The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Toru needs a miracle to come up with the money to buy the land. Tired of being in his home, he wanders out into the city for the first time in months. Toru practices watching people in the street until, slowly, colors start to become vivid again.

On the eighth day of his people-watching routine, a woman who had stopped and chatted with Toru during his first stakeout the previous summer sits to talk with him. The first time they met, she had asked Toru if he needed money. On this eighth day, Toru tells her that he finally does need money: eight million yen. The woman gives Toru a card and tells him to go to the address on it the next afternoon. 

One night, a boy wakes up to the sound of distinct chirping. He searches the trees outside his window for the mysterious bird that sounds like it’s winding up the world. The boy loves to learn new things but can’t find the mysterious bird. When the bird finally sings again on another night, the boy opens the curtains only a bit so as to not scare off the wind-up bird.

The boy spots two men in dark clothing in the garden—one with a hat, one without a hat. The wind-up bird sings again, and the shorter of the two men, who looks like the boy’s father, scales the pine tree. The tall man leaves and reappears with a shovel and a large cloth bag. He begins to dig at the roots of the pine tree. When he is satisfied with the hole he has dug, he takes a cat-sized object from the bag and places it in the hole. The wind-up bird sings once more. The tall man on the ground fills in his hole and leaves. The wind-up bird never sings again. The boy tries to stay awake to find out what happens to the shorter man in the pine tree, but sleep overtakes him.

Toru finds the woman’s office: the Akasaka Fashion Design. A young, impeccably dressed man lets Toru in. While they wait, the young man doesn’t speak, not even when he answers the phone. Before long, he mouths to Toru to follow him. In another room, the man takes out swim goggles and instructs Toru to put them on. Toru can tell that the man isn’t actually speaking, yet he can understand him completely. The man puts the goggles on Toru’s face, and Toru’s vision is blacked out. The man signals to Toru that he’ll be okay, then leaves the room.

Toru senses a woman come into the room. She leans near him and licks the mark on his face, giving Toru an erection. Toru tries to separate his mind from his body. He can feel two realities at once: his presence sitting on the sofa, and a displacement from his body. The woman leaves and the young man once again enters. He removes Toru’s goggles and brings him to the bathroom, where he is given soap for a shower. At first confused, Toru realizes that he had ejaculated into his pants. After his shower, the young man gives him a white envelope and Toru leaves.

On his way to the train station, Toru stops for a beer. He opens the white envelope and finds 200,000 yen in crisp bills. He stops at a shoe store to buy a new pair of sneakers. At home, Toru sits alone and wishes he had someone to talk to.

Toru thinks about how he essentially sold his flesh for money, like Creta Kano. Although he hadn’t had sex with anyone, he had gone to a location, allowed somebody to touch him, and walked away with a large sum of money. Toru has a premonition of change up ahead. Sure enough, when he comes home from grocery shopping, his missing cat greets him at the door.  

May Kasahara writes Toru a letter. She reports that she left home for a boarding school but dropped out after a semester. Now May is in a different place. Although she doesn’t define it as such, her descriptions of the place make it sound like a psychiatric institution. She misses Toru and has often wanted to visit him. She often made herself worry that Toru would rape her, though she knew it’s not something Toru would do. She worries she’s not ready for a boyfriend. 

The cat doesn’t look like he’s been out in the wild for a year, but he eats ravenously. Toru renames the cat Mackerel. He is happy to have the cat, a living, warm being, close to him.

The next day, Toru goes back to his usual people-watching bench. The woman who sent him to the office the day before shows up. He follows her into a cab and they stop at a boutique, where she buys Toru expensive suits. She brings him to a luxury shoe store and buys him shoes, then to a watch store and buys him a nice watch. She brings him to a barber, where he gets his hair cut for the first time in a while. She and Toru go to an Italian restaurant for dinner, where she tells him that she will pay for his cleaning moving forward. He asks her why she is giving him so much. She doesn’t respond. Toru asks if the young man in the office the day before is her son. She confirms but doesn’t tell Toru why her son can’t speak. She tells Toru that she likes when people wear the right thing, because that at least can be controlled. 

Toru asks for her name, but she is puzzled why he would need her name. He tells her he needs something to call her by, so she tells him to call her Nutmeg Akasaka. He asks about her son, and she tells him to call her son Cinnamon Akasaka. 

A magazine reports that the “hanging house” has been bought by a mysterious company, possibly the Akasaka company, on behalf of a Mr. X. The report details the house’s tragic past and questions what Mr. X will do with it. A huge wall with a security camera has been built around the house, and a landscaper has been called in to dig out a well. 

Toru descends into the newly built well. He embraces the total darkness and thinks about the people back up on Earth, living in light. He meditates until he is back in Room 208, where he tries to listen to what the mysterious woman in the dark has to say. He knows she holds the key to something, and he waits patiently. But each time he enters the room and senses the woman, knocks on the door interrupt the meditation and take him away from the dream. 

Nutmeg Akasaka tells the story of her boat journey as a child in 1945, when Japan was at war. The Americans were winning the war, Okinawa had fallen, and she was escaping Manchukuo. When a submarine stopped the boat for inspection, Nutmeg’s consciousness drifted to another dire situation. She envisioned Japanese soldiers moving through a zoo in Manchukuo and shooting animals ahead of the Soviet takeover.

The Japanese soldiers were supposed to kill the animals with poison to save bullets, but the poison never arrived. The zoo was running out of food, and predatory animals would soon turn their hunger on humans. After shooting the tigers, a young soldier is sent into the pen to make sure the tigers are dead. Astounded by the sight of real tigers, the young man is traumatized by what he sees. He hears the chirping of a bird unlike any he has heard before coming from the top of an elm tree. The chirp sounded like a winding spring.

When she finishes her story, Nutmeg reflects that the memory feels too vivid to be real, though she is certain it must be. Her father had been a vet in Manchuria and stayed behind when the war got bad. She never heard of him again and is sure he must have died there. Nutmeg and Toru meet regularly for dinner, where they speak openly about their lives. Toru explains his situation with Kumiko, and Nutmeg compares it to The Magic Flute, an opera in which a princess needs to be saved from a mysterious place.

Nutmeg’s story of the zoo massacre ends with the Chinese taking over operations of the killing in exchange for the meats, which will be valuable in rationed war time. The veterinarian of the zoo leaves the carcasses with the Chinese and ponders the meaning of life under a tree, realizing that free will makes no difference in the grand scheme of things.

Back on that transport ship, Nutmeg slept deeply as the American navy prepares to sink the ship. But a mysterious energy shifted, and the US submarine disappeared without a shot fired. Later, the passengers realized that the Americans must have gotten a direct order not to fire unless provoked, for a Japanese surrender was imminent. Her memories of this day were from her mother’s recollections. 

May writes Toru another letter, revealing that she is working in a wig factory. She enjoys the manual labor but feels disconnected from the other girls, who are working at the factory until they get married and start a new life. 

The little boy believes he is in a dream. He digs up the hole the tall man created in the ground. The boy finds a beating human heart in the hole. Curiously, the heart beats at the same rhythm as the boy’s heart, as though they are one and the same. The boy refills the hole, burying the heart. He goes back to his room and is frustrated to find someone sleeping in his bed. When he pushes back the covers, he sees himself, sound asleep. He tries to wake himself up, but his sleeping self won’t budge. The little boy pushes himself aside as much as he can and goes to sleep next to his sleeping self. When he wakes up in the morning, there is only one little boy in the bed. Everything appears normal, except for small details and senses. The boy knows this is not the same bedroom he went to sleep in. He is unable to call for his mother.

A magazine article reports that an actress named “M” went into a depression after falling out with her husband. The depression was so deep, insiders were certain her illustrious film career would be over. M contacted a psychic who was recommended by a friend of a famous former politician. The psychic successfully got M off antidepressants, but M’s symptoms flared back again. When she called the psychic, M was informed that the psychic was no longer practicing spiritual care because she lost her powers. But the psychic introduced M to another person, swearing M to secrecy. This person was a man with a mark on his face, who finally cured her of her depression. M got better but never told anybody what the treatments were. 

Toru takes a break from the well to go home and rest. There is a strange man, repellently ugly, sitting on his sofa. The man introduces himself as Ushikawa. He tells Toru that he let himself in using Kumiko’s keys. Ushikawa works as a private secretary for Noboru and has been taking care of Kumiko’s errands, since she is not able to go outside. He compliments Toru on keeping a clean household and admits that he was terrible at domestic duties. He beat his wife and alienated his frightened children. His wife finally left him when Ushikawa broke his daughter’s arm in a rage.

Ushikawa informs Toru that Noboru sent him with two messages. The first is that Noboru won’t stand in the way if Kumiko and Toru decide to get back together. The second is that Noboru suspects that Toru is connected to “The Hanging House” and he is worried that Toru will bring some dishonor to the family if he is connected with this property. If Toru gives up the house, Noboru would consider setting up a meeting between Toru and Kumiko. Toru declares that he will get Kumiko back on his own, and that Noboru has no business interfering with Toru’s home. Ushikawa accepts his response but assures Toru that this will not be their last meeting. 

Nutmeg tells Toru that Cinnamon stopped talking just before he turned six years old. She brought him to several specialists, and none could diagnose a physical or emotional issue with Cinnamon. Cinnamon delivers groceries and clean clothes to Toru. Although they don’t talk to one another, Cinnamon’s presence is friendly. They sit and drink coffee together, keeping one another company through the silence.

Nutmeg educated Cinnamon herself. Although he didn’t speak, he learned many languages and was an excellent student. When Cinnamon was 12 years old, his grandmother died and he took over care of the house.

Nutmeg suspects the reason Cinnamon lost his speech was because he was too invested in her story about the zoo massacre. She believes that “[h]is words were lost in the labyrinth swallowed up by the world of the stories. Something that came out of those stories snatched his tongue away” (444). Nutmeg posits that the same thing killed her husband.

After his regular morning coffee with Cinnamon, Toru reenters the well.

May writes a third letter to Toru. She is excelling in her work at the wig factory and is popular with the other girls there, even though she feels so different from them. She wonders if she will stay a virgin forever and tells Toru that she has no goals, but she also doesn’t think she’s in a transitional period. From May’s point of view, her job at the wig factory could be the end of the line. Even though she writes that she is happy, she also writes that she sometimes wakes up in terror. 

Ushikawa calls Toru and asks if he can come over. They meet in Toru’s house. Ushikawa tells Toru he will set up a communication between he and Kumiko. He also tells Toru that he discovered the contract between Toru and the company that bought the property with the well, but he and Noboru are curious about how Toru was able to come up with such an arrangement. Ushikawa assures Toru that Noboru is willing to pay a lot of money to buy Toru out of the property. As he leaves, Ushikawa promises Toru that he will be in touch soon with a way to communicate with Kumiko.

Nutmeg had a peculiar job. She would welcome in wealthy women in need of something. She gave them treatments but could never cure them. The women were recommended to her by a friend whose husband owned a luxurious department store. Nutmeg made her offices look like a fashion studio to avoid suspicion. When he was old enough, Cinnamon started to work for her, and the women found his presence very comforting. But after a few years, Nutmeg began to tire of her job. She knew she had found her successor when she saw the man with the mark on his face sitting on a city bench.

May writes a fourth letter to Toru. She tells him how she always felt out of place in her dull and unimaginative family. May’s parents see the world in logical order, but May knows that world is random and chaotic. She doesn’t like the mark on Toru’s face because it makes it seem like he’s giving up something of himself in exchange for something. She can’t articulate these “somethings” but still warns Toru not to give all of himself away to others. 

Ushikawa calls Toru to tell him that Kumiko is willing to talk to him, but not face to face. Instead, Ushikawa suggests that Toru use the computer in the new house—which Toru refers to as the Residence—to bridge communication with Kumiko. Toru worries that he can’t be certain the person he’s talking to on the computer is Kumiko. Ushikawa suggests that Toru start by asking Kumiko a question that only she would know the answer to. Ushikawa asks for the password to the computer, but Toru has never used the computer in the Residence.

The computer in the Residence is Cinnamon’s domain. Toru successfully guesses that the password is “Zoo” and logs in. Toru follows Ushikawa’s instructions to initiate Chat Mode.

Nutmeg and her mother escaped from Manchuria to Japan at the end of World War II. They took refuge with family members, but Nutmeg always felt like her mother’s family wasn’t where she belonged. As Nutmeg grew up, she cared less for school and more for fashion. Nutmeg put herself through design school by taking on part-time work as a seamstress. Nutmeg was talented, and her bosses promoted her to head of her own section of fashion design. Her fashion career took off, and she did not care about men or marriage.

When Nutmeg was 27 years old, she met her husband, another fashion designer. They married in 1963 and had a child shortly after that. She moved her mother in with her to help care for the baby while Nutmeg continued to work. Though she wasn’t ever sure if she truly loved her husband, they had an inspiring professional friendship. She and her husband amassed a great following and hired a business manager. Her husband, thoughawkward, became a cultural icon known for his artsy charm, but Nutmeg did most of the designing. As their company grew, Nutmeg and her husband grew further apart.

In 1975, Nutmeg’s husband was murdered in a hotel room. Someone killed him and cut out his organs, which were never found. There were too many fingerprints in the room to be of any use in a trial, and the murderer was never caught. After her husband’s gruesome murder, Nutmeg sold their company and lived off the money from the sale and stock investments. Nutmeg discovered a strange power while she was mourning the loss of her mother, who died of heart disease shortly after her husband’s murder.

Nutmeg’s power revealed itself when she was chatting with the wife of a department store owner. The wife had knelt to the ground, holding her head in pain. Nutmeg massaged her right temple and saw visions of the zoo massacre. The massage cured the wife’s head pains. A month later, the wife called Nutmeg to invite her to lunch. The woman asked Nutmeg to massage her temple again. Nutmeg focused on her memories of the zoo massacre while massaging the woman and the wife was again cured of her pains. Soon, the wife was bringing her friends to pay Nutmeg for massages.

A news report details new information about the “hanging house.” The company that bought the property is legitimate, but the reporter suspects political ties. A black Mercedes is the only vehicle that enters and exits the property, usually in the afternoons. There doesn’t seem to be anyone living in the house, as though it’s some sort of commuter location.

At the agreed-upon time, Toru logs into Cinnamon’s computer and inputs the numbers Ushikawa gave him. The chat with Kumiko begins. Toru starts by asking Kumiko to verify her identity by answering a question. He asks her what had most fascinated her at the aquarium. Kumiko replies with the correct answer: jellyfish from all around the world. He tells her the cat returned safely. He asks her where she has been and why she won’t meet with him face-to-face. Kumiko tells him that she’s been through a transformation that may be bad; she is no longer the Kumiko he once knew. She tells him that she and Toru have been separated into two different worlds, and that as painful as this may be, they need to finalize the divorce and Toru needs to forget about her.

Toru insists on knowing what she means by “going bad.” Kumiko types that there are a lot of ways to go bad, and that for her it happened over a long period of time. Toru asks her why she sought help from Noboru of all people. Kumiko tells him that she is where she is meant to be, even if it isn’t of her choosing. Toru writes that, though Kumiko tells him to forget about her, he can sense her voice calling out for his help. He writes that he is getting closer to her and won’t give up searching for her. Abruptly, Kumiko says goodbye and leaves the chat.