re:mote voices: literature

Title: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles
Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Harvill Press

Toru Okada lives with his wife in a suburb of Tokyo, paying a reduced rent by living in a house his uncle owns. Things seem to be going well, the two of them living in their own little world for the last six years. But Toru has decided his job isn't working out, so he quits and is struggling to come to a decision as to what to do next. Then the cat goes missing, his wife Kumiko is very concerned by this - especially as they adopted the cat just after they were married. The cat is an omen, while the late hours that Kumiko is working should have been a clue - one day she doesn't come home and it becomes clear that she has left him. From there Okada's life starts to get odd, influenced by obscure comments and encounters with psychics, both in the flesh and the mind. Forced to deal with Kumiko's brother, who he hates, he becomes driven as much by his desire to interfere with Noboru's plans as to get Kumiko to come back.

As with other works by Haruki Murakami that I have read, offering a simple plot summary doesn't necessarily cover what the book is really about. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles is Haruki Murakami's longest work, split into three "books" each of about 200 pages each. The story is told in first person, so for the most part the narrative comes from Okada's point of view. But this switches about to some degree, as the character receives letters from other characters or sits through long monologues by other characters. Despite the clear depth of feeling Toru has for Kumiko, she is barely a presence in the story, even before she leaves there is something absent about her. Through the searches for the cat Okada makes friends with a 16 year old girl, May Kasahara, who refers to him as Mr. Wind-Up Bird and provides some strange, dark thoughts, as well as some of the most amusing dialogue.

Kumiko's brother Noboru Wataya is set up as the antithesis of Toru Okada. Okada is unemployed, easy going and searching for direction, and is an unknown to most people. Wataya is a talking head, an economist, and aspiring politician, driven and intense. While Okada is likeable, Wataya is unpleasant, even though he seems to have gained a certain celebrity. Then there are the sisters Malta and Creta Kano, one a psychic the other a prostitute of the mind; Creta having been violated by Wataya in the past. It is through the sisters and his mysterious caller that Okada starts to explore the dream world of a dark hotel.

In some ways the hotel located in some other realm is reminiscent of Dance, Dance, Dance, the feel of the location itself is different, but both have a definite effect on the plot. In addition to a dream hotel, Murakami adds the bottom of a well, where Okada starts to spend a lot of his time thinking about what is going on in his life. An idea spawned by a couple of characters and at points imitated by a couple of other characters. These locations and the stories/thoughts which Okada experiences through the book guide him in some strange fashion to a climax.

In some ways Murakami addresses the mundane in his work. Introducing perfectly ordinary characters, with perfectly ordinary lives. But through them in a work like The Wind Up Bird Chronicles he starts knock things a little off kilter. And it is that process which starts to make his work compelling - the narration of his characters leading us through his maze, while the dream like results manage to contain an edge of tension that compels us to keep going.

RVWR: PTR
November 2002