago in a Korean translation version. Whenever I went to a book store, I saw this book on a steady book stand. I wondered why Murakami's books appeal to westerners. Also I want to know how different English translation is from Korean's because the Korean version of a book is a thick one volume or two regular volumes. I think the main difference is the size of English words that much smaller than Koreans. Another thing I could notice is that Murakami likes western music and literature so westerners can have a similar code with the Japanese writer. Watanabe and Nagasawa become friends because they love Great Gatsby. Like the two men's friendship, literature can be a good tool to connect strangers easily.

The book seems tedious to readers because Watanabe doesn't have a certain personality of protagonist. He is the best friend of Naoko's boyfriend, Midori's friend, and he goes to a so-so university, isn't interested in a riot, and follows Nagasawa's choices. Watanabe describes his friends and their lives more than his own family and personal history. That is, the book is not only about Watanabe but is about his people. Because of that, the book looks unorganized. A reader meets as Watanabe meets people randomly, not he makes events as he needs. This is one of unique Japanese cultures: be polite and lower one's head to another. Also they regard a big community as himself; they act same so they feel safe in society, not like westerners argue with each other for a tiny different opinion. This can be shown as Asian culture's beauty, meditation, but inside the quiet tolerance, the main character's life is transformed to adult from boy having people dramatic changes. It looks like the main character doesn't do anything in his life, but he adopts his life modifying little by little as people act, so-called making a balance and harmony. This is a big difference between eastern and western society.
Reviews
Murakami really outdid himself creating the perverted Midori character in this. Gosh, I love her! One of the best characters ever written. That character alone makes this a must read. Can't wait for the Tran Anh Hung film adaptation of this coming soon :)
Reviews
I was very impressed with Norwegian Wood. Murakami brings to life Toru Watanabe in such a way that I, as a reader, felt I could reach into the pages and touch him. He's flawed. Man is he flawed. An introvert to the very core, Toru spends a lot of time reading the Great American Novels while everyone else is reading Japanese Bestsellers. He goes about his business without a care that the people he associates with are only there because of proximity and not any real meaning. Toru may be flawed, but the few people he comes to care about make him seem perfectly normal. Naoko is quiet and aloof, Reiko is to used to her protected life, Nagasawa is a perfect ass and Midori is a little to extroverted for the people she loves.





All at once a Coming of Age story, a story of first loves and eternal losses Norwegian Wood is a perfect story for all ages, beautifully translated (at least in my edition) and will stay with you for weeks after you put it down for the last time
Reviews
I want to put in my own two cents here. There are other reviews which cover the novel in more depth.



First: I find this translation pretty amazing. I read a lot of Asian literature and know that poor translation (Brothers ~ Yu Hua) can tarnish what is a sterling story. I have also read virtually every Murakami novel, many more than once. I do enjoy the variety of translations, but I find that Jay Rubin is the best, especially with the newer novels.



Unlike other Murakami works, this contains no mystical creatures, weird capitalist mascots, or alternate dimensions. I recommend this novel but remark that it differs greatly from his other works.
Reviews
I've decided to take on some of Murakami's works. I'm really interested in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but it's just too damn long. I was afraid of such an undertaking considering I've never read this author before, so I decided to test the waters with Norwegian Wood, which is far shorter.



The book takes place in Japan during the 1960's. Toru is a college student who is romantically involved with two very different girls, Midori and Naoko. He has a strange history with Naoko--she dated Toru's best friend since childhood, but then he commits suicide. Naoko is a character who is "beautifully broken"--mentally fragile, the kind of girl you just want to hold. She is unable to deal with her pain and begins to live in a colony where people try to heal themselves through farmwork, simple routine, and exercise. The patients and doctors are almost indistinguishable from each other. The place sounds like a kind of awesome Utopia. Scenes between this colony and "the real world" with Midori are very unsettling. Murakami plays with the reader's sense of reality, and at times it is difficult whether things are happening only in Toru's mind or in actuality.



I particularly liked the book's characters, especially Midori. She's an absolute gem. I don't remember the last time I've liked a character so much. Perhaps it was because I loved Midori so intensely, but Toru came off as a bit of an ass sometimes.



I think I will definitely read some more Murakami. I'm always hesitant about reading translations...I know that it's irrational, that translations are usually good, but there's always a part of me that's thinking, "but that's not the EXACT word the author wanted to use!" However, I have heard that Murakami's English translations are fantastic, and after reading Norwegian Wood I would have to agree.

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