Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Bad things come in threes for Toru Okada. He loses his job, his cat disappears, and then his wife fails to return from work. His search for his wife (and his cat) introduces him to a bizarre collection of characters, including two psychic sisters, a possibly unbalanced teenager, an old soldier who witnessed the massacres on the Chinese mainland at the beginning of the Second World War, and a very shady politician. Haruki Murakami is a master of subtly disturbing prose. Mundane events throb with menace, while the bizarre is accepted without comment. Meaning always seems to be just out of reach, for the reader as well as for the characters, yet one is drawn inexorably into a mystery that may have no solution. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is an extended meditation on themes that appear throughout Murakami's earlier work. The tropes of popular culture, movies, music, detective stories, combine to create a work that explores both the surface and the hidden depths of Japanese society at the end of the 20th century. If it were possible to isolate one theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, that theme would be responsibility. The atrocities committed by the Japanese army in China keep rising to the surface like a repressed memory, and Toru Okada himself is compelled by events to take responsibility for his actions and struggle with his essentially passive nature. If Toru is supposed to be a Japanese Everyman, steeped as he is in Western popular culture and ignorant of the secret history of his own nation, this novel paints a bleak picture. Like the winding up of the titular bird, Murakami slowly twists the gossamer threads of his story into something of considerable weight. --Simon Leake
Product Description
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.
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Customer Reviews Read 284 more reviews...
Japan's most overrated author December 26, 2008
Wilbur Hoflich (Singapore)
I'd been wanting to read this book for a while, having already sampled most of Murakami Haruki's work, and since I'd heard that this was his best work I was naturally compelled. Yet the reports were mixed - some non-Japanese had devoured it, while some Japanese had found it dull as hell. Certainly, it presents a very complete world, which not ever book can accomplish.
The book is very Murakami in the way that it shows a man - very dull, quite ordinary, yet somehow unconventional in his thinking and motivations - thrust into an odd situation where he must solve riddles, learn about other-worldly things that connect him with a fantastic history, while he makes sense of trauma in his own life. And what is that trauma? Like so many other Murakami characters, his relationship with his wife has deteriorated, and then one fine day she just disappears (can Murakami not find something else to write about?). Along the the journey he half-heartedly undertakes to find his wife, he meets many strange women. Okay. And why do we care?
The more interesting part of the book deals with a Japanese soldier who is stationed in Manchuria during World War II and the hell that he endured there. That might have made an interesting book standing on its own.
The book was published in three parts in Japan. I find the first two parts more interesting. In the third part, he abandons some of the characters, and moves on with others. I don't find this improves the book, and by the conclusion I am only partially fulfilled. Still, he does a good job of NOT tying the strings together, and building a metaphor/allegory of post-war Japan.
Patience and Growth Yields Great Reward November 15, 2008
Bob Klein
This book was truly gave me the bang for my buck!
I purchased this item around the early winter (December-January) of 2007, and finished it November 15 of 2008. (Yes I know I'm a very slow reader). However part of this had to do with the fact that I had almost given up on the book, I'd say around the half way mark.
So why did I give this book a five star? Should the fact that I almost gave up on the book send a message saying that: "if it doesn't hold your interest than the purpose of the book has failed you?"
I say absolutely not. I just gave the book time. After picking it up from where I left off, it slowly trudged it's way back into a great book. Sure there were what appeared to be "slow parts" or "irrelevant chapters", but everything by the end of the book grew on me.
I was surprised myself reading whole paragraphs or even pages, just describing certain things whether it be expressions people had on their faces, tones of voice, or descriptions of clothing. All of this made the characters and environments seem all the more real.
However not so much problems I had with the book, but questions. (SPOILER ALERT BELOW!!!!!)
1. Who was the boy looking at the men with shovels?
2. Why did Malta Kano test Toru's drinking water?
3. When did Toru get cut with a knife near the end of the book?
These questions however don't take away from the experience of the book. If anything the many different stories (such as the one in the first question), only enhance it.
If anyone if considering giving up on the book because it's getting slow, DON'T. This book will not fail you. You'll take away so much from this book, the characters, events, and emotions in this book will be with you for the rest of your life!
A certain "something" that is bizarre and intriguing November 3, 2008
Book Girl (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Haruki Murakami has always been a favorite author of mine, and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle is a perfect culmination of every element of his work. He includes mystery, love, sex, politics, history, intrigue, philosophy, and more in this novel to make it a book that is nearly impossible to describe.
As Toru Okada finds himself searching for his missing cat, and soon, his missing wife, Kumiko, the reader is taken on Toru's personal journey by meeting several characters during the search. The lustful and intriguing Kano sisters, the subconsciously insightful Nutmeg and Cinnamon Akasaka, and the evil Noboru Wataya all shift the direction of Toru Okada's life in such a way that the reader finds her/himself also on this journey determined by outside forces. Through all of this though, Toru maintains his goal of finding his wife, and the delightful conclusions to this tale leave the reader questioning every aspect of her or his own life.
Just as Murakami's characters each experience the influence of a certain "something" in this novel, the reader is able to relate to a certain "something" in each of the characters. For some reason, Murakami is able to draw in his reader by using, quite possibly, the most obscure noun possible: something. It's not a frustrating ambiguity, but a helpful one. I loved it.
The common theme of defiling also forces the reader to question external forces that are unwelcome in our lives. This book manages to be philosophical without being obnoxious or trying too hard.
Also, May Kasahara. In my eyes, a perfect character, perfectly written with every flaw out in the open. I looked forward to the sections involving her.
I have a difficult time describing this book and every aspect of it, so all I can say is read it and judge for yourself. You'll be missing out on an amazing piece of work if you decide otherwise.
Excellent read October 16, 2008
Aaron D. Mestemaker
Excellent book. Very surreal writing. Murakami is probably my favorite author and this may be his best work.
Think for yourself October 14, 2008
Vincent Messina (brooklyn,NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is Murakami's masterpiece, it's everything they say, hypnotic, surreal, thought-provoking, mysterious and highly entertaining. I have a theory that the folks that realize Murakami's talent but still didn't give a good review are the type who want everything explained and resolved in easily understood and satisfying ways. I think that some people feel unsatisfied if an author doesn't come up with pat explanations for everything. I think that takes away from the fun of thinking and contemplating the mysteries presented for yourself, and is less realistic. As Alan Moore writes through the character of Hollis Mason in his great graphic novel, "Watchmen" "Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really get's resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that." I think people can enjoy great modern authors like Murakami if they don't think it's his job or purpose as a writer to explain everything to them. Rather if he gets you to think and wonder about the nature of life and reality while entertaining you at the same time, he should be thanked for doing a great job.
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