A typhoon brought in rain from the south today. The amount of rain and wind is unpredictable, so I layered on my raingear this morning, piece by piece. From plastic bags in my shoes, to trash bags covering my back pack and a rain jacket, I waterproofed myself as well as I could. When I finally went outside, I was surprised at well I had wrapped myself up and how dry I managed to stay on the way to the train station. The visor attached to my jacket shielded my eyes from the worst of it and kept the rain off my face and out of my eyes.
As I waited at the train station, the usual group of high school boys eyed me as they talked amongst themselves. When I got on the train, I placed my backpack on the overhead rack, as usual, after taking out Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. As I became immersed in the book my thoughts began to take on the particular quality of the words. The translation is very good, though I wish my Japanese was good enough that I could read it in the original Japanese.
The story is not sad, not exactly, but throughout the story the theme of suicide is touched on frequently. This ordinary boy living day to day is faced with so many stories of suicide, and is deeply impacted by one that touched his life during high school. The thing that strikes me the most is that he doesn’t understand either. I have never understood the high rate of suicide in Japan; why you see it on the news all the time, why there are trends for different types of the suicide. The character Watanabe doesn’t seem to understand either. For a book that takes place in the free time of the 60s, it seems that while some things in Japanese culture have changed dramatically, others have remained the same.
This book doesn’t make me feel sad, as I might have expected. Instead, there is a certain quality of “the real” that imbues it. The characters seem so real, like the type of people you meet everyday. Woven throughout the story are references to great Western books, like Cather in the Rye and The Great Gatsby, and other authors as well; Dickens and Faulkner. The theme of the book, the melody of Norwegian Wood, reoccurs throughout. The story is bittersweet at times, but also reminds me of college days.
Upon arriving at the train station, I watched as the other cyclists wrapped themselves and their belongings in plastic and waterproofs and I felt a strange sense of unity with them; we are all the ones biking in the rain because we must. As I cycled the last leg of my route, from the train station to my office, I thought about this book and half formed thoughts floated throughout my head, but I couldn’t remember the words to Norwegian Wood.
