The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

published	October 1997 by Knopf
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0679446699 (isbn13: 9780679446699)
pages	611
literary awards	1999 IMPAC Dublin Award Nominee
description	Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife ...more [close] Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician. Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century. If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake [close]
date added	01-31-07 edit book

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Liz rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

03/06/08

Read in March, 2008

Several of my friends took an anthropology class last year entitled “Millennial Anxieties,” and this book was a central focus of the syllabus. I think I understand why Haruki Murakami’s work is particularly relevant to that theme. One of the many aspects of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that repeatedly catches my attention is the emphasis on sensory and extrasensory experiences. In the first half of the novel, Creta Kano’s discussion of her past in the language of pain and numbness is a poi...more Several of my friends took an anthropology class last year entitled “Millennial Anxieties,” and this book was a central focus of the syllabus. I think I understand why Haruki Murakami’s work is particularly relevant to that theme. One of the many aspects of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle that repeatedly catches my attention is the emphasis on sensory and extrasensory experiences. In the first half of the novel, Creta Kano’s discussion of her past in the language of pain and numbness is a pointed commentary on the ways that people can choose to experience the globalized, overly stimulating world. A person with extrasensory abilities (such as Malta and perhaps Creta) or even just more sensitive receptors is likely to become overstimulated by all of the excess, crowding and speed of the modern world, and can become either completely overwhelmed, or become a shell that repels every sensation.

In Japan (and most of the developed world), the battery of the senses by media—visual and auditory—is a problem for many people, who need to carefully balance between what they allow themselves to feel and what parts of the world they need to shield themselves from. When Creta states that her numbness caused her to feel that she was not “anchored to the world” (99), Murakami seems to be saying that the delicate equilibrium of oneself and the outer world requires one to acknowledge the value of possibly being hurt by it. Pain, in some respects, is participation. So too is globalization, which brings everyone, from Indonesian girls who sell their hair to the Japanese salarymen who wear toupees, closer together than ever before. Information, media, trade and technology link every country together and rest on a mantra of increased speed equals more wealth equals a better world. Creta’s body, then, might be a space where the competing attitudes towards globalization meet, where too much compliance is physically destructive and isolation is psycho-spiritual death.

Toru Okada’s mind and body are perhaps also representative of defiance against globalization, for just as Jacques Cousteau went beneath while everyone else was looking up during the Space Age, he deliberately narrows his world and finds wonder. He reflects that by limiting his world to four or five people and three or so square miles, “the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving” (125). By making his world smaller, Okada escapes the buzz of homogenizing and deafening world culture and economy, and is able to discover amazing things that exist around the corner and within people and himself. Being critical and curious about people and places that no one has really cared about so much before, the narrator recreates “the world” for himself and starts to provocatively re-link local people and spaces with national history.

I am also going to admit that I am somewhat mystified about Noboru Wataya’s role in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Did he exist simply to create a mystery for Toru to solve about Kumiko’s disappearance, a mere justification for an end-point in the mystery, an all-to easy figure of blame for everything that had gone wrong? Murakami draws strong connections between the arbiters of physical destruction in Manchuria and Noboru Wataya’s mediated, psychically destructive influence in modern Japan, but I am not sure where it leads to. I think that from what we know about Noboru and his relationship with Creta Kano, his “projects” consists partly of forcing people to experience change, in peculiarly violent, detached ways. If, like his Manchukuo-era military-political ancestor, Noboru Wataya is capable of pushing forward an experimental agenda with unethical means, was it right for Kumiko to murder him? What was Noboru Wataya’s agenda in the first place?

Aside from my indecision regarding Noboru Wataya, I have come to an understanding of the importance of the jellyfish in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. If you think about it, jellyfish are the ultimate simple organism—they exist as drifters and move with the tides, and feed on whatever probiotics pass through their membranes. Their simplicity, juxtaposed to the complexity of human mind and body systems, makes them a model for many of Murakami’s characters. Toru Okada and Cinnamon are jellyfish-like because they are receptacles of stories and observations; Creta Kano also exhibits jellyfishian qualities when she passes through alternate worlds in a search to “contain” the egos of others as a spiritual medium. However, Creta, Toru and Cinnamon are not proper jellyfish because while they seem to search for the simple links connecting discrete events, their active searches actually make their reality more complex and unlinkable. Human beings, it seems, cannot be like the rather zen jellyfish; is this a failure or a something we should be proud of?

The idea of jellyfish humanity is further developed in Murakami’s depiction of what happens to the senses when human beings enter “vast” environments, particularly in the cases of Lieutenant Mamiya in Mongolia and Toru Okada in the well. Whereas Mamiya gets to experience the discombobulating effects of wide open spaces, Toru must search for vastness underneath Tokyo, and finds it in the dark. Alone with his thoughts, his “body was nothing but an empty tunnel, a conduit for moving the words from there to here. They were definitely fragments of thought, but thought that was happening outside my consciousness” (268). In the dark of the well, Toru’s mind and body merge with the environment and get away from him, creating a de-centered equilibrium for Toru’s senses, memory, mind and body. This is quite possibly as close as anyone in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle gets to achieving the jellyfish state of mind, and it is terrifying in its portrayal of the de-anchoring of mind from body. IS jellyfish state desirable, or is it an at-best temporary means through which people can passively dissolve linearity and make sense of the story of their lives?

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Kelly rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

07/14/08

bookshelves: fiction

I absolutely adored the book upon starting out. It is exquisitely crafted, with each seemingly casual word chosen to illustrate the world into which we have entered. It is a lonely world full of half finished stories, abrupt departures, missed connections and deep silences. "Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird," lives on an alley with no exits, in a borrowed life that he could never afford to live without the kindness of his uncle. He's just quit his job, as he has no idea of where to go with his li...more I absolutely adored the book upon starting out. It is exquisitely crafted, with each seemingly casual word chosen to illustrate the world into which we have entered. It is a lonely world full of half finished stories, abrupt departures, missed connections and deep silences. "Poor Mr. Wind-Up Bird," lives on an alley with no exits, in a borrowed life that he could never afford to live without the kindness of his uncle. He's just quit his job, as he has no idea of where to go with his life, but is dissatisfied with its current course. He lives with a wife that he never seems to really speak to, in a routine existence in which she is often late or absent, or spends her time repressing everything she chooses to say to him. Murakami meticulously illustrates this quietly painful existence in all of Mr. Wind-Up Bird's movements, whether it is missed phone calls, a wasted dinner, or a frozen statue of a bird never able to take flight. This sort of language kept me going throughout the book even when I lost my patience with other things.

Mr. Wind-Up Bird's relationship with May Kashara was my favorite part of the book. She is something of a wise child character, able to distill what Murakami is only hinting at into a more obvious, if odd and seemingly quaint statement. She is a wonderful character who brings light and movement to the pages, and pushes the plot along, if only in Mr. Wind-Up Bird's head. I kept looking ahead, if only to find out how long it was until she appeared again.

What I did not like? The endless repetition of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo, of the prophets who "just know," when something is going to happen, of the endless discussion of the "flow," and various other points of odd zen claptrap that really pushed me out of the story, and the reader entirely out of the reality. I think a part of the book's charm is that it hovers so close around the edges of reality, and gradually, this book just seemed to leave that behind. I appreciated the message of a bundle of stories all being woven together, stories that stop and start as people pass through them, are read and discarded as they are of use. But this went far beyond the borders of surreality into geniune, 'WTF?' territory. Perhaps I missed something, and I sort of regret it, but it was really... just a lot to push myself through. That entire middle section with the extended stories of Cinammon and Nutmeg, and the increasing weirdness of Creta Kano, the side stories of Lieutenant Mamiya, etc... I really really lost patience with the book and almost gave up several times, because that's how I thought the rest of the book would be. Many odd people professing they "just know," things and are able to solve things with special powers! What? No. The introduction of random characters and tales that are really not material to the plot, or necessary to the points that Murakami is making, etc.

Thankfully, the tale wound back down into a more manageable area towards the end. I'm glad I finished it, if only to see the end of May Kashara.

I wish I had loved this more consistently that it turned out that I did. I wish I could give it 3.5 stars. I'm sticking with the definition of the stars in terms of "liked it," or "loved it." I was somewhere schizophrenically in between, depending on the section of the book.

Ed Note the 2nd: Page 375- I was really, /really/ starting to lose patience with this. And 100 pages ago, I would've said that you were crazy if you thought that I would say that 100 pages later. The same rounds of psychic weirdness and cliched Zen claptrap was reeeally wearing thin. But now the plot is moving again, and the philsophy is combining with things /happening/, and I'm okay.

Ed Note: I'm just starting book two (about 175 pages in). I'll say this. It is a book for which I automatically picked up my pen after the first page, and I've been underlining and circling like crazy ever since. There is so much to explore with this surreal trip through back fake-alley Japan, both in terms of writing technique and theme. At this point, I'm just still fascinated by Murakami's brutally surreal, utterly complete world creation. More to come.

I have never read a Murakami novel, and this has been recommended to me as his masterpiece. Seems like a good place to start....less

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Erika rated it:

(review of isbn 0679775439)

07/10/07

Read in July, 2007

The book jacket recommends The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as "dreamlike and compelling" which I initially understood as cliche review talk. But several hundreds of pages in, I realized I really did felt compelled to read it, compelled during work, compelled on the subway, compelled during any free moment at home.

As a Chronicle, and a meta-aware one at that, part of the compulsion results from not knowing what the hell will happen next. In three "books", a chronological recor...more The book jacket recommends The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as "dreamlike and compelling" which I initially understood as cliche review talk. But several hundreds of pages in, I realized I really did felt compelled to read it, compelled during work, compelled on the subway, compelled during any free moment at home.

As a Chronicle, and a meta-aware one at that, part of the compulsion results from not knowing what the hell will happen next. In three "books", a chronological recording of daily events slips into an out-of-order, out-of-narrator's-field-of-vision controlled orgy. The book moves, notoriously, from banal episodes of cooking pasta, searching for a lost cat and dull domestic chats to unsyncopated sliced plot randomness - anonymous sex-calls (desire), visits from Manchurian veterans (memory), the disappearance of the protagonist's wife and subsequent appearance of at least five memorable, distinct, bizarre characters - a "cheerfully morbid" teenaged girl, a set of sensual psychic sisters, and a mother-son team of healers, one of whom does not speak a word - to finally, battling mythical-real creations, dreamt lucidly in a haunted-comforting well (or are they?). The narrative tone remains tranquil, logical and sound throughout.

This sort of magical realism reminded me of Marquez, but the novel has a distinctly Japanese tone. Descriptions of environment (the cawing of the wind-up bird) underlines action and pivotal points reflect the imperialist (and defeated) political history unique to Japan, from the bombing of Nagasaki to the forgotten, crushing campaign in mainlain China and Mongolia against Soviet forces. What is the fate of a country? What is the fate of a man? What is the range of this book sitting placidly in your hand?

In this case, a likeable thirty year old Everyman (as he's been cast), one Toru Okado with an almost freakish amptitude for following strange requests from his wife, and his new compatriots, is just trying to find a little direction after quitting his lame paralegal job. Sometimes a person needs to slow down entirely to see where to go. I could be convinced of the Buddhist undertones of this notion, although I must say, I would really love to read a critical analysis which could contextualize and develop these piercing hints, dropped like so many breadcrumbs. I don't know, maybe Toru Okado should tell his story in a novel, etc.

Muraki develops memorable characters, to say the least. Though the book is written in first person (or maybe because of it), others' motivations are almost never fleshed out, are almost crap shoots in a dramatic, unseen fate. Everyone is imbued with a sense of mystery. The "dreamlike" component of the book plays out on the streets this way. I'm having a hard time articulating the strength of the characterization, especially when I must point out the similarities between some, purposely meshing into another, a most enchanting connection between the young man who does not speak and the narrator.

There were slow parts, but as in The Name of the Rose, these philosophic, or mostly in this case, historical digressions create a constellation of meaning. As the main character in the book, the reader is faced with piecing together disparate symbols for an underlying satisfying, if somewhat frustrating experience. I've read a few reviews after I turned the last page (still in a dreamline cogitation for closure) which criticize Murakami for dropping the ball at the end, for not fully "wrapping up" the loose ends, for even conning the reader. I think it presses us to find our own meaning, to be wrapped in the enigma of the everyday we are presented when we put the book down, when we return to the fiction of reality as we know it. ...less

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TheDane rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

04/10/08

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: anyone smarter than a bag of hammers

Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is actually probably the best novel I've read in a long time. Granted, many of the novels I've read over the last two years have not been spectacular. There was The Lovely Bones. And then The Ass and the Angel. And then His Dark Materials. And o...more

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Sam rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

05/22/08

recommended to Sam by: Thom Yorke.
recommends it for: People asleep, but the dream's ending. People coming out of the well.

Prior to reading this book I had fallen down in my regular reading. Where I was once reading at least one, but usually more books a week, I was reading a book maybe every 7 or 8 months and dreadfully slowly. Concurrent to the start of me reading this, I had just gone through a break up and things just generally felt like they were slowly beginning to come apart at the seams wherever I cast my gaze.

That's what I brought to the book. What the book brought to me was a similar experience to what...more Prior to reading this book I had fallen down in my regular reading. Where I was once reading at least one, but usually more books a week, I was reading a book maybe every 7 or 8 months and dreadfully slowly. Concurrent to the start of me reading this, I had just gone through a break up and things just generally felt like they were slowly beginning to come apart at the seams wherever I cast my gaze.

That's what I brought to the book. What the book brought to me was a similar experience to what I was feeling on an emotional level, and a process by which I could enjoy getting lost in a book again, and a return to not just thinking about things, but thinking about what lay under the surface of things.

I know, I know. How fucking pretentious and twee can you get.

To start on a plot description in my review would be a waste of everyone's time. There's some excellent reviews already here on the site and some of them tackle the nuts and bolts a hell of a lot better than I could. Especially since this is a book with a wonderfully quicksand like concoction of a plot.

I want to make special note of the way Murakami is an expert at listing the mundane normal activities of daily life. In all of his books, there's at least one scene of a character making some kind of rudimentary meal, having a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer, and then relaxing while listening to either old jazz records or a Beatle's album. It should come off as boring, especially in a book about people with special healing powers and dream prostitutes and exotic torture sequences in World War II, but it never is. It just blends into the fabric of Murakami's simple but lovely oneiric writing.

The book continues another masterful trend in Murakami's books that I've always loved in that, on one level, it's a very slow, patient book that does have something of a plot, but it's all over the place with a passive narrator who slowly makes his way through it, making it easier and comfortable for the reader to venture along with him (even when he's not the most excited or active of protagonists). But then there's a deeper level, what I would almost say is a kind of second novel hidden within, written in tone and emotional resonance and really composed just for your subconscious to pick up on.

In a lot of ways, I feel that I can't write a normal review for the book, or that it's hard with Murakami's dream novels. Obiviously, they're just novels, intellectual constructs to breeze through and enjoy, but they're like walking through a person's brain and reminisces, navigating through their desires and their wounds, admiring their weird little ephemera all around you. Reading this novel, for me, was much like several of the character's paths in the book: They went into a place that was strange and new, both scary and amazing, and they found something and brought it out with them. In the sunlight, while examining it, they realized that something was their's....less

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Toddhuish rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

07/09/08

Read in July, 2008

recommends it for: Anyone wanting to try something different

This book was bizarre in the extreme. I have never read a Murakami book before but from what I can gather, they're all a little weird. The story is frequently inexplicable and the plot non-existent. It's a very strange jumble of barely to not at all connected stories thrown together into a novel.

Up to this point it may sound like I didn't like it. To be honest, I can't say I liked it but I can't say I disliked it either. There were some parts that I loved! That's why I gave it 3 star...more This book was bizarre in the extreme. I have never read a Murakami book before but from what I can gather, they're all a little weird. The story is frequently inexplicable and the plot non-existent. It's a very strange jumble of barely to not at all connected stories thrown together into a novel.

Up to this point it may sound like I didn't like it. To be honest, I can't say I liked it but I can't say I disliked it either. There were some parts that I loved! That's why I gave it 3 stars. Reading this book is a bit of a roller-coaster because, although I didn't understand what was happening for large stretches of the book, I really enjoy how he wrote this insane mishmash of a book.

I don't know what this is like in original Japanese. I don't know if it sounds weird because it's translated. He doesn't have a voice like anyone else. The words are lyrical and dense and carry a weight and a meaning that had me going page to page when I would have given up on other books long ago. His descriptions of people and places are amazing and put you right there in the book with the characters.

I'll show you what I mean. This isn't the best paragraph, it was just the first one that came to mind when I think of his writing style

=============================================
He was somewhat shorter than I. The hint of a smile played about his lips, as if he had just heard a joke and was smiling now in the most natural way. Nor had the joke been a vulgar one: it was the kind of elegant pleasantry that the minister of foreign affairs might have told the crown prince at a garden party a generation ago, causing the surrounding listeners to titter with delight. I began to introduce myself, but he gave his head a slight shake to signal that it was unnecessary for me to say anything. Holding the door open inward, he ushered me in, and after a quick glance up and down the hall, he closed the door, saying nothing all the while. He looked at me with eyes narrowed as if to apologize for being unable to speak because of the nervous black panther sleeping by his side. Which is not to say that there was a black panther sleeping by his side: he just looked as if there were.
=============================================

That is a single paragraph out of a 600 page novel and they are, more or less, all like that. The description of the character looking with narrowed eyes because of a nervous black panther is easily the weirdest description of a look I've ever read but at the same time you know exactly what that look must look like.

This book is like a complex, arthouse movie. Some books, just like some movies, you only recommend to your most open minded lovers of fine books. The ones who will like something experimental merely because it is experimental. The ones who will like something for a single, very special, aspect and don't need a lot of extra frippery like a plot or storyline that, you know, makes sense. This is a book to recommend to those people.
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Dave rated it:

(review of isbn 0679775439)

09/18/07

Read in September, 2007

So before long, you find yourself 340 pages into this book, and you have no idea what's happening.. Rather, you understand all you have read to this point, but still can't determine the direction Murakami is taking you in.

Still, the book is compelling. You can't seem to put it down. Meanwhile it begins to invade your dreams.. in much the same manner that Toru's (the main character) dreams are invaded. You start having dreams about strange women and empty wells.

So cracking into &qu...more

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Gana rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

10/11/07

Read in January, 2006

I guess, full understanding of this book is a hard task for the most of readers. But seems it makes book even more entertaining. Murakami entertains his readers exposing a world of subconsciousness, which is managed by an invisible hand - an invisible energy that we generate. In the book, many characters are subconsciously connected to each other and take actions subconsciously. I guess, it is the reason why Murakami left them unexplained, leaving many readers unsatisfied.

The main plot of t...more I guess, full understanding of this book is a hard task for the most of readers. But seems it makes book even more entertaining. Murakami entertains his readers exposing a world of subconsciousness, which is managed by an invisible hand - an invisible energy that we generate. In the book, many characters are subconsciously connected to each other and take actions subconsciously. I guess, it is the reason why Murakami left them unexplained, leaving many readers unsatisfied.

The main plot of the book is the resentment between two individualists with good and evil morals: Toru Okada and Naboru Wataya (or likewise Lieutenant Mamyia and Boris Manskinner). Other characters and plots are supportive. The main purpose of Corporal Honda sending empty box to Toru Okada through Lieutenant Mamyia was to connect these two people in similar situation, psychologically fighting with evil. By connecting them, Corporal Honda helps Lieutenant Mamyia relieve his long time suffering, letting him to open his secrets to Toru Okada. It adds Toru's hatred to Naboru Wataya and gives strength to defeat him. From the book I sense Toru Okada is a Lieutenant Mamaya, living in different time. He is similar to the reincarnation of Mamiya (or other people who suffered in WWII), takes actions, to fulfill Mamyia's dream: defeating evil like people and being loved by someone or having sex with woman (Creta Kano) in both real and dreamlike world. This book tells that evil and poisonous people, like Naboru Wataya always exist and succeed far. They exist in the context of different situations and the impact of their negative, powerful energy is fatal. Book gives impression that Murakami explodes his own personal hatred to evil like people and dislike to the dominant social psychology (people's confusion) through his book. I feel like I see Murakami in different characters of his book.

Appearance of teenager girl, May Kasahara makes Toru Okada's character clearer. She is strong and bright individual and helps Toru to shape his own view. Murakami perfectly exposes deeper feelings of different people, in the context of different circumstances.

Story about Mongolian man who skins people is shocking, because I'm Mongolian and I never heard this kind of things happened during WWII. I'm not really sure whether it is based in historical fact or it is fiction. Anyway, this did not affect at all my feelings towards Murakami and his books. He is great.

Even though the book was excellent, I have to admit that, in most of cases I fell asleep while reading. But it does not mean that the book was bad; may be I felt the same way as Toru Okada was feeling while sitting in the well....less

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Jaci rated it:

(review of isbn 0679775439)

02/01/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: anyone who wants to read a mind-blowing, deep novel

Spoiler Alert:

This book blew my mind. Murakami has a wonderful way of taking regular people in mundane lives and bringing them to live with surreal events. He took such a simple concept and turned it into an intricate web: we cannot escape our past, and we cannot get the most out of our present or future until we are willing to confront our past. He showed this through the struggles of so many of the characters, not just through Toru. Creta wouldn't face her past, Malta wouldn't explain ...more Spoiler Alert:

This book blew my mind. Murakami has a wonderful way of taking regular people in mundane lives and bringing them to live with surreal events. He took such a simple concept and turned it into an intricate web: we cannot escape our past, and we cannot get the most out of our present or future until we are willing to confront our past. He showed this through the struggles of so many of the characters, not just through Toru. Creta wouldn't face her past, Malta wouldn't explain her past, Toru's wife wouldn't share her past, May wouldn't take responsibility for her past, and Nutmeg wouldn't move on from her past. Each one of these characters suffered in their present situation because of how they dealt with (or refused to deal with) the past. Toru's final experience in the well shows that once he was willing to confront the past, instead of running away from room 208 as he had before, he is able to move on with his life. He experiences injuries during his confrontation, symbolic of the fact that dealing with the past can be painful, but he is then able to see his current situation more clearly and appropriately.

Not only is this book a commentary on the past, it also points to the affect of passivity. Toru meets each of the female characters in his life through chance. They come to him either by seeking him out themselves or through chance encounters. It is only when he takes action in the final episode within the well that he frees himself of the static situation his life has become.

I felt that the ending of the book was quite satisfying. We never really find out whether some or all of the characters existed in reality or in the parallel universe that Toru experienced. But do we really need to know? We are meant to come away with an understanding of what they experienced and how they affected Toru. Their reality is of little consequence. The vital parts - Toru's relationship with his wife, for example - are given enough of a conclusion that we can see how important it is for us to confront and embrace the past. What happens afterward (do Toru and his wife get back together?) is not important to the meaning of the story.

The wind-up bird is a symbol of the past. It's crrreeaaak heralds the coming influence of the past, which we can never truly escape. And Mr. Wind-Up Bird is a beautiful microcosm of how the past can creep up on you and break you back down until you are willing to acknowledge it....less

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Nan added it (review of isbn 0965341984)

03/27/08

bookshelves: all-time-favorites

Read in April, 2000

I just re-read this, definitely Murakami's best. It's a surreal mystery set in modern-day Japan, written in Murakami's distinctive style. It takes readers on a disturbing journey into the past for a bit, describing one soldier's experience during Japan's persecution of the Chinese during WWII. The main journey, that of Toru, is set in modern times but with alternate realities. I've attached the Amazon description below, but this book defies categorization. If you like your mysteries all tie...more I just re-read this, definitely Murakami's best. It's a surreal mystery set in modern-day Japan, written in Murakami's distinctive style. It takes readers on a disturbing journey into the past for a bit, describing one soldier's experience during Japan's persecution of the Chinese during WWII. The main journey, that of Toru, is set in modern times but with alternate realities. I've attached the Amazon description below, but this book defies categorization. If you like your mysteries all tied up in a neat little bow, though, this is not the book for you. A lot is left open to your interpretation, which makes it a fun book to discuss with others.

Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician.
Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century.

If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Ryan rated it:

(review of isbn 0679775439)

07/02/08

Read in July, 2008

recommended to Ryan by: Bret Rooks

Much has already been said about this book; my favorite comment comes from a blurb on the novel itself, from Washington Post Book World: "Murakami's most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice." Sure, but did they like it? The New York Times Book Review delivered similarly vague praise: "A significant advance in Murakami's art." More generous words have been tossed around--by the same critics--among them "m...more Much has already been said about this book; my favorite comment comes from a blurb on the novel itself, from Washington Post Book World: "Murakami's most ambitious attempt yet to stuff all of modern Japan into a single fictional edifice." Sure, but did they like it? The New York Times Book Review delivered similarly vague praise: "A significant advance in Murakami's art." More generous words have been tossed around--by the same critics--among them "mesmerizing," "bold and generous," and "stunning."
As my four-out-of-five-star rating indicates, I very much liked this book, but I couldn't quite say that I loved it. Fans of Italo Calvino (one of my top-five favorite authors) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez will likely enjoy Haruki Murakami's winding and often surreal narrative as well. A word of warning to the fainter-hearted: Like works from those two authors, this book features some startling sex scenes. The idea of prostitution--what constitutes it and what it can entail--figures heavily into several characters' arcs. The book also contains even more startling violence.
The plot itself--termed a "mystery" that begins with a missing cat--is less a linear tale and more a dream that follows its own logic, introducing and dropping characters and elements as it follows its own winding course. Dreams themselves figure heavily into the story, acting as alternate realities that either influence the real world or reveal hidden truths about it. And there are a lot of hidden truths here, many of which are described simply as things. People have things inside them, things trying to get out, or things trying to burrow deeper inside. Things transform people or take people over. Some people are actually things themselves.
Murakami's prose is clean, clear, and often beautiful. He can paint an emotion or setting with a few words, like a vivid woodcut image made up of a few economical lines.
Overall, I would suggest this book to anyone who enjoys good writing, does not mind scenes of sex and violence, and who doesn't need tidy resolutions. This book does resolve, but not like a typical novel--more like a dream ending with the morning....less

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B rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

01/07/08

Read in January, 2008

This novel took me for freaking ever to read. I think I started it in August? Yeah. I just finished it. Mostly because much of the book is about dreams, I think. It made me sleepy. Not that it was poorly written, not at all. The dreams were just so mysterious and sensual that it made me want to try too.

Mostly what I loved about this book was the theme that very small acquaintances can have an impact on who you are as a person, on your future. I like that. Something about knowing tha...more

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Ruby rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

04/09/08

bookshelves: classics, fiction, woo-woo

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: dreamers, incarcerated individuals and others with time on their hands

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I’ll admit, I was anxious for this book to end. It made me think about how modern lit tends to avoid 400+ page meanders (for a reason, perhaps?). But throughout the story, I was engrossed. I wanted to skip work to stay home and finish it. I read on coffee breaks. Welcoming insomnia, I read long into the night.

Something of a spoiler to follow:

Yes, it was long. Yes, it was confusing. But I believe it came together. Not in a logical, causal kind of way. You never do find out why the mysti...more I’ll admit, I was anxious for this book to end. It made me think about how modern lit tends to avoid 400+ page meanders (for a reason, perhaps?). But throughout the story, I was engrossed. I wanted to skip work to stay home and finish it. I read on coffee breaks. Welcoming insomnia, I read long into the night.

Something of a spoiler to follow:

Yes, it was long. Yes, it was confusing. But I believe it came together. Not in a logical, causal kind of way. You never do find out why the mystical things that happen to Mr. Okada occur. But isn’t that the point of mystical things? That the whys behind them are unknowable? While I may find explanations for mystical occurrences satisfying, they’re kind of like fast food. They taste great going down, but don’t sustain me through to the next meal. I received enough answers for my taste, enough to pull the plotline together.

If there was a disappointment to the ending for me, it was that I never did really get to see Kumiko and Toru interact again. I wanted that for him. By then Toru and I were good buddies, and I needed to see him have that success. I suspect if Murakami were American, I would have gotten my wish. But maybe I’m oversimplifying.

The wind-up bird refers to 1) a bird that nobody ever sees, but is audible to everyone in the vicinity, 2) Okada, as he takes this name for himself when talking to May, and 3) the name of the story that Cinnamon is writing/the story we are reading. Which leads me to ask, how is Okada like the wind-up bird and like the story they are both contained within? They are aimless. In the case of both Okada and the bird, they are invisible. I would have to go back to the text to review what happens each time the bird appears—we are led to believe the bird means danger, cries out as a warning that something bad will soon happen. Is it also winding up, like a toy might be wound, suggesting automation and lack of control? I could spend a lot of time analyzing this book, but given how much time I spent reading it, I’m not sure I will.

Very worthy of its reputation. I enjoyed the rather ordinary language used to describe extraordinary events, and the way that grounded me through the story. It’s a wild ride.
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Zinna rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

01/28/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in January, 2008

This book took me FOREVER to read! Sure it's a long book but usually I dust off a compelling 600 pages in a few weeks, as opposed to six months.

It's hard for me to explain how I feel about this book because parts of it was so different from other parts. The book starts talking about one thing (the relationship between a unemployed man and his wife who suddenly disappears) then takes off in a completely unexpected direction and just when you think you've settled somewhere solid in the storyli...more

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Brian rated it:

(review of isbn 0965341984)

08/06/07

Read in July, 2007

After finally finishing this novel, I am immediately feeling the need to re-read it. "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is one of those books that traverses so many borders in its aesthetic alone (not to mention its plot, its existential implications, and all that other mess) that it's just going to take another read to fully wrap my head around it. All that being said, here's what I got from the first read...

The narrator, Toru Okada, is a rather passive, apathetic, young, unemployed Ja...more After finally finishing this novel, I am immediately feeling the need to re-read it. "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" is one of those books that traverses so many borders in its aesthetic alone (not to mention its plot, its existential implications, and all that other mess) that it's just going to take another read to fully wrap my head around it. All that being said, here's what I got from the first read...

The narrator, Toru Okada, is a rather passive, apathetic, young, unemployed Japanese man whose mundane life rather suddenly takes a turn for the strange. After his wife mysteriously disappears (closely following the disappearance of their cat), Mr. Okada encounters several peculiar (to say the least) characters. These include, to name a few: two twin-sisters whose quasi-telepathic abilities allow them to enter Mr. Okada's dreams; an ex-soldier from the Manchuko period of World War II, who shares some seriously haunting war stories; a once-legendary-fashion-designer-turned-healer of sorts and her mute computer-wiz son (who is himself quite the story-teller); an unseen whiskey-drinking woman who may or may not be Mr. Okada's missing wife and can only be contacted in another realm of his imagination; a deep, dry well in which Mr. Okada gains access to the aforementioned "other realm" and its shadowy whiskey drinker; a very important baseball bat; and a flirtatious teenage neighbor-girl named May who makes wigs, smokes menthols and writes some great letters.

As the above list of characters indicates, Toru Okada's once boring every-day life becomes increasingly surreal, and as a result Mr. Okada is forced to confront the depths of his inner-life with increasing levels of psychological and emotional risk. Spending lots of time at the bottom of a well will make a fellow do some thinking. The novel also offers a lot of insight into the disturbing human behaviors of war, the nature of dreams, and the ways in which all human beings are inexorably connected to one another.

Read the book. It's about 620 pages long and therefore a commitment, but oh is it worth it....less

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Joseph rated it: