The Age of Loss: Original title, Norwegian Wood
- Author
- Haruki Murakami
- Publisher
- Munhak Sasangsa | Published 1989-06-01
- Category
- Novel
- Book description
- A huge bestseller that set a sales record of 6 million copies in Japan, living today's...
Although I lumped it into the miscellaneous 800s bundle, I think it's too much of a waste to put this book in this category. It's ambiguous to call it simply world literature. But I also don't want to describe it as a slightly 'peripheral' book of the miscellaneous 800s. That's because this book is one that gave me insights and brought me emotion and reflection in various areas, such as thought, the practical aspects of life, and human relationships. A book containing reflections on death and sex, its original title is said to be 'Norwegian Wood,' and you'll understand a little why it's Norwegian Wood only if you know the lyrics of that song. But I'm not of the generation that admired 'the Beatles'; perhaps because I'm of the generation that simply 'just listened to' the Beatles, I think the title Norwegian Wood is one that can give me no resonance at all. But the words 'the age of loss' resonate even without often using the word 'sense of loss,' so should I say I could understand it without difficulty; at least the title succeeded in making me infer something. Truly, if there's anyone Murakami should most repay for his works becoming successful in Korea, it's the person who gave it the title 'The Age of Loss.'
The 'loss' that is the material of this book is based fundamentally on loss in human relationships. And it's also a loss of one's own goals toward the world, and a loss of the past that the protagonist Watanabe himself experiences. Among these, first the 'loss in human relationships': Watanabe's first loss was the loss of Kizuki, and the second was the loss of 'Naoko,' a person who was at once a friend, a lover, and someone in a relationship hard to define. The reason the first is important is that in unfolding this story, the start is from the moment Watanabe thinks of Naoko. They meet, their relationship gradually grows closer, at some point the two enter a hotel room, and (Naoko, who had never once been wet before) they have sex out of an excitement she herself didn't expect, and from the next day Naoko can't be reached. Toward her, Watanabe feels an inexplicable emotion of love overlapping at the same time with emotions hard to define. Only, as shown in the way he takes action, Watanabe's consistency toward Naoko stood out: he doesn't think of her excessively, yet he acts to consider Naoko beyond the minimum courtesy. Moreover, the fact that, with some indescribable hope (because on the surface she appeared to be recovering, though in reality she wasn't), he thinks she'll recover and be able to live with him, I understood as ultimately because Watanabe loved Naoko to some degree. But since that Naoko ends up committing suicide in the end, this ultimately becomes a 'loss.'
The protagonist Watanabe had relationships that weren't broad, but he's the type of person who talks at a fairly deep level with the people he forms relationships with. Few but deep relationships, with Kizuki, with Naoko, and with Nagasawa too. He also treats Reiko and Midori, whom he hasn't known long, almost the same as the people he knew before. This trait of the protagonist Watanabe really struck a chord with me. For me, who doesn't socialize with a broad range of people, perhaps because his unwavering attitude looked so similar to how I treat people, I was very grateful that this book seemed to translate into the right words the mindsets I usually found hard to express. Because I felt as if my frustration had been somewhat relieved.
What about my own human relationships? I'm strictly divided into 'businesslike relationships' and 'life.' Businesslike relationships have really only the minimum of exchange, I'd say. Just enough nodding along and 'cooperation' for work consultations, but without sharing any personal feelings, just exchanging the bare minimum of words. As a result, in practice I have serious conversations only with the people I form proper 'human relationships' with. I've lived this way continuously, feeling that if I don't live this way I'll collapse. It's my unavoidable 'character.'
The second loss, the loss of a 'goal': the protagonist Watanabe isn't a person with any goal. Nagasawa, who lives with him in the dormitory, has a 'goal' of testing himself. But that goal too is merely a goal to symbolically demonstrate resistance against the system, not an action for self-development or social benefit. It's really hard to call this a 'goal.' Everyone is ambiguous about whether it's clearly a goal for oneself; Naoko, too, wasn't certain in her thinking that she absolutely had to go back. Reiko, too, wasn't necessarily trying to return to society, but rather had the atmosphere of someone who, wandering inside, leaves when a friend contacts her. Since this sense of loss regarding goals is laid throughout the book, no one does anything tremendously eagerly, and the narrative unfolds 'like flowing water.' The narrator 'I' develops it slowly, boldly omitting parts here and there while at the same time unfolding the story slowly. That doesn't seem to mean he's trying to tell some random story either. It's a development without 'purposefulness.' Thanks to that, I was able to read this book comfortably, and it was also hard to predict the story that followed.
Probably, the reason this 'wandering' and 'directionlessness' played a part in portraying the 20s-and-30s of that society at the time is that it most closely meshed with that era's conditions. As a writer who held antipathy toward the Zenkyoto, it was probably because he had seen those 'wandering people' contrasted with the passionate students of the time. I too don't have a definite goal set right now, and perhaps for that reason it's true that I came to understand these actions of Watanabe.
But I think Watanabe's 'loss of the past' is comparatively positive. In the sense that he steps over the past and looks back on where he himself is again, I'd like to say this loss is the most valuable, more than the other losses. Because while Watanabe ultimately lost the past called 'Naoko,' he gained a 'something' about the future called 'Midori.' There may be people who say Watanabe is wrong for being torn between Midori and Naoko, but realistically it's not easy to continue a relationship with someone you can't even properly see once a month. It wasn't an era of frequent contact, and in a situation of at most letters or phone calls, with an environment where replies don't come every week.
Although Naoko dies, if, through the process of Reiko having sex with me—with Watanabe—Watanabe sets down his own heavy feelings about Naoko (in other words, loses the past), then should I say Reiko encounters Watanabe as a passage to advance into the 'real world'; in any case it's because, from the time she cut off her relationship with society and came to 'Ami Hostel,' she might never have been able to go outside again.
'Naoko - Kizuki - Watanabe,' 'Hatsumi - Nagasawa - Watanabe,' 'Watanabe - Midori - Midori's boyfriend,' 'Reiko - Naoko - Watanabe'—in this book, relationships of three people appear especially often. As if this implies that relationships between just two people are mostly 'incomplete': Midori breaks up with her lover, Kizuki dies, Hatsumi too eventually carries out suicide later, and Naoko also resolutely takes her own life. I think this is the model of the book that the author pursues, and it seemed to emphasize that while the relationship of one or two people is incomplete, when three gather it is maintained and harmonized. For people who are incomplete, in other words people with a 'lack,' I think it was meaningful that he keeps showing that the 'human relationship' that's hard to maintain with two people is maintained with three. Whether when Naoko, Reiko, and Watanabe are in the same place, or when Kizuki, Naoko, and Watanabe are together, I wonder whether one should consider valuable the 'peace' maintained in that moment (it seems hard to replace it simply with the word 'peace'..). Only, because the protagonists of this book all have something they're lacking, well, it might also be possible to say it's a different story from me, who is comparatively not lacking.
The reason I read this book every autumn is that the feeling of being completely opened up just by looking at the autumn sky is strange yet good, while also bittersweet. I've never thought I should read this book in this season, but it's also because there's no book that resonates as aptly as this book's title. So this year I'm reading it alongside a travelogue about Nietzsche's Zarathustra. Basking in the fresh sunlight in spring, getting worn out by the heat in summer, and being sick of the cold in winter, I don't reflect on the 'existential problems' of life—but I get the sense that I've done such reflection every year by reading this book.
Comments 0
No comments yet. Be the first.