Name: Matthew Jackson's review of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Item: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Rating: 3
Author: Matthew Jackson

Haruki Murakami

Jay Rubin

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan's forgotten campaign in Manchuria.

Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Vintage Classics Japanese Series

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

 wen

People were no more than dolls set on tablet springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. 

In this whole long time since you left, I’ve lived with a feeling of having been thrown into absolute darkness. Slowly but surely, though, I am getting closer to the core, to that place where the core of things is located. I wanted to let you know that. I’m getting closer to where you are, and I intended to get closer still.

No matter what you tell me, no matter how legitimate your reasons, I can never just forget about you, I can never push the years we spent together out of my mind. I can’t do it because they really happened, they are part of my life, and there is no way they I can just erase them. That would be the same as erasing my own self. I have to know what legitimate reason there could be for doing such a thing. 

The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment - perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been 

Srijita Sarkar 

When I think about it like this, I can’t help asking myself, “Where is there any logical consistency in the world?”

Why was I born into this world as the child of such absolute dummies? And why didn’t I turn into the same kind of stupid tree frog daughter even though I was raised by those people? I’ve been wondering and wondering about that ever since I can remember...Or maybe the psychological shock of it started me covering up all kinds of memories, the way a squirrel hides a nut and forgets where he’s buried it

I sometimes feel that it’s too vivid, if you know what I mean. And when I start having thoughts like this, the more I think about it, the less I can tell how much of the vividness is real and how much of it my imagination has invented. I feel as if I’ve wandered into a labyrinth.

Gradually, I began to sense a quiet anger growing inside my body, an anger directed toward that something that remained invisible to me. I stretched my back, drew in a deep breath, and calmed the pounding of my heart. Even so, the anger, like water, seeped soundlessly into every corner of my body. It was an anger steeped in sorrow

the cigarette smoke floating in the beams of light (looking, on windless days, like souls wandering in search of someone to take them in)—all these would begin to show up with tremendous clarity.

What I suffered with most down there in the well was the torture of being unable to attain a clear view of that something in the light: the hunger of being unable to see what I needed to see, the thirst of being unable to know what I needed to know.

By comparison, it is the subsequent events of my life that seem like delusions on the borderline of dream and reality.

To most people, these stories of mine would sound like the most incredible fabrications. The majority of people dismiss those things that lie beyond the bounds of their own understanding as absurd and not worth thinking about. I myself can only wish that my stories were, indeed, nothing but incredible fabrications. I have stayed alive all these years clinging to the frail hope that these memories of mine were nothing but a dream or a delusion

“Forget everything. You’re asleep. You’re dreaming. You’re lying in nice, warm mud. We all come out of the warm mud, and we all go back to it.”

The woman said nothing more. Instead, she began to move her hips in an even more erotically stimulating way.

But now I could not even die. In my numbness, I lacked the strength to kill myself. I felt nothing: no pain, no joy. All feeling was gone. And I was not even me.

I had no more plans for the afternoon than a migrating bird has collateral assets.

In a place like this, in the middle of the day like this, there existed a darkness as deep as this.

What was the point of my life at all if I was spending it in bed with an unknown companion?

I saw it as a big, dark room. I was standing there holding a cigarette lighter, its tiny flame showing me only the smallest part of the room.

Would I ever see the rest? Or would I grow old and die without ever really knowing her?

taylor miles hopkins

 Maybe when people people ake their eyes off them, inanimate objects become even more inanimate.

But this was the home I had chosen. I had had a home, of course, when I was a child. But it was not one I had chosen for myself. I had been born into it, presented with it as an established fact. Now, however, I lived in a world that I had chosen through an act of will. It was my home. It might not be perfect, but the fundamental stance I adopted with regard to my home was to accept it, problems and all, because it was something I myself had chosen.

I think we all have thought about this idea more than one time, no one needs us or we can die alone and no one will notice that. I can't precisely put that into words but is so sad and now i can't stop thinking about it. And i hope we all are surrounded by the people who love and need us all the time.

Miyamoto Musashi

No doubt about it: a whole day had gone by. But my one-day absence was probably not having an effect on anybody. Not one human being had noticed that I was gone, likely. I could disappear from the face of the earth, and the world would go on moving without the slightest twinge. Things were tremendously complicated, to be sure, but one thing was clear: no one needed me.

Matthew Jackson

Superimposes the collapse of a marriage over the investigation into recovered war memories and a man's search for his own identity

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

Sarah Sammis

Took me five fucking years to finish this book.

D D D 

If this was the first murakami book I read the rating would be higher, but it’s the 5th so I felt used to it

“People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up bird’s cry were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table.”
---------------------------------

I have been an avid Murakami reader for quite a long while now, so it is safe to say that I have become accustomed to flow with the strange tides that rule his unique stories. His beautiful and simple writing style with a strange ethereal quality intertwines the real with the surreal in such a flawless way that the reader is often disoriented, unable to tell when the reality flips upside down and the strange becomes the new normal.

And although this book is very much true to his signature style, I unfortunately did not become entranced by it as I have with his other books. It is a very well written piece of magical realism, for sure, but a few points really held me back from truly enjoying it. (Mostly, the oversexualisation of all the female characters was particularly annoying to me as in most cases it did not benefit the plot, characterisation, or the concept either.)

Overall, a good read but not my favorite from Murakami.

----------------------------------
3.5/5

Farah Aisha Shabrina

Typical Murakami’s book: sooooo many plot twists, well who are we to complain but to keep turning the pages and still be captivated by it?

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force—and one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels. In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat—and then for his wife as well—in a netherworld beneath the city’s placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

A Novel

Jun Angelo Cabuguas

i’m gonna be thinking about this one for awhile, such an easy book to get engrossed in the writing of. (please don’t write women like this)

sarah

i feel like i would need a wall covered in pins and yarn to even begin to piece together how the different parts of this story connect. but sometimes you don’t need to totally understand things to enjoy them anyway. maybe i’ll decide i hated it the more i think about it, but for now i’ll do just that: think.

Brandy

“That’s all I think about these days. Must be because I have so much time to kill every day. When you don’t have anything to do, your thoughts get really, really far out — so far out you can’t follow them all the way to the end.”

My favorite quote from this book

Haritlak Thawikasikam

My most favorite Murakami's book. The best part is the Mongolian story. How impressive

Laura Mauler

I put the book down and had no idea what had happened during the last 600+ pages. This is not to say that I didn't enjoy it a lot - I enjoyed it quite a bit - just don't ask me to describe or explain anything because it will sound exactly like when someone describes a dream (in other words, disjointed nonsense). Having said all that, I couldn't NOT finish the book. It was like the book was a force compelling me to keep reading it. And I'm glad I did keep reading because even though I don't understand what it was all about, it kept me entertained.

Aamna

This was a like a long extended dream. The kind you have at 4am. The kind that wake you up and wonder - how could it be so vivid and SO absurd? You remember parts of it like it really happened and other parts you just cannot recollect no matter how hard you try.

Yep, this was just a dream. And I'm sure it'll be different when I read it again. And that I will.

M. Marques

Eitan Hershkovitz

One of the most elaborate novels I have ever read. Fantastic.

Kylie Frazer

Murakami is the first Japanese magical realist I have come across. I suspect there are more, because Japan's brutal modern history, is less traumatically evoked in this format. A bit like using a pinhole camera to view an eclipse. 

Mr wind up bird is a wildly different protagonist to those of Garcia Marquez or Allende. He comes across with a lack of passion; Japanese water to the Latino fire. That calm precision clashes violently and beautifully with Murakami's magic. 

The wind up bird builds and builds. Somewhat heavy going at first, it greatly rewards the trusting reader.

altlovesbooks

Brief 2/26/23 update: I just finished re-reading this with a group of friends, and I think half my pleasure during this re-read was experiencing their reactions on reading this book. We're kind of a mix of people who have read Murakami and people who made this their first, and it was fun experiencing the same weird emotions I had the first time reading it through them.

My review below hasn't changed, this is still one of my favorite Murakami books so far, but I recognize this is a tough book for someone new to Murakami to get into. That said, there's a lot of great imagery and themes going on, and I loved re-reading this, knowing what I know now.

Original Review: 
"A well without water. A bird that can't fly. An alley with no exit."

There's a lot to unpack in this novel. At its core it seems (to me) about the main character's coping with a stagnant, meaningless life. His house is on an alley with no exits. Murakami takes great care in describing his perfectly mundane house and life, his aimless, jobless wandering, and his passionless, emotionless exchanges with his wife Kumiko. A phonecall intruded on all of that, starting Toru on his wild and unexpected journey, where the end result is time begins moving for him again. 

There's a *lot* more to it than that, and the pleasure in reading Murakami is in those details. Sure, if this is your first Murakami book, things seem haphazard, random, and meaningless when thought of individually, but this is one of those books where you put the book down and suddenly find it makes a strange bit of sense. Even as I'm writing this, things that initially didn't seem to fit together at first suddenly make more sense when considered all together. 

I guess the tl;dr of this review is, what a weird, wild trip that I'm glad I went on. Murakami is an author that either you click with, or you don't. And if he clicks for you, it really, really clicks.

listen. my relationship with murakami’s work has always been like that of two people who sit on opposite ends of the same friend group: he’s someone i passively dislike and avoid the vast majority of the time, except there was this one time that we were both abandoned at the rest stop by the bus carrying all of our friends ahead to montreal and the process of finding another way to our destination kind of bonded us for a few hours without really bringing us together. 

i’ve given him a chance time and time again, and i do

see him as representative of a literary mood that marks him as an outlier even next to his contemporaries in japan. for better and often for worse, i’m aware that there is no way to experience what murakami writes without reading murakami. people have recommended alternatives if all you want is an introduction to the millieu he writes about, and plenty of better japanese authors have been rightfully championed as substitutes to his brand of worldbuilding, but that’s the thing: no one does murakami’s voice like murakami himself, and it will be a disservice to other authors to consider them only through the basis of comparison as well as a disservice to the fact that as sour an aftertaste as some of murakami’s novels bring, there is something unique to his writing style and approach to narrative elements that comprises a kind of irreplicable atmosphere no one but him can spin into being. 

across more than ten (!) attempted books, the only novel of his i’d connected with was 

short, sweet, the pov unique enough as to be removed from the mind-numbing mess of novels like

so when i had this intense gut feeling that now was the right time to read 

, it was mostly surprise i nursed throughout the entire first section after finding that i was having a great time despite it being 

 polar opposite: a first person novel that’s anything but sweet, even less short. what i loved 

 dark for—its gauziness, its foggy atmosphere, how it felt exactly like the insomnia that plagued me at its worst around the same time i read it—couldn’t come to 

 rescue bc this was so unlike murakami as i’ve known him to be. toru was inscrutably more likeable and far less detached from the very first page than all of his fellow jazz-loving, women-objectifying, staccato-narrating protagonists; murakami’s brand of magical realism has never felt as seamless and encompassing-bc-it-is-so-embedded-into-the-story-that-it’s-ordinary as it did in this; and all the side characters were bizarrely memorable, from may kasahara to both noboru watayas to even that russian soldier politely prefacing someone about to be skinned alive. this novel had no shortage of horrors, but the blasé disregard i tend to dislike about the trauma murakami loves to indulge in is here given context and significant shape wherever possible in a way that i admit is easy to write off as a fluke. it seems mostly that there was compatibility between all its elements that i’ve never found in any other murakami novel, such that even the most questionable pieces had synergy with the mundane parts, while the nonchalance became a helping layer to the casual deployment of technically horrific elements. toru was enough of a middle ground between non-passive and so aimless he’s unflappable that even the most surreal choices he made didn’t feel disjointed to me; he pushes back against noboru wataya out of spite, listens to long personal anecdotes out of curiosity? passivity? neutrality? without questioning them too much, yet even his idleness had a sincere component of hollow ennui that you can’t help but acknowledge. 

there’s enough here thematically to bite and chew on without overexerting your jaw; nowhere is the question of dichotomies (fate vs. choice, action vs. inaction, acceptance vs. resistance) more natural, after all, than in a story about liminalities within an equally liminal world full of just-slightly-wrong questions that can only have just-slightly-wrong answers. the world of 

never felt intangible, nor did the language ever feel like it’s being evasive just to drain me and keep me chasing for the fun of it bc not even murakami knows what he’s writing about. i was locked in for most of this read, and even as i wrinkled my nose at the last few resolutions in the plot, a part of me did genuinely lament how soon it would be over by then. it’s a kind of paradox on brand for the story, at least.

i do also genuinely believe the quality of this particular translation is the game changer. i checked my copy of 

and found that it was translated by jay rubin like 

was, so now there’s a crisis waiting there about whether what i found unreadable about murakami’s prose in some novels might in fact just be a matter of some translators being made greater than others :/

listen. my relationship with murakami’s work has always been like that of two people who sit on opposite ends of the same friend group: he’s someone i passively dislike and avoid the vast majority of the time, except there was this one time that we were both abandoned at the rest stop by the bus carrying all of our friends ahead to montreal and the process of finding another way to our destination kind of bonded us for a few hours without really bringing us together. 

i’ve given him a chance time and time again, and i do see him as representative of a literary mood that marks him as an outlier even next to his contemporaries in japan. for better and often for worse, i’m aware that there is no way to experience what murakami writes without reading murakami. people have recommended alternatives if all you want is an introduction to the millieu he writes about, and plenty of better japanese authors have been rightfully championed as substitutes to his brand of worldbuilding, but that’s the thing: no one does murakami’s voice like murakami himself, and it will be a disservice to other authors to consider them only through the basis of comparison as well as a disservice to the fact that as sour an aftertaste as some of murakami’s novels bring, there is something unique to his writing style and approach to narrative elements that comprises a kind of irreplicable atmosphere no one but him can spin into being. 

across more than ten (!) attempted books, the only novel of his i’d connected with was after dark. short, sweet, the pov unique enough as to be removed from the mind-numbing mess of novels like sputnik sweetheart and the third book of 1Q84. so when i had this intense gut feeling that now was the right time to read wind up bird chronicle, it was mostly surprise i nursed throughout the entire first section after finding that i was having a great time despite it being after dark’s polar opposite: a first person novel that’s anything but sweet, even less short. what i loved after dark for—its gauziness, its foggy atmosphere, how it felt exactly like the insomnia that plagued me at its worst around the same time i read it—couldn’t come to wind up’s rescue bc this was so unlike murakami as i’ve known him to be. toru was inscrutably more likeable and far less detached from the very first page than all of his fellow jazz-loving, women-objectifying, staccato-narrating protagonists; murakami’s brand of magical realism has never felt as seamless and encompassing-bc-it-is-so-embedded-into-the-story-that-it’s-ordinary as it did in this; and all the side characters were bizarrely memorable, from may kasahara to both noboru watayas to even that russian soldier politely prefacing someone about to be skinned alive. this novel had no shortage of horrors, but the blasé disregard i tend to dislike about the trauma murakami loves to indulge in is here given context and significant shape wherever possible in a way that i admit is easy to write off as a fluke. it seems mostly that there was compatibility between all its elements that i’ve never found in any other murakami novel, such that even the most questionable pieces had synergy with the mundane parts, while the nonchalance became a helping layer to the casual deployment of technically horrific elements. toru was enough of a middle ground between non-passive and so aimless he’s unflappable that even the most surreal choices he made didn’t feel disjointed to me; he pushes back against noboru wataya out of spite, listens to long personal anecdotes out of curiosity? passivity? neutrality? without questioning them too much, yet even his idleness had a sincere component of hollow ennui that you can’t help but acknowledge. 

there’s enough here thematically to bite and chew on without overexerting your jaw; nowhere is the question of dichotomies (fate vs. choice, action vs. inaction, acceptance vs. resistance) more natural, after all, than in a story about liminalities within an equally liminal world full of just-slightly-wrong questions that can only have just-slightly-wrong answers. the world of wind up bird never felt intangible, nor did the language ever feel like it’s being evasive just to drain me and keep me chasing for the fun of it bc not even murakami knows what he’s writing about. i was locked in for most of this read, and even as i wrinkled my nose at the last few resolutions in the plot, a part of me did genuinely lament how soon it would be over by then. it’s a kind of paradox on brand for the story, at least.

i do also genuinely believe the quality of this particular translation is the game changer. i checked my copy of after dark and found that it was translated by jay rubin like wind-up was, so now there’s a crisis waiting there about whether what i found unreadable about murakami’s prose in some novels might in fact just be a matter of some translators being made greater than others :/

Prashanth Srivatsa

Set in Japan, the Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a story of bizarre incidents, characters and their motives, interwoven with menacing flair and humour that is unique to Murakami. A lost cat, a baseball bat, a despotic Russian General and a series of prophecies that seem to unfurl when you least expect them to, it's a magical ride.

Murakami once again arouses a deep sinking dread inside my bones, crescendoing with each page and then leaving me completely hollow by the very end. At times I'll pause in this book every now and then and think to myself, am I actually enjoying myself or am I just forcing myself to trudge through waffle? But I think all the frustrations and confusion and disturbances add up to this incredibly specific experience of existentialist/nihilist terror and hope only elicited by murakami. So yes I eat it up every time

anarh

Frederik De Bosschere

This book has everything you come to expect, and want, from a Murakami novel. There’s ample descriptions of drinking whiskey or beers by the unit, of the ingredients that go into every meal, of very specific records playing, of the shapes and aesthetics of petite women and small neighbourhoods. And of course, a narrative featuring a cat that is missing, characters that feel like ghosts, a world that has a hard time sticking to the singular, and the moon in different (yet always significant) phases. It’s by no means a unique tale within his oeuvre, but it’s the master doing exactly what makes him so uniquely skilled at his craft.

Taylor

When this book is re-translated, I fully intend on re-reading. Something about the prose is just off, not at all representative of what Murakami can be in English. Maybe the second time around I'll understand it better, too.

Anna Brunner

I just. I have to have at least a week to process this. I have no idea what just happened all i understand is that murakami is a genius & wind up bird chronicles is a modern classic

“the book which is associated with it”

Sanat Gersappa

609 pages of pure goodness. A masterpiece and the best book I've read this year.

Cams Campbell

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It follows the story of Mr Okada, a seemingly ordinary fellow at the outset but his life becomes weirder and weirder as the story progresses. My favourite chunks were the stories of Lt Mamiya. It's kind of built up of different people's stories, all of which affect the protagonist and leads to his becoming much more self aware.

It's a somewhat quirky tale that is quite unlike anything I've ever read before. It grabbed a hold of my attention like a thief in the park and kept a hold of it until the end of the story. I normally read fantasy or sci-fi so this is a bit of a step outside the box for me and one that I'm very glad I took. I'm recommending this to pretty much everyone I know and for good reason.

Thanks to Steve Betz for the recommendation!

Emily Morgan

Reading this book was an exercise in discomfort. I was not in a good place at the time, and Murakami's nightmarish dreamscapes seemed only to amplify this pervasive unease. And despite it all, I could not put this book down. It seems ordinary at first, if not a bit mundane, until all of a sudden it's not. Things get very weird very quickly, and you find yourself, along with the main character, spiralling into an incredibly complex maze of missing cats, ominous prophecies and magic wells. The only thing you can do is surrender to the chaos;  “The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down."  

Every chapter seems to introduce a character more eccentric than the last, blending their different narratives into a patchwork tale of a fragmented and ultimately unknowable world. My friend told me not to expect any closure from this book, and she was right. In many ways it leaves you feeling more confused and uncentered than before. Overall, I think my favourite works of fiction this year have been the ones that challenged my entire conception of what a piece of fiction should do. And that's why this book makes the list. 

 “Here's what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird," said May Kasahara. "Everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can't seem to do it. They just don't get it.”

Matthew Jackson &
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

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Matthew Jackson &The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

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Matthew Jackson &
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami