Norwegian Wood

While summer break is underway, the university calls the police to disperse the striking students. The barricades are broken down, and order is restored. When he returns to campus, Watanabe is “thunderstruck” to find everything in perfect order, and he wonders what the protesting students were doing all that time. Even worse, he discovers that the protesters are back in class, taking notes like nothing happened, all commitment to their cause gone. He thinks that Kizuki is “not missing a damn thing” and concludes that his education is “meaningless” (48). However, because he has nothing else to do, Watanabe continues attending school, treating it “as a period of training in techniques for dealing with boredom” (48). Mysteriously, Storm Trooper doesn’t return with the start of the new school year. Watanabe keeps the room clean in his roommate’s absence, but Storm Trooper never appears.

After a History of Drama class, Watanabe goes to a nearby restaurant for lunch. Halfway through his meal, a girl with a pixie cut and dark sunglasses sits beside him. At first, he doesn’t recognize her, and she introduces herself as Midori from his class. He remembers she used to have longer hair, but she tells him she cut it over the summer after a bad perm.