The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird. Kumiko gave it the name. We didn’t know what it was really called or what it looked like, but that didn’t bother the wind-up bird. Every day it would come to the stand of trees in our neighborhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world.”

The wind-up bird here is the same wind-up bird in the title of the novel. Murakami introduces the wind-up bird as a symbol for the world disrupting the solitary peace a person might crave. Toru has simple desires of staying home, cooking, and listening to music, but just as the wind-up bird’s chirping will disrupt his quiet, so will the world in all its bizarreness interrupt his solitude. Toru cannot see the wind-up bird, just as a person cannot see the random occurrences of life coming their way.

“But after all, Mr. Okada, when one is speaking of the essence of things, it often happens that one can only speak in generalities. Concrete things certainly do command attention, but they are often little more than trivia. Side trips. The more one tries to see into the distance, the more generalized things become.”

Toru’s introduction to Malta Kano is a pivotal moment of foreshadowing, as Kano warns him that he will embark on a peculiar journey. Here, Kano uses the term “essence,” a concept that Toru had been thinking about throughout the day. Somehow, Kano intuits Toru’s wonderings and hones in on this concept, subtly suggesting that thinking about essence is wondering about the wrong thing. An essence may feel concrete, but the world is full of more hidden layers than concrete meanings.

“It’s not a question of better or worse. 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. When you’re supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you’re supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there’s no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.”

This quote is another important moment of foreshadowing. Unbeknownst to him, Toru will go high up on a tower and deep down into a well. The use here of terms such as “flow” are also important, as this term is used by both Mr. Honda and Malta Kano as a warning to Toru to think about flow. Flow is difficult to identify or describe; since it is not tangible, it is a conceptual theme that Murakami explores throughout the novel.

“As I sat and watched, the feeling overtook me that my very life was slowly dwindling into nothingness. There was no trace here of anything as insignificant as human undertakings. This same event had been occurring hundreds of millions—hundreds of billions—of times, from an age long before there had been anything resembling life on earth. Forgetting that I was there to stand guard, I watched the dawning of the day, entranced.”

In Mr. Mamiya’s retelling of his past serving in the Japanese army, Murakami emphasizes nihilism and the futility of human endeavors. The soldiers cannot find purpose in their duties, a direct challenge to the fervent nationalism that characterizes Japanese culture. While this connects Mr. Mamiya to Toru, who is also experiencing a loss of purpose, in Mr. Mamiya’s stories Murakami reveals the juvenility of Toru’s waywardness, highlighting how much suffering can exist when people look for productive reasons to be a person in a society.

“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.”

In Lieutenant Mamiya’s follow-up letter to Toru, he reflects on his close call with discovering grace. This moment is important to Murakami’s concepts of finding meaning in the world. In trying to grasp a piece of knowledge that is so intimate and mysterious to the human mind, Lieutenant Mamiya effectively ruined his chances at appreciating anything in the real, concrete world. This dichotomy between the known world and the mystery world is at the heart of Toru’s adventure, the wind-up bird, and Murakami’s major themes.

“And so time flowed on through the darkness, deprived of advancing watch hands: time undivided and unmeasured. Once it lost its points of demarcation, time ceased being a continuous line and became instead a kind of formless fluid that expanded or contracted at will.”

Toru’s loss of corporeality in the well is heightened when he finally gives up looking at his watch. Time is a man-made construct, and Toru must turn away from the structures that organize human society if he truly wants to discover the essence of the human spirit. Here, time works as a symbol that runs counter to Toru’s motivation to understand reality by escaping from it.

“Could it be true that the Kumiko I had thought I understood, the Kumiko I had held close to me and joined my body with over the years as my wife—that Kumiko was nothing but the most superficial layer of the person Kumiko herself, just as the greater part of this world belongs in fact to the realm of the jellyfish?”

Toru and Kumiko’s failing marriage is a tool for plot development, but it also highlights how Toru has ignored the signs of human behavior and the universe for far too long. He always found Kumiko withdrawn or secretive, and he had secrets too. He has long wondered if it’s possible to know the essence of another person, but it is clear that he doesn’t even really know himself. He and Kumiko were, in a sense, doomed from the start unless they both committed to living out society’s standards.

“Perhaps the mark was a brand that had been impressed on me by that strange dream or illusion or whatever it was. That was no dream, they were telling me through the mark: It really happened. And every time you look in the mirror now, you will be forced to remember it.

The appearance of Toru’s blue-black mark is an important turning point in the novel. Before the mark, Toru could easily dismiss dreams and strange occurrences as inexplicable illusions or coincidences. But once Toru bears the physical mark of his journey in the well, he must accept that what happens in dream world also exists in the real world—that they are essentially one and the same.

“What kind of a being was this self of mine? How did it function? What did it feel—and how? I had to grasp each of these things through experience, to memorize and stockpile them. Do you see what I am saying? Virtually everything inside me had spilled out and been lost. At the same time that I was entirely new, I was almost entirely empty. I had to fill in that blank, little by little. One by one, with my own hands, I had to make this thing I called ‘I’—or, rather, make the things that constituted me.”

Here, Creta Kano articulates the trauma and necessity of finding one’s authentic self. Although Creta understands that one can never truly know each layer of the self, nor can one know how that self might transform over time, she still does the work of self-discovery. This juxtaposes with Toru, who struggles to commit to his own journey of self-discovery. It also highlights Murakami’s point that a person must be brave and think out-of-the-box to find happiness in themselves.

“That had been a turning point. After that, the flow around me had begun to evidence a change. Now that I thought about it, that abortion had been an event of great significance for the two of us. At the time, however, I had not been able to perceive its true importance. I had been all too distracted by the act of the abortion itself, while the genuinely important thing may have been something else entirely.”

Toru’s revelation is a turning point in his life and a turning point in the novel. That Toru never quite figured out Kumiko’s feelings about her terminated pregnancy is the secret to his life Toru believes he must uncover. He acknowledges that he had been thinking about the act of abortion instead of any of the other layers to the experience that could have been important. Essentially, this is what Malta Kano has been advising Toru to do: think not of the concrete, but of the layers of flows that are difficult to perceive. This moment foreshadows the real beginning of Toru’s bildungsroman.

“Part of my consciousness is still there as an empty house. At the same time, I am still here, on this sofa, as me. I think, What should I do now? I can’t decide which one is reality. Little by little, the word ‘here’ seems to split in two inside me. I am here, but I am also here. Both seem equally real to me.”

By Book 3, Toru has started to embrace the inbetween spaces of consciousness. Instead of focusing merely on his mental state or his physical state as separate entities, he begins to consider both states as part of the same existence. This is a crucial moment of character development.

“They are the vaguely defined ‘people’, and I used to be a nameless one among them. Accepting and accepted, they live with one another beneath that light, and whether it lasts forever or for a moment, there must be a kind of closeness while they are enveloped in the light. I am no longer one of them, however […] They possess the light, while I am in the process of losing it.”

Determined to confront his inner conflict, Toru commits himself to the discomfort of embracing the darkness of the well. He now physically and mentally separates himself from others, whom he can’t even truly call people because all concrete concepts have been thrown away. Toru’s rejection of the status quo of how life should be lived is the impetus he needs to charge ahead with his self-discovery.

“Maybe the world was like a revolving door, it occurred to him as his consciousness was fading away. And which section you ended up in was just a matter of where your foot happened to fall. There were tigers in one section, but no tigers in another. Maybe it was as simple as that. And there was no logical continuity from one section to another. And it was precisely because of this lack of logical continuity that choices really didn’t mean very much. Wasn’t that why he wouldn’t feel the gap between one world and another?”

Here, Murakami uses yet another anecdote to highlight his major concept of futility. Far from having meaning, the world is presented as a chaotic place in which anything is likely to happen. With such randomness, a person will struggle immensely to grasp reality. In this quote, Murakami also poses a question about whether human beings have free will and if it even matters.

“That mark is maybe going to give you something important. But it also must be robbing you of something. Kind of like a trade-off. And if everybody keeps taking stuff from you like that, you’re going to be worn away until there’s nothing left of you.”

In May Kasahara’s fourth letter to Toru, she tells him that she doesn’t trust the mark on his face. She is worried that Toru has sold some part of his soul. This warning demonstrates May’s kindness to Toru. In fact, May Kasahara is one of the only characters who shows true concern for Toru’s happiness and wellbeing. Even so, perhaps due to her youth, May cannot relate to Toru’s journey and what led him to the facial mark. There is a dichotomy between what May sees in the mark and what Toru sees. To May, the mark is a symbol of Toru’s giving himself away. To Toru, the mark is a symbol of progress. Murakami uses this dichotomy to imply that giving yourself away could lead to progress.

“That is just one manifestation. ‘Going bad’ is something that happens over a longer period of time. It was something decided in advance, without me, in a pitch-dark room somewhere, by someone else’s hand.”

Kumiko had sentenced herself to being irrefutably bad. But what makes her bad, and how, is a more complex question. Here, Kumiko posits that there is no such thing as free will, highlighting one of Murakami’s larger questions posed throughout the novel: Are our destinies and personalities pre-determined? If so, by whom or by what? While Kumiko seems to have given up hope that she can find a better version of herself, Toru is trying to prove that with enough dedication to the sublime, one can better themselves. This dichotomous experience is an important element in bringing Kumiko and Toru back together.

“But why Kumiko and I should have been drawn into this historical chain of cause and effect I could not comprehend. All of these events had occurred long before Kumiko and I were born.”

In Book 3, Toru finally starts to make sense of the riddles surrounding him. He sees patterns between all the people he’s met and stories he’s heard since his cat’s disappearance. One major connection between all these narratives is Japanese history. Murakami juxtaposes Japan’s past with Japan’s present, suggesting the need to cut ties with history to live authentically in the here and now. History serves as an allegory of what Toru should not do in his contemporary world.

“[I]t’s as though they were all ingeniously programmed from the start for the very purpose of bringing me here, where I am today. It’s a thought I can’t seem to shake off. I feel as if my every move is being controlled by some kind of incredibly long arm that’s reaching out from somewhere far away, and that my life has been nothing more than a convenient passageway for all these things moving through it.”

In Nutmeg’s reflections on the series of events of her life, Murakami again suggests the lack of free will inherent in human life. Nutmeg doesn’t seem to have any religious affiliation, but the “long arm” that she’s using as a metaphor transcends established religions. Nutmeg’s feeling that her life has been set out and determined contrasts with Kumiko and May Kasahara’s beliefs that there is no such thing as determinism.

“But every once in a while, when the balance would shift (and what controlled the balance he never knew: he could discover no regularity in those shifts), the force would increase, plunging him into a state of near-paralytic resignation. At such times, he had no choice but to abandon everything and give himself up to the flow. He knew from experience that nothing he could do or think would ever change the situation. Fate would demand its portion, and until it received that portion, it would never go away.”

Again, the issue of free will is identified as an impediment to living an authentic life. The veterinarian, faced with certain destruction and death, refuses to succumb to the hope that he can change his future. Instead, his nihilism frees him from thinking too deeply about what’s next and allows him to focus his attention on the present, which in turn brings him a certain sense of peace. What’s notable here is his use of the word “flow,” which echoes Malta Kano’s advice to Toru to accept the flow of the universe.

“The word ‘chronicle’ in the title probably meant that the stories were related in chronological order, #8 following #7, #9 following #8, and so on […] They could just as well have been arranged in a different order. They might even run backward, from the present to the past. A bolder hypothesis might make them sixteen different versions of the same story told in parallel.”

Toru’s analysis of the “chronicle” he finds on Cinnamon’s computer is a direct, metanarrative connection to Murakami’s novel as a form. In the same way that Toru speculates that Cinnamon’s chronicle could be in numerical order, not organized by time, or different versions of the same story, so too is Murakami’s novel a mixture of all these structures. Murakami plays with the reader’s understandings of novel form and structure, winking to his role as author and world builder.

“Whether by chance conjunction or not, the ‘wind-up bird’ was a powerful presence in Cinnamon’s story. The cry of this bird was audible only to certain special people, who were guided by it toward inescapable ruin. The will of human beings meant nothing […] Nearly all within range of the wind-up bird’s cry were ruined, lost.”

Finally, Murakami directly identifies the wind-up bird. The wind-up bird is a symbol for fate, and only some people—perhaps those who are willing to hear it—are given access to that fate. Or, perhaps whoever hears the wind-up bird comes to terms with their lack of free will. That Toru notes that those who hear the wind-up bird end up in ruin is important, because the reader is reminded that Toru knows the cry of the wind-up bird. Thus, Toru may be foreshadowing his own death.

“Swimming is one of the best things in my life. It has never solved any problems, but it has done no harm, and nothing has ever ruined it for me. Swimming.”

Though a small detail, Toru’s relationship with swimming is important. Until this quote, there is little in the novel that suggests that a harmless hobby is important. Everything is of import, and the ripple effect of each action Toru takes is riddled with consequences. Here, Murakami suggests that it is important to include spaces in one’s life that are low stakes. Not everything in life should be serious.

“The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country. I tell you, Lieutenant, there is only one way to survive here. And that is not to imagine anything […] I certainly never use mine. My job is to make others use their imaginations. That’s my bread and butter […] Leave the imagining to someone else.”

The brutal killer Boris the Manskinner’s secret to success is his lack of imagination. This poses an interesting question for the reader: Isn’t Toru undergoing the practice of embracing and exploring the limitations of imagination? If the answer to Toru’s character development is imagination, then Boris is essentially wrong. As a stock evil character, this functions as proof that Toru is close to achieving his mission through imagination. On the other hand, the issue of free will is tied to imagination. Many characters have identified their feelings that free will doesn’t exist, and if one doesn’t have an imagination, then perhaps one can’t imagine what they would do with free will. And yet, Boris manipulates others, acting completely of his own accord. As for which philosophy is true, Murakami leaves this an open question.

“I tried to keep my breath from agitating the surrounding air. I am not here, I told myself. I am not here. I am not anywhere.”

This is a pivotal plot moment. Toru has finally heeded Malta Kano’s advice and committed to going with the flow. He accepts all that is and all that he cannot control. It is the penultimate moment of character development for Toru. Furthermore, this quote highlights the transience of his space. Though Toru has accepted this alternate reality, the reader is still unsure about where exactly he is. The location, Murakami vaguely identifies, is nowhere. But if a person is nowhere, perhaps a person can also be everywhere.