The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Toru waits by May Kasahara’s house until she sees him. He asks her to call the number of Kumiko’s office and ask if Kumiko is in. He realizes that it’s been days since he’s heard the chirps of the wind-up bird. May calls the office and confirms that Kumiko has not shown up for work in two days. Toru goes back to his house in case someone calls. He thinks deeply about the series of events leading up to Kumiko’s disappearance. Seized by an uncharacteristic sleepiness, Toru stumbles into bed to sleep.

He dreams he is in the same hotel as his previous dream. A woman is with him, wearing Kumiko’s dress. At first, he believes it is Kumiko and reaches towards her, but it is again Creta Kano. She keeps Kumiko’s dress on as she performs oral sex on him, then removes his clothes and has sex with him. Toru asks Creta about Noboru, and she tells him not to think of it, adding that Toru should leave everything to them. Toru wonders who “they” are. The lights in their hotel room turn off, and a voice tells Toru to forget about everything. He realizes that it’s the voice of the mysterious woman from the sexual phone calls he’s been receiving.

Toru wakes up and washes off his nocturnal emission. He contemplates his two wet dreams, located in the same place and with the same woman, Creta. He thinks through his past sexual partners, wondering who the voice of the woman from the telephone calls could be. Although he can’t pinpoint her, her voice sounds familiar.

May visits Toru in the evening. She asks him if he finds her pretty, telling him that her ex-boyfriend used to tell her she’s ugly. Toru assures her that she is pretty, and that younger men and boys will sometimes say cruel things for no real purpose. May asks Toru if he will take Kumiko back if she returns. He says he isn’t sure yet.

Later, Malta Kano calls Toru. She asks him to meet with her and Noboru the next afternoon regarding Kumiko. 

Toru meets with Malta and Noboru in a café the next day. Noboru tells Toru that Kumiko left him for another man, and that the divorce can be quick and easy. Toru finds it difficult to believe that Kumiko would have gone to Noboru of all people for help. Malta confirms that Kumiko first met with her about the missing cat, but the issue of the cat devolved into Kumiko telling Malta about the other man. Noboru calls Toru a bag of garbage and rocks, adding that he always knew Toru would amount to nothing. Toru tells Noboru that he reminds him of the story of the “shitty island,” a fantasy place where everything is warped and ugly and smelly. Furthermore, Toru can see through Noboru’s television-ready façade, and that he knows his “secret.” In truth, Toru doesn’t know any specific secrets about Noboru, but he is certain Noboru has them. Noboru grows red in the face and leaves the table.

Malta asks Toru if he feels better now that he’s expressed his feelings to Noboru. Toru tells her that Noboru is somehow able to get Toru so uncomfortable and riled up that he ends up saying things he ultimately regrets. Malta reminds Toru that he will likely see Noboru again. 

Back at home, Toru receives a letter from Mamiya. He tells Toru that he never shared those stories with anyone else before, and that he has long thought of the reason he has become an empty shell of a person. Mamiya shares a hypothesis: At the bottom of that well in Outer Mongolia, Mamiya had been suffering through the trauma of all that had happened. When the light shone in the well, he was blinded and could see something closer to his true soul. He strove to understand it but could not ultimately grasp the grace the light was offering. After knowing that he was so close to having revelation but losing it, he could no longer find any meaning in the concrete world. He tried to die but could not. He believes now that Honda’s prediction of Mamiya’s long life was unlucky—a curse instead of a gift.

Mamiya’s story makes Toru rethink his own life. He wonders if maybe Noboru was right: that Toru did nothing with his life. But he struggles to accept that he ruined Kumiko’s life along with his own. Toru decides to visit May. She doesn’t come out of her house, so Toru returns home to find Creta in his living room. She let herself in through his unlocked door and wants to talk about his meeting with Malta and Noboru. Creta reminds him that Noboru Wataya raped her. She believes that because she was a prostitute, it wasn’t technically rape, but that he had changed something in her through that defilement. Creta knows about Toru’s dreams, explaining that she has been with him sexually. She claims she is now a “prostitute of the mind.” She asks Toru to hold her and cries in his arms. Before Creta leaves, she tells Toru that he needn’t be afraid of her, and that he should embrace his dreams.

Toru receives a phone call. At first, no one speaks on the other side of the line. Assuming it’s the woman who calls him for phone sex, Toru tells her it’s not the right time for a phone sex call. Then he hears May’s voice, surprised by his reaction. She had seen him earlier in the day, waiting for her outside her house. Feeling bad for ignoring him, she went over to his house but saw him embracing Creta Kano through the balcony window. She warns him that he is too involved with too many women.

Toru packs a bag with a flashlight, a water bottle, and a rope ladder. He leaves a note for anyone who might be looking for him. Toru walks to the Miyawaki house and ties the rope ladder firmly around a strong tree. He uncovers the dry well and begins to descend into the depths. As he enters, he becomes frightened by just how deep the well is; in a city like Tokyo, it seems impossible. He looks up into the sky and sees the half-moon Malta predicted, which gives him some comfort. Toru relaxes into the bottom of the well, noting that his rope ladder is firmly in place.

At the bottom of the well, Toru thinks about the first time he met Kumiko. They had both been visiting the same hospital regularly—Toru for meetings with an ailing, wealthy client, Kumiko to visit her mother who was being treated for an ulcer. Toru and Kumiko chatted and became friendly. He invited her on a date to the aquarium, where there was a special exhibit on jellyfish. Toru hates jellyfish because as a child he had been stung many times, but Kumiko was fascinated by the exhibit. She likes jellyfish because they remind her that there are depths in the Earth she has no access to.

Kumiko and Toru continued to date, meeting once a week. Toru liked her but sensed she was withdrawn in some way. He asked her if she had a boyfriend, but she didn’t confirm or deny. They continued to date, and though Toru would sense a secretiveness in Kumiko, they married when she graduated from college.

After checking his rope ladder again, Toru falls asleep.

Four hours later, Toru awakes in the darkness. He contemplates his objective: to think about reality by getting far away from it.

When Toru and Kumiko got married, they did so in an unostentatious private ceremony and with a nice French dinner. Toru worked at a law firm but didn’t have a law degree, so he would only ever move up so far. Kumiko worked for a small publisher and refused to go to her wealthy and well-connected father for help. Although they didn’t have much, they were happy. In their third year of marriage, Kumiko got pregnant. Toru didn’t want her to have an abortion, but Kumiko was interested in her job, and they didn’t have the money to care for a child.

In the conversations leading up to Kumiko’s abortion, Toru expressed his feeling that they should keep the child. He was fine with their life becoming different. Although Kumiko couldn’t quite articulate her feelings, she told Toru that she sometimes gets a sense of unreality in the things she knows are real. Kumiko had the abortion on her own when Toru was in Hokkaido for a business trip. She informed him over the phone, and Toru was supportive of her but restless. He bar-hopped around town, listened to the live music while drinking. One of the musicians made a speech about how difficult it can be to truly articulate emotions, even with music. 

Toru drifts off to sleep and dreams that he is walking alone through a lobby where he sees Noboru on large television screens. Noboru tells his audience that motivation is the root of everything, and that people who hide away from motivation in wells have minds full of garbage and rocks. Angry at this thinly veiled personal attack, Toru marches towards the guest rooms. A man with no face tells him not to go any further, adding that now is not his time. Toru forges ahead, and the man calls after him that he won’t be able to turn back. Toru tries to find the guest room he was escorted to in his first dream, but he can’t recall the room number. He sees a waiter pushing a cart with Cutty Stark on it and follows him. Toru finds the door to room 208. He waits behind the waiter until someone opens the door. Toru enters and hears a voice from the bed. It’s the same woman who calls for phone sex. He tells her he must find out where Kumiko is; he has opened Pandora’s box and must commit. Toru asks the woman what her name is—he is sure she is somehow familiar. She asks him to pour her a drink, then tells him that she doesn’t know who she is. The woman tells Toru that if he can find out her name, she can help him get out of the room. Suddenly, the woman becomes worried, telling Toru that a certain man is more dangerous than they think, and that if this man finds Toru here, he will be in trouble. An ominous knock rings on the door. The woman beckons Toru, and he follows her through a wall, her tongue in his mouth. Toru breaks through the wall and finds himself at the bottom of the well.

When Toru wakes up, he contemplates the vast sky above him. He thinks about his dream, but he knows it’s not a dream—it’s a memory. Toru rubs his face and notices day-old stubble. He thinks about how he’s been gone from home for a day and it likely matters to no one. Toru checks for the rope ladder, but the rope ladder is gone. His panic and hunger are replaced by resignation.

When Toru returned to Kumiko after her abortion and his business trip, they had a difficult time communicating with one another. The abortion, essentially undiscussed, hung over them. Kumiko convinced Toru to take a sick day and they went off to the mountain to walk in nature and find some peace. After about a day in the mountain town, Kumiko finally succumbed to her emotions. She cried for a couple of hours but couldn’t explain to Toru what she was feeling.

Toru is awoken from a shallow sleep by May’s voice. She asks him what he’s doing in the well, and he tells her he’s thinking. She informs him that she’s the one who lifted the ladder. He thought the ladder had simply disappeared on its own, but the truth is he hadn’t thought much about it. May calls down to him that she’ll help him go deeper into thinking—and closes the well.

In the total darkness of the closed well, Toru’s consciousness and physical body separate. He imagines himself as the wind-up bird, flying high and chirping the world into action. But he cannot picture his body, since he’s never seen the wind-up bird.

May pays a second visit to Toru. She’s been researching how long people can survive underground without food. Although it’s possible to live a long time in Toru’s predicament, she warns him that if something were to happen to her, he would certainly die down in the well. She wonders if death is the most necessary concept for humans—the concept that helps them evolve. She asks Toru if he’s been thinking about his death, but he’s too busy thinking of other things. Toru tells May about his wife’s affair and how he missed all the signs. He doesn’t want to escape reality in the well, but he needs clear space to discover what went wrong between him and Kumiko. May replies that he thinks he can remake himself, but even she knows that’s not possible. She closes the well again.

Down in the well, Toru creeps towards feelings of disembodiment. When he takes a break from looking at his watch, he notices how time ceases into one deep flow. His hunger causes him physical pain. He stops thinking about anything else but this pain, and his mind passes by him in fragmented thoughts. Toru tries to recreate memories, but the memory of a fight he had with a colleague years before fills him with such anger that he must force himself to calm down. Toru regrets many of his memories.

Soon, Toru’s thoughts become so disjointed that he loses control of his nerves. It occurs to him that, with the well closed, the air around him must not be circulating. He panics, wondering what it would feel like to die of asphyxiation. Suddenly, he hears Creta’s voice. Believing himself to be in another dream with her, he doesn’t respond. But he soon realizes that it’s the real Creta. She has opened the well and throws the rope ladder down to him. When he finally exits the well, Creta is nowhere to be found. He slowly makes his way back home.

Toru checks his mailbox and finds a letter from Kumiko. She confirms her affair of three months with a man but tells Toru that she won’t see the man again. The man is an older colleague from work who is married with children. She felt a burning desire for him, and though she wasn’t in love with him, she wanted his body with an uncharacteristic desperation. When the man asked her to leave Toru for him, her desire for him disappeared. Kumiko doesn’t feel bad about the sex because it was, to her, a simple fact of the body. But she does feel bad that Toru never suspected her. She admits to Toru that she never felt that sex with him was enjoyable. Having run away, Kumiko asks Toru to forget about her and never look for her. She assures him that divorce proceedings won’t be complicated. She tells him that she is suffering through a problem of her own, and that she must be alone to figure herself out.

Toru realizes that Kumiko avoided having sex with him over the last few months because she was deep in lust with someone else, Toru had been having his sex dreams about Creta. He realizes that perhaps he had only ever known the most superficial layer of Kumiko, even though they had been together physically and emotionally for years.

Later that night, Malta calls Toru.

Malta says she tried to call Toru over the last couple of days with no response. He tells her he was away but doesn’t tell her about the well. Malta asks Toru if he’s seen Creta. She tells him that Creta was worried about him and went out to look for him but hasn’t been back home since. Toru doesn’t tell Malta about speaking with Creta at the well. Malta also asks Toru if there is any physical difference in him. Confused, he searches his body but sees no change. Before they hang up, Toru senses that it’s possible he’ll never speak to Malta Kano again.

Toru remembers he left his rope ladder tied to the tree and down the well. He heads back to the well and calls out for Creta, who responds. She is at the bottom of the well because she too wants to think. She invites Toru to come down with her, but he refuses. He tells her that Malta is looking for her and can’t feel her presence. Though Creta doesn’t want to worry her sister, she is eager to accomplish her own deep thinking at the bottom of the well.

The next morning, Toru returns to the well to check in on Creta. The rope ladder is gone, and the well is tightly closed with two stones on top. Toru opens the well and calls out for Creta. He tosses down a couple of pebbles to see if she’ll respond. When he gets no response, he assumes Creta climbed out of the well already. Toru watches May’s house but sees no movement or life within. He realizes that “[s]omething felt different about the neighborhood, unfamiliar—as if, in the days I was down the well, the old reality of this place had been shoved away by a new reality, which had settled in and taken over” (285). Toru goes home to shave and is shocked to find a blue-black stain on his face that won’t wash off.

Toru talks himself out of his panic. The mark could go away, or it could be an allergic reaction from something in the well. But the more he thinks about it, the more he wonders if the mark is a branding from his dream—a message that the dream was reality.

Toru calls his uncle to ask about his past with his house. The uncle tells him that nothing bad ever happened to him in that house, and certainly nothing like what happened in the cursed Miyawaki house. Toru goes to sleep for the night but is awoken by a tense dream he can’t recall. He reaches over to the other side of the bed, habitually looking for Kumiko. Instead, he is shocked to find Creta in bed next to him.

Creta is naked and deep in sleep. Toru leaves the room without waking her and ponders his situation in the living room. He wonders about seeing someone about the mark on his face and his dream-sex with Creta. Toru dozes off in the living room and is awoken the next morning by Creta, cooking breakfast in the kitchen and wearing Kumiko’s clothing. Toru asks her where her clothes are, and Creta tells him that she doesn’t know. All Creta knows is that one moment, she was at the bottom of the well, and the next, she was naked in Toru’s bed. Toru examines the soles of Creta’s feet. It had been raining the night before, but Creta’s feet are perfectly free of scratches and clean. Creta asks Toru if the mark on his face hurts. It doesn’t, but Creta tells him she doesn’t believe a doctor would be able to help him. Creta believes Malta can help, but she is not allowed to reach out to Malta on another person’s behalf. Toru will have to wait for Malta to reach out to him.

Creta confesses that it’s not the first time she’s forgotten a series of events and lost her clothing in the process. Toru asks her to tell him the rest of her life story.

The organization that coerced Creta into working for them sent her to a room on the sixteenth floor of a hotel. The man inside was Noboru, her client. He was well dressed and reading a book. He examined her, as most clients do, but something in his eyes made Creta nervous and confused. He instructed her to remove her clothes and lie face down on the bed. He started to touch her, almost inquisitively, and it aroused Creta. Her arousal was a shock, because this was during the time when she couldn’t feel anything at all. Noboru spread her legs and arms apart, and rubbed his penis against her, but it was flaccid. Creta suspected him to be impotent, and her suspicions were confirmed when he inserted something large—not his penis—into her from behind. The pain was intense, but it was partnered with her pleasure. The pain and the pleasure were so cohesive and passionate that Creta felt as though she was being split into two. Suddenly, a thing came out of her split body—something Creta had no knowledge of but that had always been inside of her. When Creta orgasmed, she felt as though her entire body had melted. It took her a while to regain herself, but she was forever changed by the experience with Noboru in ways she could not quite articulate.

For several days after being raped by Noboru, Creta had to lock herself away and deal with her waves of pain, pleasure, and confusion. When her extreme feelings finally subsided, she realized that she had entered her third self. Her first self had felt only pain, her second self had felt nothing at all, and her third self, perhaps the truest version of herself, can feel both. Creta immediately quit prostitution and spent her days trying to reconstruct her new self from scratch. Finally, Malta returned to Japan. Creta told Malta everything about her last years. Malta analyzed her situation: Creta had been defiled by Noboru Wataya and was lucky that the defilement turned into something productive for Creta’s self-reconstruction. Malta gave Creta a new name (Creta), a celebration of her new self. Malta taught Creta how to control her new self, and how to divide the flesh from the spirit.

Five years later, Creta met Noboru again when he visited Malta’s house for spiritual guidance. Creta told Malta that that was the last man she sold herself to, and Malta told her to hide and leave everything to her. Toru interrupts to ask Creta if she purposefully entered his mind when they had sex in his dreams. She says that the ability to enter someone’s mind is indeed one of her functions. She tells Toru that Malta assigned her to infiltrate Toru’s mind, though she didn’t know what Malta was looking for. Creta assures Toru that, due to Malta’s hatred for Noboru, they are both on Toru’s side. 

Creta tells Toru that she is tired of going into and out of peoples’ bodies and minds. She wants to go to Crete and take some time for herself, and she wants Toru to come along. But Toru tells her he needs to find and speak with Kumiko face-to-face before he can move on with his life. Creta asks Toru to think about her offer; she simply wants his honest answer when it comes time for it.

Later, Creta asks Toru to sleep with her. She believes she can finally free herself of her defilement if she physically has sex with the last man she had mind-sex with. She wants Toru to buy her, for the absolute last time. Toru agrees to give Creta his wife’s clothing in exchange for sex. But first, he asks her about Noboru’s motivations. Creta tells Toru that he and Noboru hate one another because they are of two different worlds. When Noboru touched Creta all those years ago, she could feel his dark hatreds. She warns Toru against succumbing to hatred, a dangerous and unproductive emotion. Toru has sex with Creta, though he often gets confused that the woman is not Kumiko. After, Creta warns Toru that if he stays in Japan, she is certain something very bad will happen to him.

May calls Toru to invite him over. At May’s house, she asks him if he’s mad at her. She admits that she wanted to leave Toru down in the well until the absolute last minute to test his fortitude. May also confesses that she also went down into the well for a few hours. In the well, she felt gripped by fear and sensed something “gooshy” creep up inside of her, eating her up. Toru asks May why she talks so much about death. Instead of answering his question directly, May tells him that every person runs on a different core, and she has found it difficult to be understood by others. When she feels unheard, she acts out, such as when she trapped Toru in the well or when she put her hands over her boyfriend’s eyes as he drove the motorcycle. Toru realizes now that the motorcycle accident had been May’s fault. He asks her what happened to the boyfriend, and she admits that he died. May tells Toru that she is thinking of going back to school. Toru has shown her how abnormal the world can be, and now she craves a little more structure. May kisses Toru’s mark, and he caresses the scar by her eye. He can sense her consciousness, and he hopes that she finds someone to take care of her. 

Toru calls his uncle to tell him the truth about Kumiko, adding that he’ll need to move out of the house soon. Toru’s uncle comes over, and they discuss life and love. His uncle advises Toru to take his time figuring out the more complicated things in life. For the next several days, Toru tries to spend his energies doing a very simple thing: watching. He chooses a busy spot in the city and watches people as they pass by. After a few days of people-watching, he finds he can notice details about people around him without thinking of anything else. On the 11th day, he recognizes a man with a guitar case. He realizes that it’s the musician from that night in Hokkaido, when Toru was on a business trip and Kumiko was getting an abortion. Toru follows the man, unsure what he would say or why he would follow him. Toru realizes that everything truly changed when Kumiko got that abortion. The secret to Kumiko’s fear of her pregnancy was the one that Toru needed to figure out; it was the one he hadn’t paid enough attention to.

Toru follows the musician, finally stopping in a quiet residential area. Toru let some time pass before he enters the apartment building the musician entered, but when he finally let himself in the musician hits him with a baseball bat. Toru wrestles for the bat and beats the man to a pulp. Toru leaves with the bat. Back at home, he knows if he falls asleep, he will have terrible dreams. He craves company and wishes that somebody would call him. Despite his best efforts, he dozes off and has a terrible dream. In the dream, Toru again follows the musician into his apartment building, and again they get into a fight. But instead of leaving, Toru stays and watches as the man laughs and peels off his own skin. Toru wakes up and resolves to get Kumiko back.