Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
First published in Japanese 1987
First publish in this translation 2000

The novel is based on the suicide problem in young people and the attendant mental illness that leads them to utter despair.

The narrator (a guy) has only two best friends in school-life: a guy and a girl, who are also romantically together. When the guy commits suicide at 17, the narrator by total chance finds himself comforting and taking care of the girl who starts to behave oddly after the tragedy, apparently due to sadness, but things turn for the worse when the girl suffer a mental breakdown and gets admitted to a sanatorium for treatment. The rest of the story is the narrator’s attempt to put things to right and to bring the girl back to normal life.

It’s a pretty straightforward first person narrative without the usual flourishes Murakami is known for. However there are a few things that got me thinking.

He makes tons of references to Western classical music and American pop. The books which feature in the story, too, are mostly Western. Shouldn’t a novel about Japanese people set in Japan and written in Japanese should be more grounded in the Japanese culture, music and literature? One character who is a good maverick musician only plays Mozart and Bach and Beatles. The name of the novel itself is derived from Beatles’ song. The mentally ill girl liked the song and that is the only justification for naming the book so.

Sex is a recurrent theme. It is too much in fact. At times it feels the author is taking great pains, figuratively speaking, in describing the repetitive sexual encounters of his characters. In this novel everyone is trying to do it with everyone else.

Other than that it's a well-written, sad, moving and, at times, gripping story worth your time and money but not a spectacular piece of writing, despite it having sold millions of copies worldwide.

I really liked this novel. I actually found it a very good and stark portrayal of loss, and maturing to adulthood with all the dreams and possibilities ahead but still the lingering blackness in the back of the mind. I read it when I was an undergraduate, though, so the things it was talking about I was actually living myself. I have a personal connection with it, so I cannot be objective, but it is a book I love much more than I admire.

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Originally Posted by Marbles

Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
First published in Japanese 1987
First publish in this translation 2000

He makes tons of references to Western classical music and American pop. The books which feature in the story, too, are mostly Western. Shouldn’t a novel about Japanese people set in Japan and written in Japanese should be more grounded in the Japanese culture, music and literature? One character who is a good maverick musician only plays Mozart and Bach and Beatles. The name of the novel itself is derived from Beatles’ song. The mentally ill girl liked the song and that is the only justification for naming the book so.

Sex is a recurrent theme. It is too much in fact. At times it feels the author is taking great pains, figuratively speaking, in describing the repetitive sexual encounters of his characters. In this novel everyone is trying to do it with everyone else.

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I thought that. It did seem very western, particularly as it was set around 1967. I thought there was a lot of sex in it too. I cannot remember the names of the character, but the narrator was obviously a handsome devil. It was achingly sad. I really felt the narrator's grief (but maybe not as bad as he did). He had a terrible dilemma too, although there was only one sensible option for the him to take.

I liked the title. Obviously I recognised it as a Beatles song. It was an incongruous title for a book set in Japan, but there was a reason for it.

I did have a couple of reservations. One was that the narrator was supposedly a great raconteur, but he did not seem that way. His conversation actually seemed a bit dull, so I wondered whether something got lost in translation. The other thing I slightly disapproved of was all the suicide. I counted three.

Did you know that the Beatles song in Japanese use the word 'wood' as in forest, instead of the material of the song? Has an effect on understanding the book I think.

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Originally Posted by kev67

I thought that. It did seem very western, particularly as it was set around 1967. I thought there was a lot of sex in it too. I cannot remember the names of the character, but the narrator was obviously a handsome devil. It was achingly sad. I really felt the narrator's grief (but maybe not as bad as he did). He had a terrible dilemma too, although there was only one sensible option for the him to take.

I liked the title. Obviously I recognised it as a Beatles song. It was an incongruous title for a book set in Japan, but there was a reason for it.

I did have a couple of reservations. One was that the narrator was supposedly a great raconteur, but he did not seem that way. His conversation actually seemed a bit dull, so I wondered whether something got lost in translation. The other thing I slightly disapproved of was all the suicide. I counted three.

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I counted four. The main female character (Naoko) herself, her sister and her boyfriend, and the girlfriend of one debonair, ambitious character who is a dormitory-mate of the protagonist. But the last one is a minor entry used as a plot embellishment or as a filler.

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Originally Posted by Poetaster

Did you know that the Beatles song in Japanese use the word 'wood' as in forest, instead of the material of the song? Has an effect on understanding the book I think.

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I did not know that. 'Wood' as 'forest' might have some bearing on the two main characters' rendezvous in the quiet and leafy sanatorium outside Kyoto, whose descriptions are well done. Other than that though, I can't think of the title being any more relevant to the story.

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Originally Posted by Marbles

I counted four. The main female character (Naoko) herself, her sister and her boyfriend, and the girlfriend of one debonair, ambitious character who is a dormitory-mate of the protagonist. But the last one is a minor entry used as a plot embellishment or as a filler.

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I forgot about her.

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Originally Posted by Marbles

I did not know that. 'Wood' as 'forest' might have some bearing on the two main characters' rendezvous in the quiet and leafy sanatorium outside Kyoto, whose descriptions are well done. Other than that though, I can't think of the title being any more relevant to the story.

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Norwegian Wood was Naoko's favourite song. It is what causes the narrator to break down when he hears it being played over an airport speaker system, many years later.

Concerning "all the suicide," it is a novel that explores the problem of suicide. As it happens, Japan has a very high suicide rate. I believe it's the seventh highest in the world.