Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
List Price: $13.00
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0375704027
Publisher: Vintage Books
This stunning and elegiac novel by the author of the internationally acclaimed
Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has sold over 4 million copies in Japan and is
now available to American audiences for the first time. It is sure to
be a literary event.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to
Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion
is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru
begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces
there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable.
As she retreats further into her own world, Toru finds himself reaching
out to others and drawn to a fiercely independent and sexually liberated
young woman.
A poignant story of one college student's romantic coming-of-age, Norwegian Wood takes us
to that distant place of a young man's first, hopeless, and heroic love.
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1. When Watanabe arrives in Hamburg and hears the song "Norwegian Wood," memories of a scene
with Naoko from eighteen years before come back to him. He feels these
memories as "kicks" and says they were "longer and harder than usual.
Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. . . .
I have to write things down to feel I fully understand them" [p. 5].
Why does this particular song have such a powerful effect on Watanabe?
What does he understand--or fail to understand--about it by the end
of the novel? In what ways does the process of writing help in understanding?
2. Many readers and critics have observed that Norwegian Wood is Murakami's most
autobiographical book. While we can never know exactly to what degree
a work of fiction reflects the lived experience of its author, what
qualities of the novel feel autobiographical rather than purely fictional?
Do these qualities enhance your enjoyment of the book?
3. After Watanabe sleeps with Naoko, he says that "her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm
I had ever heard" [p. 40]. Just before she commits suicide, Naoko tells
Reiko: "I just don't want anybody going inside me again. I just don't
want to be violated like that again--by anybody" [p. 284]. In what sense
did Watanabe "violate" her? Do you feel this experience directly relates
to her suicide? Was it, as Watanabe still asks himself nearly twenty
years later, "the right thing to do"?
4. Throughout the novel, Watanabe is powerfully drawn to both Naoko and Midori. How are
these women different from one another? How would you describe the different
kinds of love they offer Watanabe? Why do you think he finally chooses
Midori? Has he made the right choice?
5. The events Norwegian Wood relates take place in the late sixties, a period of widespread
student unrest. The university Watanabe attends is frequently beset
with protests and strikes and, in Watanabe's view, pompous "revolutionary"
speeches filled with meaningless clichˇs. "The true enemy of this bunch,"
Watanabe thinks, "was not State Power but Lack of Imagination" [p. 57].
At first, he identifies with the student protesters but then grows cynical.
What qualities of Watanabe's character make this cynicism inevitable?
What is Midori's reaction to student activism?
6. How would you describe Watanabe's friend Nagasawa? What is his view of life, of the right way
to live? Why is Watanabe drawn to him? In what important ways--particularly
in their treatment of women--are they different? How does Murakami use
the character of Nagasawa to define Watanabe more sharply?
7. The Great Gatsby is Watanabe's favorite book, one that he rereads often. Why do you think
he identifies so strongly with Fitzgerald's novel? What does this identification
reveal about his character and his worldview?
8. In many ways, Norwegian Wood is a novel about young people struggling to find themselves
and survive their various troubles. Kizuki, Hatsumi, Naoko's sister,
and Naoko herself fail in this struggle and commit suicide. How do their
deaths affect those they leave behind? In what ways does Kizuki's suicide
both deepen and tragically limit Watanabe's relationship with Naoko?
9. Murakami's prose rises at times to an incandescent lyricism. The description of Watanabe
embracing Naoko is one such instance: "From shoulder to back to hips,
I slid my hand again and again, driving the line and the softness of
her body into my brain. After we had been in this gentle embrace for
a while, Naoko touched her lips to my forehead and slipped out of bed.
I could see her pale blue gown flash in the darkness like a fish" [p.
163]. Where else do you find this poetic richness in Norwegian Wood?
What does such writing add to the novel? What does it tell us about
Watanabe's sensibility?
10. At the center of the novel, Reiko tells the long and painful story of how her life was
ruined by a sexual relationship with a young and pathologically dishonest
female student. How does this story within the story illuminate other
relationships in the novel?
11. What is unusual about the asylum where Reiko and Naoko are staying? What methods of
healing are employed there? How do the asylum and the principles on
which it is run illuminate the concerns about being "normal" that nearly
all the characters in the novel express?
12. Naoko attributes Kizuki's suicide and her own depression to the fact that they shared
such an idyllic childhood together and eventually, as adults, had to
pay the price for that early happiness. "We didn't pay when we should
have, so now the bills are due" [p. 128]. Do you think this is an accurate
way of understanding what's happened to them? What alternative explanations
would you propose?
13. After Kizuki and Naoko have both committed suicide, Watanabe writes: "I had learned one
thing from Kizuki's death, and I believed that I had made it part of
myself in the form of a philosophy: 'Death is not the opposite of life
but an innate part of life'" [p. 273]. What do you think he means? Is
this view of life and death resigned or affirmative? How would such
a philosophy change one's approach to life?
14. What makes Midori such an engaging and forceful character? How is she different from everyone
else in the novel? What kind of love does she demand from Watanabe?
Is she being selfish in her demands or simply asking for what everyone
wants but is afraid to pursue?
15. Norwegian Wood appears to end on a happy note with Watanabe calling Midori and telling
her: "All I want in the world is you. . . . I want the two of us to
begin everything from the beginning" [p. 293]. But when Midori asks
where he is, Watanabe is plunged into a kind of existential confusion.
How do you interpret the novel's final mysterious sentence: "Again and
again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that
was no place." Is there anything positive in Watanabe's not knowing
"where he is"? What is the significance of his being at the "dead center"
of no place, wishing for a new beginning?
16. The events of the novel take place in the fictional past. What can you infer about Watanabe's
present condition from the way he tells this story? Do you imagine that
he and Midori have remained together?
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"A world class writer who has both eyes open and takes big risks."—Washington Post Book World
"[Murakami belongs] in the topmost rank of writers of international stature."—Newsday
