Joe's
Digital Garden

The Wind Up Bird Chronicles

Themes

One item has stuck with me on every read through of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and that is how it leaves me feeling with a sense that our grasp of reality is slippery. That we presume to know how things "should" work based on preconcieved or material notions.

Setting

Characters

  • Taro Okada, 30. The narrator and protagonist. Unemployed at the begining of the novel, but previously employed as a lawyer-gopher.
  • Noboru Wataya, 40s?. The unpresent antongist. A creep who defiles Kumiko's older sister and Creta Kano. He goes from a reclusive, creepy professor to being a celebrity economist and diet candidate. Taro discribes his later incarnation as like talking to a person behind a pane of glass. He contains a kind of cosmic horror behind a human face.
  • Kumiko Okada, 30s. Taro's wife who goes missing after book 1 and resumes contact with Taro by the end of book 3. Kumiko is having an affair with an unnamed man and flees both her marriage and the man. Noboru uses this as a chance to demand Taro divorce his sister. However, the paperwork remains unresolved.
  • Kumiko's Older sister. Commits suicide after being defiled by her older brother Noboru Wataya
  • Maya. 16. Truant. Obessed with death. Killed her boyfriend by covering her eyes while they were riding on a motorcycle. Abandons Taro at the bottom of a well to test if she would go through with killing him.
  • Malta Kano. 30s. A psyhic that Kumiko hires at the recomendation of Noboru Wataya to help find their lost cat
  • Creta Kano. 20s. A "prostitute of the mind," and previously a prostitute of the flesh. Lived in constant pain until her 18th birthday when she tried to commit suicide and afterwards began a life numb and unable to feel pain. Was defiled by Noboru and lost her sense of self. Now works with her older sister as a diviner. She visits, and has sex with Taro in his dreams and later in person.
  • Mr Honda. 80s. Diviner that Komiko's father sends Taro and Kumiko to for a year. Mr. Honda is a WWII verteran of Nomonhan. Passes away leaving Taro an empty box for Cutty Sark.
  • Lt. Mamiya. 80s. A a WWII verteran and comrade of Mr. Honda. A cartographer. Sent on a mysterious mission leading up to Nomonhan into Mongolian/Soviet held territory. Is captured and then abandoned at the bottom of a well before being rescued by Mr. Honda.

Plotting

External References

  1. Dil, Jonathan. Woman as Symptom and the Void at the Heart of Subjectivity: A Lacanian Reading of Murakami Haruki's 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle'. Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, 2010.
  2. Murakami, Haruki. The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Vintage International, 1998.

Linked References