Norwegian Wood

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail.”

At the beginning of Norwegian Wood, an older Watanabe reflects back on his youth and thinks about the nature of memory. He can clearly remember things that he never even considered at the time, like the landscape in the meadow, but it is harder to recall what seemed more important, such as Naoko’s face. The fact that Watanabe recalls the meadow in such detail while admitting that he didn’t pay attention to it at the time suggests that he has returned to the scene in his mind many times, possibly even reconstructing and reimagining it.

“Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.”

Watanabe decides to write down his memories as he feels them slipping away, but he worries that he has already forgotten too much or that he remembers things incorrectly. However, as many of the people from his past are gone forever, his memories, however “imperfect” they might be, must stand on their own. The image of a starving man sucking on bones gives the impression that Watanabe’s memories are all he has to sustain himself but that they can give him no true nourishment.