Naoko's Birthday: Film vs Novel

Overall, I thought the film lacked key elements from the novel that were important to the story. One scene in particular that stood out to me was Naoko's birthday scene. In the novel, the scene feels much more developed, since we are viewing it from Toru’s perspective. There is more focus on his thoughts about turning twenty, which adds a reflective tone and makes the moment feel more significant than just an interaction between the two of them. We also see more of the dynamic between Toru and Naoko, especially in conversations like the one about Storm Trooper, which feels like Toru is opening up and letting her more into his life. 

The novel also gives us a clearer sense of how Toru understands Naoko’s emotional state. As he listens to her, he becomes aware that something feels off. For example, he points out that she was talking continuously and her thoughts don’t always fully connect, with heavy, intentional pauses, as if she is avoiding certain topics related to Kizuki. Because we are reading from his perspective, her emotional breakdown feels more gradual and easier to understand. Additionally, Toru himself mentions that he is unsure of how to interpret the situation and wonders if it was the right thing for him to do in the moment. In the novel, it is noted that Toru feels like sleeping with her was the only way he could comfort her in that moment, whereas in the film the interaction comes across as more forced and less emotionally grounded.  This adds another layer of complexity to the scene that we are missing from the film. 

In contrast, the film presents this moment in a much simpler way. There is less emphasis on conversation and internal reflection, and more focus on their physical connection. Because we do not have access to Toru’s thoughts, Naoko’s emotions are not explained as clearly, which makes her shift feel more sudden and harder to interpret. As a result, the scene feels more distant and less emotionally detailed than it does in the novel. This also connects to how the following sex scene is filmed, which comes across as more awkward and physical rather than emotional, reinforcing the lack of psychological depth in the film compared to the book.

- Alexia Koulikourdis 

A story of love based on a coming of age story (Norwegian Wood - Movie and Book) - Thomas Weber

    The 2010 rendition of Norwegian Wood on film is a very interesting and unorthodox piece of media. The movie invariably demands the watcher having already read the Novel. This is an incredibly interesting idea and makes for a movie where context is assumed rather than given. However, where I truly find an issue with the movie is in its modulating of the story to focus on the concept and ideals around love instead of growth. From my reading of Norwegian wood, what stood out to me about the novel was its extremely realistic depiction of coming to age, at least in its sentiment, and the complexity of what it means to be and life as the person that you are. The movie takes out the majority of Watanabe, and many other characters', internal complexities and simplifies them for the sake of plot progression. This, I believe, to have been a disservice to the base material. Norwegian Wood is only on the surface a story about sex, love, and loss. At its core I believe it to be depicting the building of Watanabe's character through experience. Starting out as an intelligent and malleable person, slowly, through both good and bad decisions, finding himself. One of the scenes that was removed that I think particularly hurt this presentation of progression of Watanabe's character was omitting his pushback against Nagasawa after Himiko's death. In the novel, this marks a change in his character from constantly molding to those around him to solidifying the shape of his character.

    Another primary type of scene that was not showcased in the movie was the impact that his living situation in the dorm had on his character. More specifically, how his habits and attitude towards his environment slowly changed through small actions. One example of this can be found in his relationship with Nagasawa. From the start of the novel till about the halfway point Watanabe is always seeking out Nagasawa. But as the story progresses and Watanabe's character grows through his relationships with the women in his life, Nagasawa primarily seeks him out. Although small, these slight changes through the presentation of banality help cement Watanabe's character and situation whilst also showing his growth over the course of the novel. The movie primarily skips over these scenes and ideas, often trivializing them and their importance. 

Norwegian Wood the Book and the Movie- Carly

 Carly 

After watching Norwegian Wood, I felt like the movie would be hard to fully understand without having read the book. Many of the characters also felt watered down compared to the book. For example, “Stormtrooper” appears at the beginning of the movie once, and we never see him again. Toru being able to tell these stories about Stormtrooper to prevent the tears that would overwhelm Noako would’ve been nice to see in the movie. 

I also wish the film had developed Toru and Reiko’s relationship more. At the end of the book, the two started to become fairly close. Reiko even gave his advice on what to do when he realizes his feelings for Midori. However, in the movie, she was just Naoko’s closest friend that Toru was familiar with. This made the funeral scene between Reiko and Toru less meaningful. It was really a shame that the scene was completely changed in the movie. Reiko asking Toru if he thinks she will fall in love in Asahikawa and then following it up with asking him to sleep with her, felt off to me. It came off as if she was sleeping with Toru to prepare for her next stage of life rather than grieving Naoko. I wonder if Reiko’s story was left out purposely due to its controversial nature, or if it was a time thing. 

One thing I think the film emphasized well was the disconnect between the worlds of Noako and Toru. Scenes like Noako asking if Toru is okay being together even if she is never able to have sex, and his response saying he’s optimistic. The look on Naoko’s face as Toru left the sanatorium highlighted how Toru struggled to come to reality about Naoko’s condition and how she probably wouldn’t get better. The visuals, especially Toru often following behind Naoko, also gave me the feeling that Toru was unable to grasp the seriousness of Naoko’s sickness. 

I enjoyed the ending scene of the movie. It was a bit on the nose, but the transition from Reiko telling Toru to be happy, and then him calling Midori in a green shirt, felt like it was clear he made the choice that he wanted to live and move forward.

Why the Novel Cannot Be Replaced by the Film

 After watching the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood, I personally have an opinion: film is NOT a good medium to present this story. I'm not trying to criticize the filming techniques or anything like that. If we only view it as a separated movie, it's not that bad. In another word, at least it succeeds as a movie. However, if we discuss it together with the original novel, it fairly lacks the ability to convey the whole context within the novel.

To understand Norwegian Wood, the tiny details between the protagonists’ interection should be importantly considered. At the beginning of the movie, it only tells us that Kizuki, Toru, and Naoko are friends during high school. After Kizuki's death, Toru and Naoko move to Tokyo and coincidentally meet again. Then they become close through the time they spend together over the year, and finally they do. That is it.

But what is really important in the novel is how Kizuki plays a really important role in both Toru and Naoko's hearts, (the lost of Kizuki in movie seems not to be too strike on both of them) , and how the loss of their closest friend, in a city where they are both strangers, is what connects the two of them together. And from that, how a certain emotion, and a certain redemption, grows between them. But all of this, none of it comes through in the movie.

The movie only tells us the story, tells us what happens. But everything that is truly important for both Toru and Naoko themselves can only be explored through their tiny conversations, their small actions, and what they are thinking inside. These are things the movie simply cannot show.

To put it all together: although the movie tells the story of Norwegian Wood fairly clearly, it completely fails to bring out what the novel is really about:  the bonds that grief creates between people, the desperate need to save each other, and the quiet, painful hope of redemption. And so a book that is so full of human nature, ethics, and all kinds of deeper meaning ends up looking in the movie like just an ordinary, plain tragedy.

Boran

Difference between the book and the film

One detail I noticed throughout the film is how it portrayed Toru's inner thoughts. The narration of Toru's thoughts in the book was a huge part of the story, where the readers were able to notice smaller details compared to the movie, which makes his character feel more complex. Even if he used words that sounded calm or monotone, we were able to tell that he was impacted by his environment and surroundings. These narrations were almost like hints to us, that helps us understand ideas such as Toru's characteristics like detachment was not the same as being indifferent. And that there could be other possibilities such as a way to cope for the loss.

Now in the movie, Toru's thoughts are less visible to the audience because the film did not include his narrations in the same way as the book did. Us, as the audience, mostly had to understand or judge him through his actions, expressions and body language. Because of this, he can come across as harder to understand or to be read by the viewers. And I believe this difference also affects the emotions of what we could potentially feel. In the book, Toru somewhat feels closer and more personal because his mind is like an open book. While in the movie, he feels more distant, like it is just an observation. To me, this was one of the biggest details I noticed between the film and the book.

- Shurun Li

Murakami's voice in novel and film

  Previously I wrote about how Murakami’s novels and short stories have an “American voice”, despite being set in Japan. In Norwegian Wood, I found the many references to other novels like The Great Gatsby and songs by The Beatles and other jazz artists to set a scene not quite natural to Tokyo, despite the references to landmarks and street and city names. In the film version, this is done similarly with music. Murakami was a jazz cafe/bar owner, and his works reflect his knowledge of Western culture. The soundtrack in scenes of transition consists of mostly lively, vocal samples accompanied by guitar and drums, whereas the film score around dialogues is calm and consists of mainly quiet piano phrases. This choice maintains the traditional Japanese setting, while interjecting with Western elements. Murakami’s voice is not directly perceived in the film—rather, we hear Toru’s internal dialogue relevant to the immediate world around him. The typical monologue is omitted, and Murakami’s style only enters through scenes like the pool game, working at the record store, and Reiko’s guitar performances. In between, Toru has a factory job, hikes in the mountains near Tokyo, and spends time with Midori. I think that although many scenes are truncated in the adaptation to film, Murakami’s style appears in fewer situations, essentially muting his voice. The soundtrack is more like an excursion into America, rather than an inheritance of either Japanese or American culture. Overall, it distances the film from the novel; if we think of Murakami as directing his stories, the film does not belong to him in the same way.

River

Toru's Inner Life

 One of the most interesting differences between the Norwegian Wood book and film is the way each portrays the inner world of the protagonist, Toru. In the Murakami novel, the memories and experiences of Toru are much more intricate and personal because they are all told through his voice. We get to see his quirks, reactions, and troubled musings on death and life. We are constantly inside his mind, so we can feel the complexity of his grief, desire, guilt, and confusion surrounding Kizuki and Naoko. I feel like, because of that, we can see things much more from his perspective and know his internal reactions to things. He comes off as a much more conflicted, angst-riddled, and despondent person. 

In the movie, however, the film feels more distant and aesthetic. I think the differences that the distance between the two media creates are significant because Norwegian Wood is a novel entirely concerned with the nature of memory and internal experience. A lot of scenes, which were much longer scenes in the novel, like Stormtrooper waking Toru up to do his exercises, were represented only in mere seconds or not represented at all. Because of that, I feel like the film captures Toru and the other characters less as a whole. I wonder if a film that includes everything in the novel would become more boring or less artistic as a result. However, I enjoyed how the film makes the world of Norwegian Wood feel melancholic and dreamlike, even if it sacrifices some of the psychological depth and rich details in the novel. 

Katherine 

Kizuki's Suicide or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Imagination

I must preface and say that this blog post will be a rant, a rant about a singular sequence in the film adaptation of Norwegian Wood. Said sequence being Kizuki's suicide.

In the book, Kizuki's suicide is tragic as it is enigmatic. His death impacts the lives of both Toru and Naoko in their established connections to one another, but also because of the sheer abruptness of his suicide. He doesn't inform anyone of it prior to his commitment, choosing to inform no family member nor Naoko or Toru. The most anyone gets out of Kizuki's intentions is when Toru spends time playing pool with Kizuki a day before his suicide. Kizuki responds with "I didn't want to lose today"(p. 24) when Toru notices his stoic drive to win during their games of pool. This suggests Kizuki's desire to spend his last day "winning" rather than going out on a sullen note, but not exactly why he want to "go out" in the first place. All we find out regarding Kizuki's suicide is that he died by self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning in his family's car parked in the garage. No suicide note, no further investigation, nothing. Toru and the reader are left to ponder many factors regarding his death. The length of time, the degree of suffrage Kizuki endured, whether there where attempts to stop the suicide; none of the questions that a reader may pose are ever answered. The same can't be said about the film. 

In the film, Kizuki's entire suicide routine is showed. We see him get into the car, release carbon monoxide into the car, and suffer a bit until his death. This sequence answers just about every question one may have regarding his death, leaving little to be pondered. That is until the end. There is a brief moment where the camera lingers on Kizuki flinging to the backseat of the car, seemingly attempting to escape, or no, accept his fate? It's hard to tell what he's doing, and that's what makes those brief seconds within the film so great. We only hear the carbon monoxide permeating throughout the car and Kizuki's grunts of suffrage, all morbidly striking choices. This is however ruined once his noises cease as the camera pans over to Kizuki in the backseat, confirming his death, blue-balling the audience from getting to place the final jigsaw in the puzzle themselves. I honestly eye-rolled in this decision.

In film, the concept of "off-screen space" can be a powerful tool at the disposal of the filmmaker. Off-screen space allows the creative to create a more engaging scene by using sound or other background elements to imply movement or action taking place behind a scene. Although the audience can't see what's going on out of frame, they can infer or deduce based on the scene's off-screen attributions. This allows the film's audience to be actively engaged as they are then required to use their imaginations to understand and deduce the narrative for themselves. Jafar Panahi's It Was Just an Accident, Cannes 2025's Palme d'Or winner, received it's acclaim partially do to a brilliant ending that had utilized off-screen space to manifest a chilling finale. I can't help that if the film was going to alleviate some of the mystery behind Kizuki's suicide, it would have benefited simply from having it all take place in a static shot, obscuring some of the moment-to-moment action within his suicide. With this change, some audience members may think he had suffered with little effect to his body while others may begin to suspect that perhaps he had suffered a violent and hellish death due to the effects of the poisoning, Albeit morbid thoughts, Kizuki's death can continue to feel enigmatic while attempting to show some of it to the audience. You get to have your cake and eat it too! 

Overall, I noticed this issue consistently throughout the film. It attempts to be straightforward and to the point when Murakami as a writer is anything but straightforward. It paints Naoko and Toru's death as a tragic love-story while failing to consider the other otherworldly and dream-like elements of the film, leaving nothing up to the imagination. The audience isn't dumb, they can think for themselves!

- DK 

 

A Friend of Gatsby: Characteristic Analogies Between Norwegian Wood and Gatsby

Reading Norwegian Wood, I could see a very obvious comparison between the two novels drawing Toru and Gatsby as mirrors. I think the imagery that comes with Gatsby yearning for Daisy on the dock staring at the green light of the Buchanan house in East Egg could pair nicely with Toru seeing his love affair with Naoko play out while her heart still belong s to Kizuki. Really, I could see East Egg being a physical manifestation of a space before death like the sanatorium seems to be. 

But I wasn't fully pleased with this obvious paring, especially factoring in Nagasawa. Gatsby is the uniting factor between Nagasawa and Toru: "'Any friend of Gatsby is a friend of mine.'" (30) Initially, for me, this placed Nagasawa, Toru, and Gatsby into a sort of vague category that admittedly doesn't make sense when I think of it now; however, when Nagasawa does compare Toru and himself, he states that Toru also has a "hunger that won't go away" (210) indicating that there is something perpetually missing from him as it is in supposedly Nagasawa (though I don't agree) as well as Gatsby incidentally. But I don't think Nagasawa and Toru actually are one and the same (maybe you do which is ok), and I also don't think that at this point in the narrative Toru has a desire that never ceases—I think that comes after when Naoko dies. This is where I'd like to make a maybe farfetched nomination for Norwegian Wood's Gatsby character as Naoko.

I'll get to Naoko in a moment, but this theory also frames Toru as Nick Carraway—a comparison I actually rather like. And one reason for this is that Gatsby ends (in a sense) the way Norwegian Wood begins: with the Dutch. Obviously I know that Norwegian Wood begins as Toru begins his descent to Hamburg, but there is also this description: "Cold November rains drenched the earth and lent everything the gloomy air of Flemish landscape." It's my understanding that the Flemish region is specifically in Belgium today, but that the "Low Countries" historically refer the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg and their strategic position between France and Germany though they did not specifically include those two entirely. I'm not sure if there is a separate word for Flemish in Japanese that refers to the same specific region that it refers to in English, but I think attaching the Flemish landscape to a descent toward a place that is not the narrator's place of origin could echo for both narrators the final paragraphs of Gatsby in which Fitzgerald references Dutch sailors arriving in New York: 

"And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. 

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night. 

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (Fitzgerald 127)

Gatsby is likened to the Dutch sailors through their respective capacities for wonder. Nick Carraway mentions that they are "compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired." Initially this made me think of how Toru says that he writes to understand himself, but the aesthetic contemplation he does by writing this book—grieving Naoko and Kizuki—is something he does desire because he desires understanding. So perhaps this aesthetic contemplation could actually be representative of Naoko's life as she is forced to sit with not only Kizuki's death, but also her sister's. Naoko, like Gatsby,  is consumed by the past. I think to a certain extent the green light also signifies something made inaccessible by institution (marriage or literal institution though perhaps that's reaching) and it could also signal sequestration or death. The connection between Nick Carraway and Daisy Buchanan is familial, perhaps mirroring Toru and Kizuchi. Marriage to Tom Buchanan in this analogy would logically then represent death in my eyes (possibly because I've always disliked him so much). There's also the small detail that at the beginning of Norwegian Wood, Toru is thirty seven, and on Nick Carraway's thirtieth birthday he says: "Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair." At the end of both novels, it's also just relevant to my theory that Daisy / Kizuki and Gatsby / Naoko are dead while Nick / Toru is alive (and both Naoko and Gatsby have sparsely attended funerals!). So maybe Toru actually is a friend of Gatsby's after all (or a lover?) Anyways, just a fun theory!

—Alana

On Norwegian Wood's film version

 In general, I found the portion of Norwegian Wood that we watched in class to be more fast-paced than I had expected. There was also less dialogue than I thought there would be, making the plot flow feel somewhat disjointed and sparse in detail. On the other hand, I thought the casting for Midori and Naoko was really well done.

The use of setting also stood out to me. Notably, the forest was used as background scenery in many more scenes than Murakami had put in the book. Specifically, Midori and Toru sit together on a bench in the woods; Naoko and Toru's walk together doesn't ever show them leaving the forest; and Toru first meets Reiko in the forest instead of inside one of Ami Hostel's buildings, as Murakami had written it. I suppose the director was attempting to make the forest a much more central motif than it originally was in order to better match the book's title. This change also could have been to create more continuity between Toru's interactions with each woman, creating a more obvious link between them for the viewer. Or maybe it's just to more intensely foreshadow Naoko's death in the forest.

However, the biggest scene change for me was that of Toru and Midori's first kiss. Rather than kissing out on the balcony as they watched a burning building, the director chose to make them kiss by a window as the rain pours down outside. I don't know whether this decision was made in order to tone down Midori's eccentricity (it was her suggestion to watch a building burn down for fun, after all) or if this was meant to add to the element of rain Murakami employs in the book (like the scene where Toru and Midori kiss on the street in the middle of a rainstorm). Murakami's rain scenes make me think of what he wrote in "Abandoning a Cat" about raindrops representing people: each drop (person) has their own story, fears, etc. but once they merge with others and form a collective, none of it matters. If this is the case here too, I think rain adds to the sense of understanding between Toru and Midori in the moment as they kiss. Both characters are able to lay down their respective worries (Midori's being her family issues and Toru's being Naoko's condition) and become one for a moment (physically through the act of kissing and emotionally through the connection they feel to one another). 

Overall, I don't dislike the movie but I feel the book has more substance to it. However, if the rest of the movie slows down a bit and digs into the character's exchanges a bit more, it could be better redeemed.

Sloane 

Norwegian Wood: Film vs Book

 Hello Class, 

The main difference that I want to highlight is the loss of Murakami's slow and subtle building of emotion and understanding in Norwegian Wood. The movie seems to lose the subtlety of Naoko's eventual departure to the sanatorium. 

To start, when Naoko is reunited with Toru in the film, she already appears to be holding on by a thread. Her actions during their walk make her seem as if she should be going to a sanatorium immediately. We lose the more melancholic and humanizing moments from the book. Like when Naoko laughs at Storm Trooper stories or when she and Toru are genuinely attempting to understand each other. Instead, the movie presents Naoko as emotionally detached, vacant, and constantly disassociating. Because of this, her instability feels obvious, removing much of the surprise from her sudden departure. 

Naoko's birthday serves as a tipping point in the book. She and Toru seem to be on good terms, meeting every Saturday and building a connection. The narration makes it seems like she is having a great time, until, she suddenly can't stop crying. While this is depicted on screen, the scene that follows is drastically different. In the novel, Toru describes the encounter as something that simply happens to both of them, emphasizing emotional distance in a reflective and quiet manner. The film, however, does not keep this atmosphere during the scene. Instead it opts for something that appears more disturbing. Naoko lies nearly motionless, like a lifeless corpse, as if her mind has shut down. This shift in tone makes her later move to the sanatorium feel more expected than sudden.

Overall, I think the movie does a fine job as an adaptation but dramatizes the book, which loses some key subtleties!

-Raul 

Storm Trooper in Norwegian Wood Movie :(

I don’t know…I found storm trooper to be one of the most important characters in the book. In the movie, I felt that he was just used as a brief source of comic relief in the beginning, and then written out with no explanation. For me, the saddest moment in the book is when Toru finds out storm trooper has left without a word. Though storm trooper does not die, his loss seems to impact Toru like a death would, leaving something empty inside. Storm trooper seemed to animate his life, lifting him out of his general state of apathy. On Toru’s walks with Naoko, his stories of storm trooper made Naoko laugh the most. Storm trooper’s exit in the story affected his relationship with Naoko; they didn’t really have much to laugh about after he was gone. I think the dynamic between Toru, Naoko, and storm trooper is important, even though Naoko and storm trooper never meet. In this novel, there is almost always an intermediary between a two-person relationship: Toru with Naoko and Kizuki, Reiko with Toru and Naoko, Toru with Nagasawa and Hatsumi. Relationships are not bilateral, they are held together by a much larger social fabric. Storm trooper serves to show how relationships between two people cannot exist in a vacuum; people who never meet are still deeply interconnected. Toru’s loss of storm trooper undoes a part of the social web which connects him with others; this loss bleeds into his relationship with Naoko, darkening it. It really bothered me that this narrative was written out of the movie, especially in the context of Naoko and Toru’s conversations. I feel that their walks were a bit flat and one-dimensional without those moments of laughter and feelings of connectedness with an outside world beyond the two of them. In a way, storm trooper was Naoko and Toru’s tether to the real world, something in the present moment so that their relationship was not only defined by their past. I think these cuts hurt the movie overall; without storm trooper, the movie doesn’t capture Murakami’s themes surrounding social relationality, or Toru’s connection/disconnection with his dormitory's culture, as well as it could. I think I am just fixated on this one moment though, and I thought the movie was good while I was watching it. 

Juliet 

Thoughts on Norwegian Woods movie vs book

 I found many differences between the movie and the book. Most notably, the pacing is MUCH faster. The movie barely touched on the parts with Watanabe’s crazy roommate, the student protest, and Nagasawa. This is understandable, as a movie can’t drag out the story like a book can. The movie skipped the whole part about Toru’s girlfriend in Kobe, which was an interesting choice. Also, during Toru and Naoko’s first walk in the forest, when I read the book I didn’t think they were so quiet, but I realized in the movie that they barely talked at all. To be honest, I thought these two have zero chemistry (at least in the beginning) and have no idea how they got this close. 

The character in the movie that matched closest with my imagination from the book is Midori. She is bubbly, speaks whatever is on her mind, and fashionable like I remembered. Reiko looks older than I imagined her to be. I imagined Reiko would be closer in age with Naoko, but maybe that is just because I didn’t read the book enough (after a search, indeed she is in her 30s and I just did not read enough). Also, I know the movie was filmed in 2010, but it feels a lot older than it actually is. Like, the film just does not feel modern, and definitely not targeted toward western audiences. 

Murakami himself said that the book was written with the mindset of being “100% realistic.” However, from how the movie was directed and with the eerie music, it feels more dreamlike than realistic. I feel like this is a deliberate choice to capture the mood of the book, which I can see. The movie progressed so fast that it feels a bit surreal to be honest. 

-Allen

Norwegian Wood & and the blend of the real with the surreal

Relative to his other works, Norwegian Wood is framed as Murakami's most realistic book, both by his own claims and by audience opinion. Yet many elements in it make it feel just as surreal as many of his other stories. The only thing that really separates it from his more surreal works is the lack of explicit supernatural content- elements like sheep men and alternate worlds are absent from Norwegian Wood, and yet its characters and settings are far from what most would consider realistic.

My first read of Norwegian Wood was a few years ago, and at the time I had been going through Murakami's novels one after the other without much prior research. Upon finishing it, I hadn't even noticed the absence of supernatural elements — it felt essentially the same as any of his other books. Only after reflecting on it later and discussing it in class did I register that it was intended to be a realist novel.

I think the reason Norwegian Wood came across this way to me is that Murakami's style is so entrenched in surreality that even his realistic novels end up feeling strange, unusual, and ultimately surreal. What I love about this quality is not just that all of his books feel strange, but that he makes the surreal feel normal. A book like Norwegian Wood might read similarly to one of his more surreal works- but you could also say that his more surreal works read more grounded than they first appear. Whether it's Norwegian Wood or Killing Commendatore, Murakami blends realism and surrealism so seamlessly that even his realistic books occupy that feeling somewhere between the real and the abstract.

Kevin 

Memorial Slicing Style of the Movie

When watching this film, the most intense feeling was not the progression of the plot, but a sense of "slicing" and exaggerated sound. This film contains the most significant feature of the book's nostalgic genre, combining together Watanabe's memories through the language of the camera.

The scene initially has an old-fashioned and rich greenish tone. That was when Watanabe, Naoko and Kizuki were playing together. Through their smiling faces, audience could sense their vibrant youth. After Watanabe and Kizuki played billiards later, they switched to the cold and deathly silent darkness at the scene where Kizuki committed suicide. This contrast of highly saturated pictures or sound gives the audience a strong impact.

This slicing effect does not merely rely on visuals but also lies in the film's sound processing, which makes the audience feel more immersed. Background music was not usually used in the film. In many scenes, we can only hear the quiet conversations between characters or their breathing. Or the sounds of the environment itself, such as wind sound or the jazz music. For instance, when Naoko and Watanabe were taking a walk, it was always their quiet conversation or sound of stepping on something. In the scene at the Naoko Sanatorium, the sound of rain in the mountains and the rustling of fallen leaves are magnified. This extremely realistic sound design makes the audience feel as if they were in that damp forest.

It is precisely this slicing editing technique combined with the immersive sound design that makes this film more like a dream of memories about the story between them. The character traits, environment and sounds formed through Watanabe's memories.

Vivian

Setting a Tone: Thoughts on the Norwegian Wood Movie

*Discussion of suicide below relating to Kizuki in the film and book, Norweigan Wood.

Since watching the beginning of Norwegian Wood, there were a few things that stuck with me. The most prominent of which was Kizuki’s death scene. In the novel, I feel the description of his death was so extremely opaque and fuzzy. It was not drawn out nor was it detailed. Strangely, at times, it felt like a small occurrence that just so happens to loom over the entirety of the book. It sets the tone for the rest of the novel and puts Naoko squarely on the path she inevitably traverses. In the moment, however, Kizuki’s death feels so small – by design – happening offscreen, and only relayed to the readers by Toru. I think this made sense for the novel. Conveying the brevity of death, while making its victim small. I think this felt like an important choice, obscuring the physical act of the suicide and putting distance between Watanabe and his friend. It also puts immense distance between Toru and Kizuki’s motivations, which I feel is another important obstacle for Toru to overcome throughout the novel. This is a through line that extends towards Naoko as well, starting off the novel with such an intense moment though seemingly incomprehensible. 

The movie, however, takes another stance, explicitly depicting the suicide of Kizuki in what feels like the longest shot in the film thus far, explicitly showing Kizuki taping the gaps on the window while the hose hangs into the car. This scene disturbs a lot of the opacity the book gives, I feel. It highlights just how intentional the act is, and how much planning and time this act truly required. It takes time for Kizuki to commit suicide. It takes time and each moment it feels, in real time, he is making the continuous effort and choice to kill himself. I am not sure if I liked this choice as much as the way it was conveyed in the novel. It takes away from some of the themes of Norwegian Wood. I think, it feels these characters are living on the border of life and death, where at any point they can be pulled into the ether easily. The choice to explicitly depict his death definitely disturbs this a bit, but also does take away some of the romanticization, highlighting the reality of the situation.

I also wish the birthday scene was a bit more drawn out. I was excited to see the rush conversation that Naoko is described as producing in the novel. I feel like that was relevant, especially in the end, when she has a similar rush of dialogue with Reiko. The pacing was a bit fast, I think what also makes Watanabe's actions and feelings more understandable is his extreme solitude and quiet contemplation. I do think this would be difficult considering the time limitations of a movie, but I would love to see how they convey his loneliness towards the end of the story. 

 This is not to say I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the movie so far. It was so beautifully shot. Each scene looked like a beautiful photograph. The sound design was amazing too. I loved the the chants of the protestors, the summer cicadas, and the sounds of the rain. I think that way, the movie captures the ambiance and setting so well. The direction was also so dynamic and interesting: the shot of Toru’s quick reflections and him running up the winding staircase after receiving Noako’s letter. The actors and actresses I also loved. I feel like they truly embodied the characters so well, especially Naoko. Overall I really loved the movie and wanted to finish watching it. Some small changes stuck out to me, but otherwise, I feel the movie is strong so far, and stands on its own as a coming of age tale. 

Isabella

Thoughts about the movie

One of the biggest problems I had with the film adaptation was the casting. The actress who played Naoko was especially disappointing to me. When I read the novel, I imagined Naoko as someone pure, fragile, and almost otherworldly. In the film, however, she did not give that impression at all. Her expression often felt empty in a way that made her seem less like a delicate young woman and more like someone who had already been worn down by many years of suffering. This completely changed the feeling of her character for me. 

Midori was also very different from how I pictured her in the book. In the novel, she has a playful charm, but the film did not really capture that side of her. Instead, she came across as too elegant and fashionable. Details like her sunglasses and the way she spoke made her feel much more polished than the Midori Murakami described. The only character I thought fit my impression fairly closely was Kizuki. Even though he dies at the very beginning, his appearance and presence matched the image I had while reading. The car suicide scene also conveyed a real sense of struggle.

Another weakness of the film is the way it handles the other characters and the flow of the story. I understand that a movie has limited time and cannot develop every side character as fully as a novel can. However, some characters, such as Storm Trooper, appear so briefly and strangely that their scenes may feel confusing, especially for audiences who have not read the book. More broadly, the entire film often feels like a sequence of disconnected images rather than a continuous story. At times, the transition from one scene to the next feels abrupt and almost random. For example, one moment Storm Trooper is by Toru's bed, and the next moment Toru is in a bar talking with Nagasawa about girls. Because of this, the film loses the emotional and narrative continuity that makes the novel powerful. In my opinion, these details were handled poorly, and in some cases it might actually have been better to leave them out rather than include them in such an incomplete way.

- Wendy

Thoughts on Norwegian Wood: The Movie

Even though we only watched 50 minutes of the Norwegian Wood movie in class, there were many things that I noticed that came across as interesting. First, the beginning felt more like a montage rather than a movie where we are just hit with scenes after scene after scene. We go from Toru, Naoko, and Kizuki, to Toru and Kizuki's pool game, to Kizuki's suicide all within a matter of 5 minutes. This feeling continues throughout the movie where it seems like a bunch of information that is barely held together is just thrown at the audience. For example, Stormtrooper plays a much lesser role in the movie, as we only see him twice before he leaves and also never get to hear his name. The same goes for Nagasawa. We don't get the scene where he finds Toru reading the Great Gatsby and how that moment kick started their friendship. All we see is that the two of them are already friends. This opening felt rather rushed and if we hadn't read the book in class, I would not have been able to understand what was happening. Many people say to read the book instead of watching the movie, but for Norwegian Wood it is a necessity. 

There were other parts that were either completely skipped over, or just different from the book. The meeting with Midori again seems rushed, but then we cut straight to when they meet up after she ghosted him at lunch, which then cuts straight into when she invites him over for food. Similarly, he gives her pink and white flowers in the movie while in the book he gives her daffodils.

I also noticed how important of a role music plays in the film. Almost every scene was set to some background track, ambient noise, or the shouts of the student protest. To me, this seems like a good way to captivate Murakami's obsession with music from his novels. While reading, it can be hard to visualize what a mentioned song is if you've never heard it before and no one is going to take the time to look each song up and listen to them before getting back into reading. Therefore I feel this element and the sound design are one of the more well executed aspects of the movie from the half we have seen so far. 

- Angus Black

When grief doesn't seem like grief

 One thing that was interesting to me was the portrayal of grief in Norwegian Wood. The novel gives Toru a voice that seems calm and controlled most of the time, sometimes too much that it can feel unsettling to the reader. This calmness makes it seem like he is narrating almost as if he's describing someone else's life rather than his own. That distance reads less like indifference and more like coping, and staying detached is the only way he can keep moving forward. I've noticed how Murakami doesn't treat grief like a single emotion, as it shows up as a whole shift in how Toru experiences the world. He can still go to school, talk to people and follow routines but even then, everything feels slightly hollow, as if he was functioning on autopilot. When the novel returns to Kizuki's death, it becomes clear that the loss isn't just about sad memories, it's something that permanently changes the atmosphere around Toru and Naoko. With Nook specially, grief feels like being stuck in a certain place or time, like everything in her life paused at the moment. Being with her pulls Toru into the same space, even when he tries to stay rational.

- Shurun Li

Thomas Weber Post 2 - Finishing Norwegian Wood

     This book definitely marked. To be more specific, the atmosphere that it created through Murakami's natural surrealist style of description, the characters innate humanity, and the unabashed strangeness of each relationship created a comprehensive story that I felt encapsulated a person's coming of age very well. Murakami let his characters exist in harsh narratives without giving them excuses or pathways out that would seem easy. 

     The most interesting part of this novel, in my opinion, is Toru's relationship with death. Something that marks every major moment in the story. Whilst not explicitly said till towards the end of the book. There always existed this sort of detachment and distance that Toru seemed to create that wasn't just a part of his innate personality. But something formed by his relationship to Kizuki's death. Fundamentally, I think that this is what makes Toru so different from a character like Nagasawa. Toru isn't someone who exists without worries of others perception, instead existing within the framework of death within life. Constantly recognizing the impermanence of life, which often leads to "aloofness," and accepting his inability to control the world around him.

    Outside of the direct scope of the book, I greatly appreciate its very sensitive description of suicide and the complexities of keeping on living after having lost someone to themselves. Throughout the book, death and suicide seems to be presented as not only a moment of great sadness, often pausing the lives of those around them, but also as a transition. Throughout every death someone moves forward in some way. Whether in Midori moving from her parents bookstore to "live a fuller life" or Reiko moving form the sanitorium after Naoko died. This book emphasizes the beauty of death in its ability to present people with the impermanence of their own lives and breaking their "protective bubbles."

    I truly enjoyed reading this novel, even with all its strange sex descriptions and awkward moments, feeling its sincerity bleeding through every page. 

Norwegian Wood: Realism or Illusion?

Norwegian Wood stands apart from both Haruki Murakami's earlier and later works. It lacks the abstract symbolism of A Wild Sheep Chase and the magical realism of Killing Commendatore. In many ways, it is the first and only novel in Murakami's career with a distinctly realist sensibility. Yet upon finishing it a second time, I found it far richer than the impressions left by my first reading, when it had seemed a straightforward coming-of-age love story. Beneath its realist surface, the novel conceals a quiet idealism and a current of deeper allegory.

When I first encountered Ami Hostel in the novel, my mind did not leap to the sanatorium in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (though that novel is repeatedly referenced when Boku visits) but rather to a celebrated classical Chinese text: Taohuayuan Ji (The Peach Blossom Spring), written by Tao Yuanming around the fifth century CE. In it, a fisherman passes through a narrow mountain gorge and stumbles upon a hidden community, completely cut off from the outside world, where the people live in self-sufficiency and quiet contentment, untouched by the chaos beyond.

The parallels between Ami Hostel and the Peach Blossom land are striking: both are self-sufficient and isolated from the outside world; both are insulated from external political turbulence; and in both, the inhabitants live peacefully, with little desire to leave. Crucially, after centuries of scholarly debate, the Peach Blossom Spring is now widely understood not as a real place, but as a utopian ideal ---- a world that exists only in the imagination. Reading Norwegian Wood a second time with this in mind, I began to wonder whether Ami Hostel might similarly function not as a literal setting, but as a utopian symbol.

Throughout Boku's time at Ami Hostel, various people tell him: "We are all honest here, we say everything that is on our minds"(Ch.6). On the surface, this speaks to a kind of radical transparency, a community free from concealment and pretense. But as the remark is repeated: casually, insistently, by person after person, it begins to feel less like reassurance and more like warning.

Adding to this unease is a telling exchange in which Boku asks Naoko whether anyone ever wants to leave. She replies that almost no one does, and that those who do leave cannot come back. Taken together, these details suggest a darker possibility: that the residents of Ami Hostel are not honest because they have genuinely chosen openness, but because dishonesty carries the threat of expulsion, and no one is willing to risk that. What presents itself as a virtue, then, may in fact be a form of enforced compliance.

Yet for all its apparent calm and beauty, Ami Hostel is not truly a place one could long for. A comfortable life, for human beings, is not reducible to mere survival, it must be filled with something more: genuine connection with others, the honest exchange of feeling, the friction and warmth of real relationships. We are, at our core, social animals.

Boran

Living with Loneliness

 In Norwegian wood, loneliness follows almost every character like a shadow. As Schopenhauer once said, “Either one is alone or one is vulgar.” In this work, loneliness can be both a poison and, at times, a remedy for life. The story begins with the suicide of Kizuki. Kizuki, Toru Watanabe, and Naoko were once an inseparable trio, but Kizuki’s sudden death forces Watanabe to realize that death is not the opposite of life, but rather a part of it. Kizuki’s death not only takes away his life, but also leaves Watanabe and Naoko trapped in a loneliness they cannot escape. For Naoko in particular, Kizuki had been her entire world. When that world disappears, she gradually becomes lost within her own inner darkness.

In her relationship with Watanabe, Naoko seems to depend on him, yet Watanabe understands that he can never truly enter her inner world. She holds his hand and leans on him, but her heart still belongs to the memories of Kizuki. Although the two grow close to each other, they cannot truly fill the emptiness inside one another. This kind of loneliness: being unable to be understood or saved, eventually leads Naoko toward death.

Other characters in the novel are also surrounded by loneliness. Hatsumi deeply loves Nagasawa and patiently waits for him, even though she knows he is selfish and emotionally distant. In the end, after marrying someone else, she is still unable to escape her inner emptiness and eventually takes her own life. Nagasawa appears confident and rational, yet his world is closed as well. He neither seeks to understand others nor desires to be understood. Each character remains trapped in their own form of loneliness.

Unlike Naoko, Midori represents another way of facing loneliness. She is lively, direct, and full of vitality. Rather than escaping from life’s difficulties, she chooses to continue moving forward. Midori’s presence gradually makes Watanabe realize that although loneliness may be unavoidable, people can still choose to keep living.

For this reason, this book is not only a coming-of-age love story, but also a novel about loneliness and growth. Through these characters, Haruki Murakami suggests that loneliness is an inevitable part of life, yet it does not have to consume us. When faced with loneliness, people can either escape from it or learn to move forward despite it.

As the novel quietly implies, no one truly likes loneliness, people simply fear disappointment. When loneliness follows us like a shadow, what truly matters may not be escaping from it, but learning to live with it while continuing to search for light in life.

Wendy

Murakami and Trauma

Norwegian Wood, unlike The Wild Sheep Chase, is not abstract or surreal. Murakami instead describes a realistic college life, including loneliness, sex, grief, and emotional confusion in a very relatable way. He openly addresses suicide and mental health without glamorizing or stigmatizing it. For example, Kizuki’s death is not romanticized or explained, and Naoko’s emotional instability is quietly addressed rather than dramatized. Even as we learn more about Naoko’s state and her living arrangements, she is shown in a “bubble” or utopian-like society, rather than a dramatic psychiatric ward.

I also noticed that Toru is very passive and detached, particularly in his relationships with Naoko and Midori, as well as in the emotionless sex he engages in. This passivity feels consistent with Murakami’s other male protagonists, who often observe rather than act. Toru seems to function more as someone who listens to other people’s stories rather than someone who actively changes events himself. As the novel progresses, this aspect of Toru’s character becomes increasingly apparent. Toru remains very composed while hearing about and experiencing different traumatic situations. Because of this, he often comes across as a relatively stable presence compared to the other characters around him. This seems especially clear when Naoko mentions that she and Kizuki felt more at ease when Toru was with them, and also during his lunch with Hatsumi and Nagasawa, where he again seems to occupy the role of the most grounded person in the group.

When thinking about Murakami’s motives for writing the novel, I kept thinking about his essay “Abandoning a Cat,” where he reflects on his father and the difficulty of fully understanding his experiences and trauma. In that essay, Murakami describes how certain memories, like abandoning the family cat, stay with him even though they seem small or ordinary at first. What stood out to me is how trauma and memory are often discussed indirectly, through fragments and reflections rather than clear explanations. I think something similar is happening in Norwegian Wood. Many of the characters are shaped by trauma, but it is rarely fully explained. Thinking about Norwegian Wood through the lens of “Abandoning a Cat,” it seems like Murakami may be interested in how people carry trauma quietly, often without fully understanding it themselves. Just as Murakami reflects on his father’s experiences from a distance, Toru seems to observe the pain and histories of the people around him without always being able to explain them. Instead of dramatic explanations or clear resolutions, Murakami presents these experiences as complicated parts of everyday life.

- Alexia Koulikourdis

A memoir style of Norwegian Wood

The vitality of Norwegian Wood is largely due to the expressive memory of Watanabe. When reading it, it doesn't even feel like a recollection across years because the writing is so vivid and concrete. Especially in the chapters where Watanabe visits Naoko at the mountain asylum, the description is so detailed including the scene of mountain, the environment of the room they live and so on. This creates an illusion that this is not a fading memory, but an eternal "now."

For Watanabe, life is a series of departures, like Kizuki's. The most impressive scene for me when reading is the firefly gifted by his roommate Trooper. It was trapped in a coffee bottle. Watanabe released it and watched the glow of the fireflies gradually fade away in the darkness. This firefly is a metaphor for those who have passed. Though their light was dim, they left an impressive mark of his memory.

This reminds me of the movie Coco: "Death is not scary; the final death is being forgotten by everyone." The meaning of those captured details and recorded moments lies in the act of remembering itself. As long as someone remembers, those "fireflies" that vanished into the night will never truly go out.

Vivian (Zihan Yan)

Are you going to be in my dreams tonight?

 Norwegian Wood is a more grounded detour from the other Murakami works that we have read so far. Toru’s memory is triggered after hearing the Beatles song Norwegian Wood on a plane, sparking his recollection of the events of the story. This differs from the structure of stories like A Wild Sheep Chase, as we as an audience are given a personal telling of past experiences rather than an objective view of current events. This inadvertently raises questions regarding Toru’s reliability. On page 8, we see Toru describe his experience with Naoko walking through a meadow in October 18 years ago. Notably, Toru depicts a field well in this memory; a feature he admits he has no recollection of and is only informed of by Naoko after the fact, “Once she had described it to me, though, I was never able to think of that meadow scene without the well. From that day forward, the image of a thing I had never laid eyes on became inseparably fused to the actual scene of the field that lay before me. I can go so far as to describe the well in minute detail” (Page 8). This makes it seem very early into the book as though Toru’s memories could simply be constructions of past events rather than objective truths. This depiction of the well suggests that remembering Naoko is a descent into something dark and unknowingly deep for Toru, “All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world's darknesses had been boiled down to their ultimate density” (Page 8). We also see Toru doubt the reality of the world around him when he wakes up from his dream and has an encounter with Naoko on the first night of his stay,” I felt as if it were the continuation of my dream” (Page 158). Due to Toru’s continued detachment from reality when it comes to recalling specific interactions with Naoko, I think it would be fair to assume that we are not getting an objective retelling of events. The trauma sustained by Toru influences the reliability of the story, especially in his ability to describe Naoko. 

-Bradley

Thomas Weber - Norwegian Wood and Liminal Spaces

Whilst Murakami specifically stops himself from drawing on the surreal and magical throughout Norwegian Wood what exists in its place is the clever use of setting and pacing. More specifically, throughout chapters 6 and 7 Murakami utilizes themes commonly associated with mountains, power lines, and narrow cliff roads to convey to the reader the precarity, isolation, and uncertainty of different scenes. One such scene is found in Chapter 7 when Toru goes to visit Midori's father in the hospital. When entering the room before lunch, Toru quickly is given a kind of break in momentum in the scene to look out the window and notice the power lines, quickly commenting on sparrows intermittently perching on the lines right outside. This struck me as interesting as, from my knowledge, sparrows, across many cultures, are strong symbols of resilience, fortune, and friendship. I took this very short choice of imagery as being a reference to Midori visiting her father in the hospital. Acting as a sparrow perching for limited times on a liminal space (power lines) between life and death. 

    Traditionally, moonlight is used in literature to convey feelings of love, mystery or even the subconscious. While I do think that Murakami utilizes these motifs in Norwegian Wood, he pushed it farther to the point of using moonlight as a liminal space for Toru and Naoko. The most obvious example of this can be found in the scene where Naoko presents herself naked to Toru during the night, backlit by moonlight. While the existing setting where Toru and Naoko are, specifically the motifs of the mountains, dense forests and total isolation, already add to this sense that they are existing in a liminal space away from society, the moonlight exacerbates this feeling by being used as a carrier for the space between life and death itself. Specifically, the moonlight acts as a tool for the reader to understand two crucial things about Naoko. First, the true fragility of her state and her constant proximity to death. Second, her existence within a liminal, "inaccessible to Toru," space. On the one hand, the transparency of Naoko's eyes during this scene described by Toru can be taken as a presentation of both the distance between Toru and Naoko, or as Naoko as being mere steps away from death. With the eyes of the dead often being described as glassy or transparent. On the other hand, there are lines showing that whilst she is at a mere arms-width away she seems inaccessible and distant. This presents the liminality of not only Naoko's mind but also her place on earth. She exists in a constant state of in-between, getting better and staying as she is with no true path towards either. 

Hello Murakami, My Old Friend

Haruki Murakami makes direct reference to the film, The Graduate, in Norwegian Wood. The protagonist, Toru, watches the movie in a theater, stating that "I didn't think it was all that good, but I didn't have anything better to do, so I stayed and watched it again." (81) The film is also brought up on page 139 when Reiko and Toru talk about Simon and Garfunkel, as their music was extensively used in the film and helped bring the group cultural success within the mainstream. It's ironic for Toru to not like the film as he has a lot in common with Ben, the protagonist of The Graduate.

Both Ben and Toru are disillusioned young adults who don't have a place in the world. both men also attempt to fill their meaningless lives with sex—Ben with Mrs.Robinson, a close neighbor he's known since he was a boy, and Toru with the many women he sleeps with in part due to his friend Nagasawa's help. Both also finally find meaning in their dreadful lives due to a woman they madly fall in love with, Naoko in Toru's case and Elaine, Mrs.Robinson's daughter, in Ben's.

However, Ben takes a bit more of a passive role. He chases Elaine all the way to Berkeley, California after she moves away for college, attempting to prove his love and adoration for her despite all the people within their family forbidding their relationship from transpiring, mostly due to Mrs.Robinson's affair coming to light. Although Toru does visit Naoko while she's in the care of a mental hospital, he makes no attempt to stay there as long as he could, returning to his mundane life after some time. Ben also heavily loves Elaine due to her being the first person he shares a genuine, personal connection with, and not for superficial reasons like his sexual desire for Mrs.Robinson. Even after their genuine heart-to-hearts, Toru is left with a throbbing memory of Naoko's pleasing body as a memento from their time together at the hospital.

Murakami and The Graduate also share a connection through their use of popular music. Prior to The Graduate, pop music in film was sparsely used, often seen as cheap or simply piss-poor if use was attempted. Only smaller filmmakers attempted to break these industry rules, such as pioneering queer filmmaker Kenneth Anger. It wasn't until The Graduate where pop music in film went mainstream due to the film's heavy use of Simon and Garfunkel music. Murakami essentially does the same thing with his constant allusions to musicians and music he finds enjoyment from. Both The Graduate and Murakami helped reinforce pop music's use in art, as a tool that helps establish the audience to the cultural zeitgeist that the artists had found themselves within the time their work inhabited. 

-DK 

 

 

Norwegian Wood and Sex- Carly

 After reading chapter 6 of Norwegian Wood, I find it interesting how central a theme sex is in this book. I don’t think it is a bad thing to mention sex in a book about college students, it makes sense. However, I think the frequency and how sex shows up overshadows other interesting parts of the novel. It also comes off as self-insert fanfiction. Like, Midori’s whole fantasy being Toru trying to have sex with her against her will just made me question who he was writing this for. Moments like this and Reiko’s lesbian “sex” scandal could all partially be explained by the book being a product of its time. It could also be that Murakami used sexuality to transition into realism as a writing style. Even with this in mind, I still can’t help but to I feel like his portrayal of sex was just odd, and it felt like sex would randomly take over certain scenes. When Reiko was explaining her having another mental breakdown and having to leave her marriage, the main point of that story was “lesbian sex,” instead of the fact that the person she was having sex with was 13. It could’ve gone into any feelings of remorse or even how she would deal with it as a mother, but no, the only time her daughter was properly mentioned was when she was worried about getting caught. It almost feels as if sex is used as a transition between topics. First, Toru and Midori are talking about Naoko, and then she immediately starts talking about porn movies. Midori’s dad dies, and she ends the call asking about porn movies again. I just wonder what this story would be like if sex were included differently and how the characters would change as a result. I also wonder if this is common amongst Murakami's stories as a first-time reader.

The Restaurant POV in Murakami's Writing

Having read Norwegian Wood during my time working in the food industry, one scene really stood out to me—when Midori is cooking for Toru. In Norwegian Wood, the scene is described in such detail that it focuses, or rather obsesses, over some of the most mundane or “uninteresting” things. The reason this stood out to me is because of the kind of crowd drawn into restaurant culture. Chefs are extremely odd people (if you’ve never worked in a restaurant, just trust me). The way Murakami lingers on small actions and tiny details felt familiar, almost like being back in a kitchen watching someone take plating way too seriously. For example, some chefs would watch a cook plate and before sending it to the pass, take the same plate and spend minutes moving around random greens or sauces until it became "perfect". 

The way Murakami writes about spaghetti in The Year of Spaghetti stood out to me in the same way. The story centers around something so simple (boiling pasta) yet it becomes this intense, almost ritualistic act. While part of that is just Murakami’s prose style, I think part of it also comes from the culture he was a part of. Japan has an abundance of smaller Izakaya-style bars and cafés, spaces that revolve around routine, repetition, and attention to detail. 

Restaurant culture can be neurotic, obsessive, and strangely intimate. In a lot of Murakami’s writing, especially in these two works, that same energy is there. The focus on process, on small repeated actions, on quiet moments inside kitchens or apartments. It was only after I learned of Murakami's jazz bar, Peter Cat, and reading The Year of Spaghetti, that it felt less like coincidence and more like influence.

Raul 

Reconstructing Shadows of War in "Tony Takitani" & "Abandoning a Cat"

On December 7, 1941, an infamous strike was launched by the Japanese military on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, causing the United States to cease its neutrality and enter World War II. Both Murakami's father and the fictional father of Tony Takitani, Shozaburo Takitani, are safely sequestered when this occurs—one was released charitably from military service just before, and the other had never shed any sweat over the war to begin with. These two fathers and their two sons have the war, its atrocities, and the subsequent American occupation of Japan stitched into them, and when reading "Tony Takitani" and "Abandoning a Cat" it seems almost inevitable that the traumas of war are carried in the body and then passed on, though diluted, to those who come after.

In the case of Tony Takitani, with "his curly hair," "his somewhat deeply sculpted face," and the Italian-American origins of his namesake, it could very well be that America is reflected onto him in place of his mother, whose absence the story depends upon. He is named casually by the American major his father plays jazz with, who assigns himself as Tony's godfather. I think this naming of Shozaburo's son by an American military leader could be representative of the effect that militaristic occupation has on a native culture since the matter is unceremoniously handled by the major and Shozaburo, numb from his wife's sudden death, can do nothing but acquiesce: "The American occupation of Japan was probably going to last a while yet, and an American-style name might come in handy for the kid at some point." This thought on Shozaburo's part is especially interesting when you consider that if he and Tony's mother wedded in 1947, Tony is born just a few short years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The next paragraph immediately refutes the slightly disruptive thought that an American name would be (someday) beneficial: "For certain people, coming face-to-face with a child called 'Tony Takitani' was all it took to reopen old wounds." This lends nicely to the beginning of "Abandoning a Cat."

From the first few paragraphs of this nonfiction piece about his father and these cats, American violence sits immovably in the corner of the reader's eye with the mention of ruins of a building "bombed by American planes—one of a few still visible scars of the war." (Again for me, the dropping of atomic bombs in Japan were brought to mind.) Murakami's father was discharged from service only days before Pearl Harbor, and, despite having survived narrowly, felt a sense of guilt over those he had left behind: "having his own life saved while his former comrades lost theirs became a source of great pain and anguish. I understand all the more now why he closed his eyes and devoutly recited the sutras every morning of his life." This event of American entrance into WWII becomes central to his father's life as a moment in which his life split decisively into two paths, one leading to life and one to a nearly certain death, and it is this moment that makes a part of Murakami's father permanently inaccessible to Murakami himself. It is impossibly to extract the effects of war from those who are affected by it, and I understand why Murakami ends "Abandoning a Cat" the way he does: "Still, that solitary raindrop has its own emotions, its own history, its own duty to carry on that history. Even if it loses its individual integrity and is absorbed into a collective something. Or maybe precisely because it's absorbed into a larger, collective entity."

The description of the relationship between Tony and his father are also very similar to the dynamic painted between Murakami and his father. Of Tony and Shozaburo, Murakami writes that "being the kind of people they were, imbued to an equal agree of habitual solitude, neither took the initiative to open his heart to the other." Of him and his own father, he writes, "Both of us were unbending, and when it came to not expressing our thoughts directly, we were two of a kind. For better of for worse." For Murakami, he describes also how his life was free from the worries of war that took up his father's youth, that he could study unmoored and enjoy what his father couldn't. But this expectation from his father carries this latent burden of war from father to son. This sublimation (or absorption to follow Murakami's metaphor) of pain into other emotionally intensive narratives is present in "Tony Takitani" as well. In both stories, it is the disconnect between father and son that paint the seemingly unrelated stories of a wife with a shopping addiction and a cat escaping up a tree with similar thematic undertakings: they convey a tragic inaccessibility to those you love as a result of trauma. The scars of war show up, though transformed and translated. Murakami communicates a dreadful sense that even after surviving war or violence or death, the loved one coming back unscathed returns as only fraction of the person who left: "Going down is much harder than going up." 

(There is so much much more to say here about the connection here to American culture, the ending of "Abandoning a Cat" with the mention of "individual integrity" in relation to the solitary raindrops history, and collective history! But I am very interested to see this effect in Norwegian Wood as well because I do see some of it there also!)

Alana Lopez