Content Warning: Mentions suicide

Most people have heard of The Beatles, but how many have heard of their song, ‘Norwegian Wood’? Perhaps not many, but Haruki Murakami’s protagonist Toru Watanabe has, and when he hears it once again at the age of 37, he is transported back to his university years in Tokyo in Murakami’s appropriately named book, Norwegian Wood. 

The story follows the college life of Toru, and how he navigates his most formidable years in the face of studying, grief, and love. Murakami introduces Toru and immediately sets the tone of the text by discussing the suicide of his best friend, Kizuki, a moment in Toru’s life that shapes the rest of the book. It is from this event that the rest of the text transpires as Toru learns how to grow from this grief and conduct himself around others who are grieving too, namely, Naoko, Kizuki’s girlfriend of the time and Toru’s love interest. In this nostalgic, coming-of-age book, Murakami does not hesitate in dealing with the complexities of teenage love and how relationships form and change during a time of mourning.

In typical Murakami fashion, he creates a string of characters all with very different complexes and emotions in a culturally charged world. In the case of Norwegian Wood, that world is 1960s Tokyo, a period in which many students were protesting established orders. This backdrop makes the novel feel satirical; Murakami places his characters amid student uproar, yet none of these characters engage with the uproar and instead work their lives around it.

Amongst the web of characters is Midori, Toru’s second love interest. Murakami uses Midori as an opposite to the beautiful but damaged Naoko to perplex Toru and his responsibilities with relationships. Throughout the novel, Toru is torn between being with Naoko, who is in a mental health sanatorium after the loss of Kizuki, or being with Midori, a vibrant and witty girl who captures his eye during a class in college. I often found instances in the novel where Murakami pits Midori and Naoko up against each other for Toru’s affection and noticed that his commentary on women in ‘Norwegian Wood’ is often quite misogynistic.

Murakami runs with the trope of women being beautiful but damaged in this text — Naoko is passionately beautiful but mentally ill. Midori is fun and quirky yet cares for her terminally ill father. Reiko, Naoko’s flatmate in the sanatorium, is mature and wise but suffers too from mental disorders. It is a recurring theme in Norwegian Wood and many of Murakami’s works and makes the book quite a problematic read.

One thing that this Japanese coming-of-age novel does do well is destigmatise university and youth culture. It is easy to assume that university students, like ourselves, are always out and having fun with little care in the world (apart from the mounting student debt, of course), but Murakami is not afraid to give his characters moving backgrounds. For instance, take Midori: she encourages Toru to go out for drinks, food, and shopping when he clearly would rather be at home writing to Naoko. On top of that, she attends the same history classes as him. Yet she is also the primary caregiver of her father, who is in hospital with a terminal brain tumour. Not only that, but her mother died of the same disease a few years prior to the setting of the book. Whilst these stories are moving and sometimes hard to read, they remind us that we never know what is going on behind closed doors, and sometimes university students really do have a lot on their plate. 

I would recommend Norwegian Wood to anyone who loves a coming-of-age story, or anyone looking to explore Japanese literature. It is a book that you will feel running through your veins when you finish it, and one that will probably take you to The Beatles’ Spotify page too.

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