The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Nutmeg visits Toru in the Residence. She tells him about the second article in the “Mystery of the Hanging House” series. She is worried that someone will discover what they are doing in the Residence. Nutmeg asks Toru about Noboru, and he confirms that the famous up-and-coming politician is indeed his estranged brother-in-law. Nutmeg points out that his prying into the Residence may violate the privacy of their clients. She tells Toru that she’s been wondering about the long arm that reaches out, her metaphor for her predestined future. Her husband’s murder, her sudden loss of passion for fashion design, her newfound power, and meeting Toru all feel controlled and preordained. Cinnamon has canceled all appointments for the near future, fearing a security breach.

Toru falls asleep in the Residence and wakes up in the middle of the night to the sound of sleigh bells. He follows the bells to Cinnamon’s office. Toru opens the door and sees that the computer is on, beckoning him to enter. The screen states that access has been granted to a program called “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” documents 1-16. Toru selects number 8, and a document opens.

The document tells the story of the veterinarian from the zoo massacre. He wakes up early the day after the massacre and tries to deal with his new reality. The vet tries to appreciate his time and the animals that have survived the massacre. He thinks about the issue of free will; he has always felt under the control of an outside force. The vet has a mark on his face that he used to be ashamed of but that he has now accepted as one part of his fate. He thinks longingly of his wife and especially of his daughter, but he also sees them as separate beings with their own fates irrespective of his love. The vet goes to the zoo and feeds the remaining animals with the help of two Chinese boys.

The young lieutenant in charge of the massacre comes back to the zoo with his troops. The officer takes the zoo’s cart and mule, even though the vet needs them to feed the animals. The lieutenant returns with four young, severely beaten Chinese men in baseball uniforms at gunpoint. The vet follows the men out to a clearing, where the lieutenant instructs the Chinese men to dig holes. The lieutenant asks the veterinarian where he’s from. The vet is from Kanagawa, and the lieutenant remarks that Japan is far away, that they’ll all probably die before they can return. The Chinese men dig four holes, and the lieutenant uncovers the cart to reveal four dead bodies, also Chinese men and also in baseball uniforms. The surviving Chinese men take the bodies out of the cart and throw them into the holes. The lieutenant orders the execution of three of the living Chinese men. The Japanese soldiers kill the three men with their bayonets. Their deaths are slow and painful.

The lieutenant explains to the veterinarian that the executed men had been Chinese recruits in military training. They killed two Japanese instructors and wore baseball uniforms to desert. He orders one of his soldiers to kill the leader of the group, the remaining Chinese man, with the same baseball bat the man used to kill the Japanese officers. The soldier hits the Chinese man in the skull, and the lieutenant asks the veterinarian to confirm the death. While the veterinarian is inspecting the body, the Chinese man suddenly grips the vet’s wrist and drags him into the Chinese grave. The lieutenant shoots the Chinese man in the head and helps pry the corpse’s fingers off the veterinarian.

The soldier who killed the Chinese man with the baseball bat is transfixed. He hears the wind-up bird and has fragmentary visions. He sees his lieutenant hanged by the Chinese after the Soviet disarmament, as punishment for the execution of the Chinese recruits. The veterinarian would die a year later in an accident. Suddenly, the young soldier misses the ocean. 

Toru tries to open more documents from “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” but access is denied.

Toru figures that “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” is a set of stories written by Cinnamon. The stories must be somewhat fictional, since Nutmeg couldn’t have known all that had happened to her father, the veterinarian from story number eight. Toru wonders why Cinnamon wrote the stories, and why he named the stories the “chronicle.” Toru realizes that Cinnamon doesn’t know that Toru’s nickname is Mr. Wind-Up Bird, thus connecting Toru to the chronicle. He reasons that Cinnamon knows about his computer chat with Kumiko. He further figures that Cinnamon must have programmed the computer to reveal the chronicle to Toru. Toru is struck by the similarities he shares with Cinnamon’s grandfather in chronicle number eight. They both have a mark on their face, have used or witnessed a baseball bat swung in violence, and have heard the cry of the wind-up bird. Furthermore, the lieutenant in the story reminds Toru of Lieutenant Mamiya, who had also been assigned to Kwantung Army Headquarters in Hsin-ching during 1945. Toru wonders if these details are real connections, or if Cinnamon projected details from his real life into these historical stories. 

May writes Toru a fifth letter. She’s been thinking about the Miyawaki family. She remembers as a child when the Miyawakis seemed to have picture-perfect life in that house, even though the rest of the neighborhood thought it creepy that the family lived there. She remembers the house turning to decay. May wishes that the Miyawakis had taken better care of the house’s feelings because a house is part of a symbiotic relationship with the people who live within its walls. May sometimes feels like she is Kumiko, run away from Toru and hiding in the mountains. She tells Toru that this fantasy feels like an obsessive delusion. 

One morning, Cinnamon doesn’t show up. Toru calls the Akasaka office, but no one answers. Then he calls Ushikawa, but the line is disconnected. Toru no longer feels motivated to go into the well. Without clients, he would not be able to pay for the Residence. He tries to catch Nutmeg in her office but is unable to enter. He worries with a deep sadness why Cinnamon and Nutmeg have suddenly cut ties with him. 

Toru dreams that he is drinking tea with Malta Kano in a room decorated with human scalps. A dog with Ushikawa’s face taunts Toru, and Malta makes the dog bleed by throwing a hard lump of sugar at him. Malta apologizes to Toru for not being in touch; she explains that she was away in Malta. Toru tells her that the cat came back. Surprised, Malta asks if he is sure it’s the same cat. Toru is certain but admits that the cat’s tail seems more bent than he remembered. Malta tells Toru that she has the cat’s real tail, then takes off her trench coat to reveal her naked body. Attached to her body is Mackerel’s tail. Malta tells Toru that Creta Kano’s baby’s name is Corsica. Toru wakes up in a sweat.

Toru goes for a swim then returns home. A letter has arrived from Mamiya. He writes about his time in the Siberian prison camp, where his basic Russian saved him from manual labor and he worked as an interpreter. People died every day in Siberia, and along with POWs these camps held Russian prisoners and former convicts who stayed in Siberia to work. One day he is stopped by a man on duty who can’t read, so he calls over one of his prisoners to check Mamiya’s translator pass. The literate prisoner is none other than the Russian officer who ordered Yamamoto to be skinned alive. Mamiya supposed that the man had fallen out of favor in his ranks and ended up a prisoner. Mamiya passes through the checkpoint but is disturbed that the man now knows his name. If the man revealed the story of how he first met Mamiya, Mamiya could get in even more trouble for being a former spy.

Mamiya had one Russian friend in the prison camp, a fellow mapmaker enthusiast named Nikolai. He asks Nikolai about the Russian convicts and describes the former Russian officer. Nikolai warns him not to get involved with that prisoner, nicknamed Boris the Manskinner. Boris had been a star in the Russian security force, crushing counterrevolutionary groups through pragmatic torture, including skinning. Boris is now in the prison because he accused a high-ranking Russian of being a traitor. Boris was arrested and sent to the prison camp, but because of his connections and fame within the Party, he receives special treatment such as his own room, cigarettes, and alcohol.

One day, Mamiya walks by the station and is stopped by a sergeant who instructs him to go to the stationmaster’s office. Mamiya goes to the office and meets Boris, unshackled and alone. Boris proposes that Mamiya work with him to improve relations between the Russians and the Japanese in the prison camp. Mamiya works as intermediary between Boris and the unofficial leader of the Japanese prisoners. When the Russian in charge of the camp is replaced, some Japanese demands are met. However, three Japanese men are also lynched, their murders made to look like suicides. These three men were suspected of being informants to the Russians, betraying their Japanese comrades. The lynching solidifies Boris’s influence with the Japanese prisoners. 

Toru goes into the well on his own but is surprised to find that the baseball bat he keeps down there is missing. He falls asleep to the sound of a slight droning buzz noise. Toru is enveloped by a thick feeling and finds himself deeper into the hotel room than ever before. He recognizes the hotel room but feels that it is somehow different. This time, there is no woman in the bed, though the sheets are disheveled. The phone rings, but when Toru picks it up the line goes dead. Toru investigates the room and finds that, for the first time, the door is unlocked. He makes his way out of room 208 and tries to find the lobby. The silence of the hotel is almost deafening; Toru can’t hear his own voice when he speaks out. He finds himself in a maze of doors. Finally, he hears a waiter whistling. Toru follows the sound and finds the waiter, who glides by him with a tray of Cutty Sark. Toru follows the waiter back to room 208. The waiter knocks and the door opens from within.

Mamiya’s letter continues the story of Boris the Manskinner. Boris helps the Japanese prisoners of war form their own representative committee. The committee takes charge of monitoring behavior of the Japanese prisoners to avoid the punitive and pointless violence of the Russian officers. Boris trains some of the prisoners to become his own bodyguards. Boris’s favorite guard is a Mongolian nicknamed “the Tartar.” Boris stops wearing prisoner’s clothes. Nikolai confesses to Mamiya that Russian officers who complained about Boris’s power were disappeared. After six months of developing false hope among the Japanese prisoners that they had safety and autonomy, Boris begins to apply pressure onto the Japanese. He eliminates any Japanese prisoner who speaks up. Mamiya feels guilt for having built the bridge between Boris and the Japanese.

One day, Boris calls Mamiya in for a meeting. He offers Mamiya the job of his assistant, and Mamiya knows he cannot refuse. Mamiya begins to manage Boris’s black-market dealings. The other prisoners isolate Mamiya because of his relationship to Boris. Before long, the Siberian prison camp turns into Boris’s own little country. He tells Mamiya that his secret to success is to imagine nothing, and let others fantasize and imagine their way into trouble. But Mamiya imagines; he resolves to kill Boris. Mamiya has no fear of his own death and is willing to take the risk.

In 1948, Mamiya finds out that the Japanese are to be repatriated to their home country. Boris confirms this but offers Mamiya citizenship with the Soviets. Mamiya tells him he prefers to go back to Japan to check in with his family. One night, Boris and Mamiya are alone in the office. Mamiya steals Boris’s gun and points it at his head. Boris tells him that he has known for a long time that Mamiya has been imagining this assassination and that the gun is not loaded. Boris takes two bullets out of a drawer and tosses them to Mamiya. He tells Mamiya that he can attempt to kill him, but if Mamiya fails, he is not to tell anyone in the world about Boris’s secret dealings. Mamiya loads the gun and misses his first shot. The Tartar enters with his gun drawn. Mamiya takes the second shot but misses again. Boris tells him it is not possible for Mamiya to kill him. Boris curses Mamiya for life: Mamiya will never know happiness and is sent back to Japan. 

Toru remembers he has a pen in his pants pocket. He doesn’t follow the waiter into room 208. Instead, he waits for the waiter to deliver the Cutty Sark and leave. He follows the waiter away from room 208, using his pen to mark the walls so he can find his way out when the time is right. He follows the waiter all the way to the lobby. In the lobby, Toru watches the news, which reports that Noboru has been hit in the head with a baseball bat and is in critical condition. The assailant is described as a man with a mark on his face, around thirty years of age, with an outfit that matches Toru’s. Toru hurries away from the lobby but is followed by people who recognize his look from the news. Suddenly, the lights of the hotel turn off. Toru suspects that someone turned off the lights to help save him from the mob. A voice reaches out to him; Toru recognizes it as the man with no face. The man tells him that once the lights turn back on, he will be in grave danger and must leave. The man turns on a pen light and instructs Toru to follow him.

Toru asks him about the whistling waiter and the man tells Toru that there are no waiters; whoever he saw was disguised as a waiter. The man brings Toru to room 208 and hands him the pen light. The door is unlocked, and Toru enters. The room is the same as before. He hears a woman’s voice asking him not to shine the light on her. 

Toru promises not to shine the light on the woman. He sits by the woman and tells her that he has thought a lot about who she could be; he has decided that she is Kumiko. He suspects that she has been calling him because the real-world Kumiko couldn’t tell him everything, so alternate-world Kumiko called to give him secret codes. The woman reasons that if she is Kumiko, she should talk like Kumiko. She changes her voice, and suddenly it is truly Kumiko’s voice. Toru tells her that he’s come to bring her back. He asks for her help in solving some riddles.

The first issue he still doesn’t understand is why Kumiko had to leave in the first place. An affair is hardly a reason to disappear without a trace, and Toru is certain that the real reason for her disappearance has something to do with Noboru. He posits that even the affair itself is a metaphor for something else.

Kumiko switches her voice again. A new voice reminds Toru that people don’t necessarily send messages to tell the truth. Toru suggests that there is something in the Wataya family inheritance that Kumiko was afraid of passing on, which is why she feared her pregnancy. He also predicts that Kumiko’s sister didn’t die accidentally but killed herself because of violent acts inflicted on her by Noboru. He believes that Kumiko tried to escape Noboru’s thirst for violent power through her marriage to Toru, but over time life in a serene and normal world could not hide her family’s secret, which is why she sought out Malta Kano. He concludes that Kumiko’s pregnancy activated something in her that Noboru sensed and wanted, which is why he had her disappeared. The only sexual act he can commit to is, possibly, impregnating a woman.

The woman asks Toru what he thinks will happen if he rescues her and she is not Kumiko. He assures her that he will rescue her no matter what. The woman gives Toru a gift: his baseball bat, with the residue of hair and blood Toru knows is Noboru’s. The woman assures Toru that Noboru is unkillable, but he can still wander through the darkness. Someone knocks on the door, and the woman begs Toru to leave, telling him that if he leaves then and there, he can still make it through the wall. Toru stays.

Toru walks to the door and the knocking subsides. The door creaks open. A man enters quietly and shuts the door behind him. He stands breathing by the door, and Toru stands waiting. Toru remembers Mamiya’s letter and reminds himself not to imagine anything—not even to think. The man lights a dull flashlight and starts a fight with Toru in the dark. The man slashes Toru’s facial mark with a knife. Toru swings his bat and makes contact. He swings again and hears bone cracking. Toru takes his flashlight to check the body on the ground, but the woman begs him not to. Toru takes heed of her warning, then vomits. He tells the woman it’s time to go, but she disappears. Toru sits for a moment, reflecting on his failure. He has killed a man to bring Kumiko home, but now Kumiko is gone. He tried to follow the flow, but it didn’t work.

He awakens at the bottom of a well, but it’s not the well he recognizes as his own. The well is filling with water. The water rises slowly, but Toru is paralyzed. He hears an opening in the well through which the water is flowing. He remembers Mr. Honda’s warning to be careful of water. Toru decides to reactivate his imagination and fantasizes that May will open the cover to the well. Suddenly, he hears May call down to him. May asks him if he is afraid of dying. He says he is, and May apologizes that she can’t do anything for him. She closes the well and Toru yells out for her.

The water rises to Toru’s neck as he tries to accept his death. The water meets his mouth, then his nose. Toru begins to drown.

May writes a sixth letter to Toru. She tells him about the pond at her factory where ducks swim around. May calls the ducks “duck people.” The duck people stay even when it gets very cold. May likes to sit and observe the duck people. She finds them funny, endearing, and interesting. She tells Toru that she woke up from a strange dream about him. She heard his voice calling out to her, and he woke her up. For whatever reason, May decided to take off her clothes and bathe her naked body in the moonlight, inexplicably sobbing. She tells Toru to call out for her again if anything happens to him.

Toru wakes to the sound of Nutmeg’s voice. Cinnamon rescued Toru from the well and treated the knife wounds. Nutmeg tells Toru that they’ll have to get rid of the Residence; she will take over treatment for the women and Toru will move on with his life. She also tells Toru that Noboru collapsed in the street and is unconscious in the hospital, likely never to recover. The doctors suspect a stroke. Although Toru didn’t directly kill Noboru, whatever he did in that hotel room destroyed something inside Noboru Wataya. He wonders if Kumiko is finally free. Toru nods off and dreams of Creta and her baby, which is half-Toru’s and half-Mamiya’s. She never went to Crete and now lives in Hiroshima with Mamiya. When Toru asks her about Malta, Creta looks sad and disappears.

Nutmeg tells Toru she’ll likely sell the Residence within the next month, but Toru will walk away with some money for all his hard work. She tells him to start thinking again about things that don’t matter. Toru shaves his face, avoiding the stitches in his cheek. He is surprised to find that his facial mark is gone.

Later that week, Toru is awakened by the sound of sleigh bells. He goes to Cinnamon’s office and the computer is on again. The screen invites Toru to read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” documents 1-17. Toru opens document 17.

Document 17 is a letter from Kumiko. She writes that she must kill her brother. She will go to the hospital and pull his life support. She will ensure he is dead then give herself up to the police. She will never offer a defense of her actions and is not afraid of prison, for she has been through worse. Kumiko accuses Noboru of defiling her from inside her mind, imprisoning her while she was still a child. She writes that she didn’t just have one affair; she slept with many men when she left Toru, which she blames on Noboru. She has still not discovered who the real Kumiko is. After she left Toru, she often dreamed that he nearly found her in the darkness, but he always missed. She fantasized that he would ruin the spell and rescue her.

Toru visits May at the factory. They sit by the pond but there are no duck people to watch. She asks about Kumiko, and he tells her that Kumiko refuses to leave the jail before her trial; she will plead guilty and accept the verdict. Toru plans on waiting for her to finish her sentence and come home to him. He wants to have a child with her and name it Corsica. May asks if Toru read all her letters. He says he never received a letter and got her location from her mother. May wonders where they all went. Later, at the train station, May encourages Toru to call out for her if anything happens to him. On the train ride, he thinks of May Kasahara and bids her goodbye. He drifts off to sleep.