This
was the first time reading Haruki Murakami’s long novel, although I had read
several short stories by him. Based on the impressions on the short stories
that I had read, I expected the Norwegian Wood to be quite bizarre but was
surprised to find out the first 50 pages of the novel actually quite accurately
reflected the psychology of human relationships.
Although
the part that we read was the intro part of the novel, Watanabe describes
several of the relationships he had with his ‘friends.’ The three main
relationships that he describes are one with Kizuki and Naoko, one with Storm
Trooper, and one with Nagasawa. The types of relationships Watanabe have all
differ with the varying people he meets. Kizuki is Watanabe’s assumed-to-be
best friend and Naoko is Kizuki’s girlfriend. After Kizuki died, Watanabe maintains
a guilty dating relationship with Naoko. Storm Trooper is Watanabe’s roommate,
but never did once Watanabe mention his real name. Storm Trooper is somewhat
unique and possibly annoying roommate, but Watanabe exaggerates the tales about
him over the extent to maintain his shallow relationship with others and even
Naoko. Nagasawa is a new wealthy friend Watanabe made through similar interest
in books, but after seeing Nagasawa’s sexual doings, Watanabe decided not to
open his heart for Nagasawa. What seems on the outside may seem different for
all three relationships but they have one thing in common: they are not
genuine.
Watanabe
himself is not sure what kind of relationship he is having with the people
around him. Rather it seems like Watanabe is using the people around him for
his own comforts. However, it did not seem like only Watanabe’s problem. People
around me and even I sometimes wonder about what kinds of relationship we are
sustaining with others. People gossip about others even when they are not that
annoying in order to get closer with each other and form a sense of belonging. Similar
to Watanabe, people who exaggerated tales themselves believe in them and the
vicious cycle continues until someone has a deep scar in their hearts. People
hang around together and have fun, but actually they feel that each other is
not their true friends and feel alone and lonely even when in the crowd. Generally
there are more shallow relationships than true, real relationships.
Recently,
there had been issues about depression and stress that comes from interactions
with other human beings. The survey with employees about the greatest cause of
stress turned out to be social life with others. Through the advancement of
communication, it became easier to people to contact each other, but in the
same way, the relationships became shallower. Because people are not true to
their close acquaintances and not care that much, people have to worry more
about the relationships become more calculated. If only people could be more
truthful to themselves and to the people around them, the relationships have
the possibility to grow deeper and not one-time happening.
