The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“After lunch, I went back to my library novel on the living room sofa, glancing every now and then at the telephone. What were we supposed to understand about each other in ten minutes? What can two people understand about each other in ten minutes? Come to think of it, she seemed awfully sure about those ten minutes: it was the first thing out of her mouth. As if nine minutes would be too short or eleven minutes too long. Like cooking spaghetti al dente.”

This quote emphasizes a major theme in Murakami’s novel: It takes a long journey to know oneself and others. Early in the novel, the narrator Toru is already thinking about his distance from people and from himself. The idea that people could connect deeply in ten minutes seems ridiculous to him, which foreshadows his future challenges in relying on people quickly throughout his adventure. It is also notable that Toru compares getting to know people to cooking, as though there could be or ought to be a recipe to human nature.

“There was a small stand of trees nearby, and from it you could hear the mechanical cry of a bird that sounded as if it were winding a spring. We called it the wind-up bird. Kumiko gave it the name. We didn’t know what it was really called or what it looked like, but that didn’t bother the wind-up bird. Every day it would come to the stand of trees in our neighborhood and wind the spring of our quiet little world.”

The wind-up bird here is the same wind-up bird in the title of the novel. Murakami introduces the wind-up bird as a symbol for the world disrupting the solitary peace a person might crave. Toru has simple desires of staying home, cooking, and listening to music, but just as the wind-up bird’s chirping will disrupt his quiet, so will the world in all its bizarreness interrupt his solitude. Toru cannot see the wind-up bird, just as a person cannot see the random occurrences of life coming their way.