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