The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Toru’s house is owned by his uncle, who charges his nephew minimal rent to cover the cost of taxes. The uncle was extremely successful in the bar and restaurant industry. He married later in his life but had no children. Toru’s uncle always had a vested interest in his nephew, especially since Toru’s mother died when he was in college. On the phone with his uncle, Toru asks about the abandoned house. His uncle tells him about the history of its ownership. First, a colonel owned the house, a man known for inflicting barbarous cruelty during the war in North China. One day, a GI came by his house and the colonel shot him, then killed himself. Later, a movie actress bought the house. She started to lose her vision, then tripped on set and injured herself more. She had to stay in the house, and her housekeeper ran off with all her money. This actress also killed herself inside the house. When a man named Miyawaki bought it, he razed the original structure to avoid the bad luck. But he eventually lost all his money and had to abandon the house.

The day feels quiet and normal until the postman delivers the mail in the afternoon. Toru receives a large rice-paper envelope from Tokutaro Mamiya in Hiroshima Prefecture. Toru doesn’t know anyone by that name. He struggles to read the formally written letter. The letter is to inform Toru that his former fortune-teller Mr. Honda died of a heart attack two weeks prior. Mamiya had served with Mr. Honda in Manchuria. Now, it was Mamiya’s job to ensure that Mr. Honda’s belongings were distributed as requested by the deceased. Mamiya asks Toru to meet him in Tokyo so Toru can collect an item left to him.

Kumiko returns home late again. She seems edgy, but Toru assures her he’s only worried that she’s overworking herself. He tells her about Mr. Honda’s death and how he left something behind for Toru, which surprises Kumiko. Toru decides not to tell Kumiko about May.

Kumiko tells Toru that Noboru is going to run for office in Niigata. She tells him a disturbing story. As a child, shortly after her sister had died, Kumiko found Noboru masturbating to their sisters’ clothes. What’s more, Noboru knew that Kumiko was watching him. Kumiko always suspected that Noboru had some sort of psychological problem.

Three days later, Lieutenant Mamiya calls Toru in the morning. He asks if Toru has time to meet, and Toru invites him over to his house that day. Toru straightens up Kumiko’s workspace and finds a Christian Dior gift box. Believing it to be a box for perfume, Toru looks through Kumiko’s bathroom cabinet. He finds the bottle of Christian Dior perfume, a scent Kumiko typically doesn’t wear. Toru wonders who would have given Kumiko such an expensive gift. He suspects that Kumiko received an intimate gift from a man she knows well. Toru’s thoughts are interrupted by a phone call. It’s the woman who called before, talking explicitly about her body. She tells him she knows it’s been a while since he’s had sex with his wife. She tells him that if he would only look around, she would give him everything he wants.

Toru hangs up when the doorbell rings: It is Lieutenant Mamiya. The two men chat about Toru’s home, then about the deceased Mr. Honda. Mamiya tells Toru about Mr. Honda’s family: a son and a daughter from a marriage to a woman who killed herself in 1950 or 1951. Mr. Honda sent Lieutenant Mamiya a letter a day before his death, asking for his help in distributing his keepsakes. Toru asks if the two men met during the Nomonhan Incident. Mamiya tells Toru about meeting Mr. Honda before the Nomonhan Incident. In addition, Mamiya had been imprisoned during the war and for 12 years after.

Toru encourages Mr. Mamiya to share more about his experiences.

Lieutenant Mamiya tells Toru a long story from his past. Because Mamiya had studied geography in college, he was assigned to the Military Survey Corps when he was enlisted in 1937. Mamiya considered himself fortunate; the job itself was easy; it was a non-combat position, and he was stationed in Manchuria, which had been relatively peaceful at the time. His easy time in the army ended in April 1938, when he was assigned to accompany a man named Mr. Yamamoto to Mongolia. Mamiya was told that Yamamoto was a civilian who had been hired to pose as Mongolian and learn their customs, but he could tell that the man was a professional soldier. Only three men had been assigned as armed escort, of which only one, Mr. Hamano, could truly fight. Mr. Honda, then Corporal Honda, had also been assigned.

One of Mamiya’s duties was to study and record the topography of the borders he would pass through. After a couple days of travel, Yamamoto took Mamiya aside to tell him the plan: They would cross the Khalkha River into Outer Mongolia. This distressed Mamiya, as crossing the Khalkha would be a grave border violation against Mongolia and its powerful allies, the Soviet Union. Yamamoto assured Mamiya that this mission had been approved by the highest authorities, and that Yamamoto would take full responsibility for the crossing. The four men crossed the frigid river and moved into Outer Mongolia. They were stopped by a Mongolian on horseback. Yamamoto exchanged a few private words in Mongolian with the stranger, then informed Mamiya that he would be leaving with the man. If he wasn’t back in 36 hours, Yamamoto added, one of them should return to their base camp to report him missing.

Corporal Honda, Lieutenant Mamiya, and Hamano were left alone in essentially enemy territory, constantly on guard. The three men speculate about who Yamamoto really is, and what their purpose is in Outer Mongolia. Hamano suggests that Yamamoto and the Mongolian on horseback are in collusion with one another, planning an alliance between the Japanese army and anti-Soviet Mongolian units. If this was true, it would mean all-out war between the Soviet Union and Japan.

Yamamoto returned to the camp, shot in the arm but not in critical condition. Riding back to their base, Yamamoto gestured to his sack, telling Mamiya that documents inside that sack must reach headquarters or be burned. They were top-secret and could not fall into enemy hands. Yamamoto instructed Mamiya to shoot and kill him if they found themselves in a bad situation. Although he had never shot anyone before, Mamiya accepts.

Mamiya wondered aloud to Honda if they would die there, in a desolate but painfully beautiful country far from home. Honda told Mamiya with absolute certainty that, of all the men on that mission, Mamiya would live the longest and die in Japan. 

Their rest spot was discovered by Mongolian border patrol. The men pointed flashlights and guns at Yamamoto and Mamiya, but Mamiya couldn’t see Honda or Hamano. The Mongolian border patrol looked through their bags, and when they shook Yamamoto’s bags, both Yamamoto and Mamiya were silently shocked to see that the crucial documents Yamamoto had been carrying had disappeared. The Mongolian soldiers tied Yamamoto and Mamiya up, naked. One Mongolian soldier dragged a large object towards them: Hamano’s dead body. Honda was still missing, and Mamiya hoped that he had escaped, opening the possibility of rescue.

A small plane landed, containing Russian and Mongolian reinforcements. The Russian officer approached Yamamoto and Mamiya and told them he was looking for a special letter he was certain was hidden away somewhere on the Outer Mongolian side of the river. Yamamoto denied knowing anything about a letter. The Russian officer asked the men why they were in Outer Mongolian territory. Yamamoto told him that he was a mapmaker, and that the other men were his security escort. The Mongolian soldiers placed four stakes in the ground, then tied Yamamoto by the arms and legs to the stakes. A Mongolian soldier, smiling, slowly skinned Yamamoto alive. After it was all over, the Russian officer mused that perhaps Yamamoto really didn’t know anything about the letter, or else he surely would have screamed out for mercy. The officer reasoned that if Yamamoto didn’t know about the letter, then neither did Mamiya.

The officer flew off in the plane, and the Mongolian border patrol tied Mamiya to a horse and set off north. They stopped at a dried up well, where one of the soldiers untied Mamiya and pointed a gun at his head. Mamiya had been given a choice: die immediately or jump into the well. Remembering Honda’s vision that Mamiya would not die on that continent, Mamiya chose to jump into the well.

When he hit the bottom of the well, Mamiya was lucky to find that the bottom was sandy and broke the impact of his fall. As he lay at the bottom of that well, the Mongolian soldiers all pissed on him. He waited for a long time after they had left before he grasped that they would not come back.

When light from the daylight sun poured into the well, Mamiya felt bliss and inspiration, quickly followed by intense despair. He realized, sitting at this bottom of the well naked with no food or prospects, wishing for death, that he was incapable of dying.

After three days, Mamiya was rescued by Honda. Honda sensed the approach of the Mongolian guard and escaped with Yamamoto’s letter. He buried the letter in the ground, then followed behind Mamiya’s captors on foot. Honda helped Mamiya cross the river and return to base, where they both denied knowing anything about the letter. Eventually, the men were sent to different outposts and duties, but many years later they reconnected.

Mamiya tells Toru that the experience in the well fundamentally changed him. After those three days, he could no longer feel anything with any depth. Mamiya experienced other horrors throughout the war and his imprisonment, but something about the light in that well had closed off a part of his heart.

After twelve years away from Japan, Mamiya returned from the war with a severed hand and the loss of over a decade of his life. He went home to Japan only to find that his entire family was dead. His little sister died while working in a factory during the atomic bomb blast that destroyed Hiroshima, and his father perished at the same time on his way to visit his daughter. Mamiya’s mother died from the shock of it all. He discovered that his family had made a grave for him in the cemetery, certain that he would never come back. Mamiya became a geography teacher, but his life was a series of motions and nothing else. He could not love, nor could he develop relationships with people.

Toru says goodbye to Mamiya at the bus station. He returns to his house and opens Mr. Honda’s gift. The gift is an empty Cutty Stark box.