The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
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| Author | Haruki Murakami |
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| Original title (if not in English) | ねじまき鳥クロニクル Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru |
| Translator | Jay Rubin |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Shinchosha (Japanese Edition) / Vintage (English Edition) |
| Released | 1994-5 (Japanese Edition), 1997 (English Edition) |
| Media Type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 607 pages |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-679-77543-9 |
| Preceded by | South of the Border, West of the Sun |
| Followed by | Underground |
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (ねじまき鳥クロニクル Nejimaki-dori Kuronikuru?) is a novel by Haruki Murakami. Two chapters were originally published in The New Yorker under the titles The Zoo Attack on July 31, 1995, and Another Way to Die on January 20, 1997. A version of the first chapter translated by Alfred Birnbaum was published in the collection The Elephant Vanishes under the title The Wind-up Bird and Tuesday's Women. The American translation and its British adaptation were published in 1997.
The original Japanese edition was released in three parts, which make up the three "books" of the English language, single volume, version.
For this novel, Murakami received the Yomiuri Literary Award, which was awarded to him by one of his harshest former critics, Oe Kenzaburo.
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[edit] Plot summary
The novel is about a low key unemployed man, Toru Okada, whose cat disappears. A chain of events follow that prove that his seemingly mundane monotonous life is much more complicated than it appears. Also examined is the Manchukuo episode of World War II and its place in Japanese history.
[edit] Main characters
While this book has many major and minor characters, these are among the most important:
- Toru Okada: The narrator, Toru is a passive and often apathetic young man living in suburban Japan. He is Kumiko's husband and continually follows the orders or wishes of others. Currently unemployed, he is the embodiment of passivity.
- Kumiko Okada: Kumiko is Toru's wife and, as the breadwinner of the couple, is the more autonomous of the two. She works in the publishing business.
- Noboru Wataya: Noboru is Kumiko's older brother. He is presented as a mediagenic figure; the public loves him, but Toru cannot stand him. Noboru is a politician and has no apparent personal life. He is said to be hidden behind a façade — all style, and no substance.
- May Kasahara: May is a young girl who should be in school, but, by choice, is not. Toru and May carry on a fairly constant exchange throughout a good deal of the novel; when May is not present, she writes to him (though the reader can peruse them, her letters never reach him). Their conversations in person are often bizarre and revolve around death and the deterioration of human life. Even more bizarre is the cheerful and decidedly non-serious air with which these conversations take place.
- Malta Kano: A medium of sorts who changed her name after performing some kind of "austerities" on the island of Malta for some time. She is enlisted by Kumiko to help the Okadas find their missing cat.
- Creta Kano: Malta's younger sister and apprentice of sorts, she describes herself as a "prostitute of the mind." Disturbingly, for Toru, Creta has a nearly identical face and figure to Kumiko. By the end of the book it is suggested that she is pregnant by Toru (and Lieutenant Mamiya) and plans to call the baby Corsica.
- Nutmeg: She first meets Toru after becoming attracted to the mark on his left cheek. Her and Toru share a few strange coincidences; the blue-black mark and the Wind-up bird appear in the stories, and also Nutmeg's father and Lieutenant Mamiya are linked by World War 2. Her real name is never mentioned.
- Cinnamon: Nutmeg's son. Does not speak but communicates through a perfectly comprehensible system of hand movements and mouthing words. His real name is never mentioned.
[edit] Dream Interpretation
Note: spoilers kept to a minimum
Note: this section open to interpretation
Dreams have a fundamental role throughout the book. The book contains, but never describes the following:
- Lucid dreams are defined as dreaming while knowing you are dreaming. This is "achieved" at least 3 times in the book when Toru is in the place with the lobby and room 208. Although Toru does not consider himself to be dreaming, he is aware that he is not in the physical world. Backing this is that Toru performs a technique called "WILD" (without knowing of it's existance), which is a well known lucid dream inducing technique.
- Sleep paralysis, while not in itself dreaming, is when a person is paralyzed in non-vital muscles (ie: anything but the heart, lungs, and muscles located in and around the eyes) during the REM (dream) stage of sleep. It is possible to wake up while in sleep paralysis, which is often scary for the person experiencing it, as they may also experiance terrifying hallucinations. Toru has sleep paralysis after waking from a dream, which ends a climax for the book. The sleep paralysis may be said to last for longer than it normally occurs in real life.
- Shared dreaming- A shared dream is a dream experience by two or more people of which both/all have the same recall of the dream. While shared dreaming is not scientifically proved or disproved, many believe in it's existence. Toru and Creta experience a relationship twice in two dreams. Both have memory of the event and indeed talk about it.
- False awakening and out of body experiences- A false awakening is a normally extremely realistic dream where the dreamer believes that they have woken up, however . An "out of body experience" may be considered to be a dream. A character in the book, which may perhaps be interpreted, through several hints, to be a young Cinnamon, has both of these at once. However, like in real life, the border between a false awakening and a normal awakening is as hard to distinguish as in the book. Is the first part a false awakening or real? It is open to interpretation. However, the second part concerned with this is definitely both a false awakening and an out of body experience because the boy finds his own body in his bed. As the boy finds his body in bed, and believes he is awake, we can assume it is both of the above.
[edit] Missing Chapters
Two chapters from the third volume of the original three-volume Japanese paperback edition were not included in the English translation by Jay Rubin. In addition, one of the chapters near the excluded two was moved ahead of another chapter, taking it out of the context of the original order. The two missing chapters elaborate on the relationship between main characters Toru Okada and Creta Kano, and a "hearing" of the wind-up bird as Toru burns a box of Kumiko's belongings.
[edit] Translation
The English translation of the novel was written by Jay Rubin.
It must also be noted that in addition to very notable differences between the Japanese and English versions, there are also differences between the original Japanese hardcover and paperback editions.
Further differences exist between the American and British editions, but these are much more superficial.
[edit] References
- Murakami, Haruki. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated by Jay Rubin. ISBN 0-679-77543-9.
- Murakami, Haruki. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, translated by Jay Rubin. ISBN 1-86046-581-1.
[edit] External links
- Exorcising Ghosts Page with plenty of links to reviews
- Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at Amazon with some comments on the book
