Norwegian Wood

by Haruki Murakami

  “Twenty,” I said.

  “I’m like a human jukebox,” Reiko exclaimed. “My professors would faint if they could see me now.”

  She went on sipping and puffing and playing: several bossa novas, Rodgers and Hart, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Carole King, The Beach Boys, Stevie Wonder, Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki Song,” “Blue Velvet,” “Green Fields.” Sometimes she would close her eyes and nod or hum to the melody.

  When the wine was gone, we turned to whiskey. The wine in the glass in the garden I poured over the stone lantern and replaced it with whiskey.

  “How’s our count going?” Reiko asked.

  “Forty-eight,” I said.

  For our forty-ninth song, Reiko played “Eleanor Rigby,” and the fiftieth was another performance of “Norwegian Wood.” After that she rested her hands and drank some whiskey. “Maybe that’s enough,” she said.

  “It is,” I answered. “Amazing.”

  Reiko looked me in the eye and said, “Now listen to me, Watanabe. I want you to forget all about that sad little funeral you saw. Just remember this marvelous one of ours.”

  I nodded.

  “Here’s one more for good measure,” she said, and for her fifty-first piece she played her favorite Bach fugue. When she was through, she said in a voice just above a whisper, “How about doing it with me, Watanabe?”

  “Strange,” I said. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  WE WENT INSIDE and closed the curtains. Then, in the darkened room, Reiko and I sought out each other’s bodies as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to do. I removed her blouse and slacks, and then her underwear.

  “I’ve lived a strange life,” said Reiko, “but I never thought I’d have my panties removed for me by a man nineteen years my junior.”

  “Would you rather take them off yourself?”

  “No, go ahead. But don’t be too shocked at all my wrinkles.”

  “I like your wrinkles.”

  “You’re gonna make me cry,” she whispered.

  I kissed her all over, taking special care to follow the wrinkled places with my tongue. She had the breasts of a little girl. I caressed them and took her nipples in my teeth, then slid a finger inside her warm, moist vagina and began to move it.

  “Wrong spot, Watanabe,” Reiko whispered in my ear. “That’s just a wrinkle.”

  “I can’t believe you’re telling jokes at a time like this!”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m scared. I haven’t done this for years. I feel like a seventeen-year-old girl: I just went to visit a guy in his room, and all of a sudden I’m naked.”

  “To tell you the truth, I feel as if I’m violating a seventeen-year-old girl.”

  With my finger in her “wrinkle,” I moved my lips up her neck to her ear and took a nipple with the fingers of my other hand. As her breathing intensified and her throat began to tremble, I parted her long, slim legs and eased myself inside her.

  “You’re not going to get me pregnant now, are you? You’re taking care of that, right?” Reiko murmured in my ear. “I’d be so embarrassed if I got pregnant at this age.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Just relax.”

  When I was all the way in, she trembled and released a sigh. Caressing her back, I moved inside her and then, without warning, I came. It was an intense, unstoppable ejaculation. I clutched at her as my semen pulsed into her warmth again and again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t stop myself.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Reiko said, giving me a little slap on the rump. “You don’t have to worry about that. Do you always have that on your mind when you’re doing it with girls?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Well, you don’t have to think about it with me. Forget it. Just let yourself go as much as you like. Did it feel good?”

  “Just great. That’s why I couldn’t control myself.”

  “This is no time for controlling yourself. This is fine. It was great for me, too.”

  “You know, Reiko,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You ought to take a lover again. You’re terrific. It’s such a waste.”

  “Well, I’ll think about it,” she said. “But I wonder if people take lovers and things in Asahikawa.”

  Growing hard a few minutes later, I went inside her again. Reiko held her breath and twisted beneath me. I moved slowly and quietly with my arms around her, and we talked. It felt wonderful to talk that way. If I said something funny and made her laugh, the tremors came into me through my penis. We held each other like that for a very long time.

  “Oh, this feels marvelous!” Reiko said.

  “Moving’s not bad either,” I said.

  “Go ahead. Give it a try.”

  I lifted her hips and went in as far as I could go, then savored the sensation of moving in a circular pattern until, having enjoyed it to the full, I let myself come.

  ALTOGETHER, WE JOINED our bodies four times that night. At the end each time, Reiko would lie in my arms trembling slightly, eyes closed, and release a long sigh.

  “I never have to do this again,” said Reiko, “for the rest of my life. Oh, please, Watanabe, tell me it’s true. Tell me I can relax now because I’ve done enough to last a lifetime.”

  “Nobody can tell you that,” I said. “There’s no way to know.”

  I TRIED TO convince Reiko that taking a plane would be faster and easier, but she insisted on going to Asahikawa by train.

  “I like the ferry to Hokkaido. And I have no desire to fly through the air,” she said. I accompanied her to Ueno Station. She carried her guitar and I carried her suitcase. We sat on a platform bench waiting for the train to pull in. Reiko wore the same tweed jacket and white pants she’d had on when she arrived in Tokyo.

  “Do you really think Asahikawa’s not such a bad place?” she asked.

  “It’s a nice town. I’ll visit you there soon.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “And I’ll write to you.”

  “I love your letters. Naoko burned all the ones you sent her. And they were such great letters, too!”

  “Letters are just pieces of paper,” I said. “Burn them, and what stays in your heart will stay; keep them, and what vanishes will vanish.”

  “You know, Watanabe, truth is, I’m scared, going to Asahikawa by myself. So be sure to write to me. Whenever I read your letters, I feel you’re right there next to me.”

  “If that’s what you want, I’ll write all the time. But don’t worry. I know you: you’ll do fine wherever you go.”

  “And another thing. I kinda feel like there’s something stuck inside me. Could it be my imagination?”

  “Just a lingering memory,” I said, and smiled. Reiko smiled too.

  “Don’t forget about me,” she said.

  “I won’t forget you,” I said. “Ever.”

  “We may never meet again, but no matter where I go, I’ll always remember you and Naoko.”

  I saw that she was crying. Before I knew it, I was kissing her. Others on the platform were staring at us, but I didn’t care about such things anymore. We were alive, she and I. And all we had to think about was continuing to live.

  “Be happy,” Reiko said to me as she boarded the train. “I’ve given you all the advice I have to give. There’s nothing left for me to say. Just be happy. Take my share and Naoko’s and combine them for yourself.”

  We held hands for a moment, and then we parted.

  I TELEPHONED MIDORI. “I have to talk to you,” I said. “I have a million things to talk to you about. A million things we have to talk about. All I want in this world is you. I want to see you and talk. I want the two of us to begin everything from the beginning.”

  Midori responded with a long, long silence—the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori’s quie
t voice broke the silence: “Where are you now?”

  Where was I now?

  Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the telephone booth. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again, I called out for Midori from the dead center of this place that was no place.

  Reader’s Guide

  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 cliches. “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 “deadcenter” 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?

  Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo. His work has been translated into more than forty languages. The most recent of his many honors is the Franz Kafka Prize.

  www.harukimurakami.com

  Books by Haruki Murakami

  Fiction

  After Dark

  After the Quake

  Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

  Dance Dance Dance

  The Elephant Vanishes

  Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

  Kafka on the Shore

  Norwegian Wood

  South of the Border, West of the Sun

  Sputnik Sweetheart

  A Wild Sheep Chase

  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

  Nonfiction

  Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese

  Psyche

  What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

  ALSO BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

  AFTER DARK

  Murakami’s trademark humor and psychological insight are here distilled with an extraordinary, harmonious mastery. Combining the pyrotechnical genius that made Kafka on the Shore and The Windup Bird Chronicle international bestsellers, with a moving infusion of heart, Murakami has produced one of his most enchanting fictions yet.

  Fiction/978-0307-27873-9

  AFTER THE QUAKE

  Set at the time of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, Murakami’s characters emanate from a place where the human meets in the inhuman. An electronics salesman who has been abruptly deserted by his wife agrees to deliver an enigmatic package—and is rewarded with a glimpse of his true nature. A man who has been raised to view hims
elf as the son of God pursues a stranger who may or not be his human father. A collection agent receives a visit from a giant talking frog who enlists his help in saving Tokyo from destruction.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-71327-9

  BLIND WILLOW, SLEEPING WOMAN

  This superb collection of stories generously express Murakami’s mastery of the form. Here are animated crows, a criminal monkey, and an ice man, as well as the dreams that shape us and the things we might wish for. Whether during a chance reunion in Italy, a romantic exile in Greece, or in the grip of everyday life, Murakami’s characters confront grievous loss, or sexuality, or the glow of a firefly, or the impossible distances between those who ought to be closest of all.

  Fiction/Short Stories/978-1-4000-9608-4

  DANCE DANCE DANCE

  As he searches for a mysteriously vanished girlfriend, Murakami’s protagonist plunges into a wind tunnel of sexual violence and metaphysical dread in which he collides with call girls, plays chaperone to a lovely teenage psychic, and receives cryptic instructions from a shabby but oracular Sheep Man.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75379-7

  THE ELEPHANT VANISHES

  With his genius for dislocation, Murakami makes this collection of stories a determined assault on the normal. A man sees his favorite elephant vanish into thin air; a newlywed couple suffers attacks of hunger that drive them to hold up a McDonald’s in the middle of the night; a young woman discovers that she has become irresistible to a little green monster who burrows up through her backyard.

  Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-75053-6

  HARD-BOILED WONDERLAND AND THE END OF THE WORLD

  Japan’s most popular fiction writer hurtles into the consciousness of the West. Murakami draws readers into a narrative particle accelerator in which a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his undemure granddaughter, Bob Dylan, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect.