Norwegian Wood

           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.