Often those characters, like Kumiko Okada in Murakami's acclaimed masterpiece The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, have in turn been the victims of abuse. But the most terrifying and subtle predators in Murakami's worlds are the female characters who inflict psychological violence, often on naive and emotionally vulnerable young men. In men, that predatory instinct can manifest as violence against women, and Murakami frequently introduces sexually violent male characters in novels including After Dark and his latest, 1Q84. The rapacious aspects of some human relationships is a theme that Murakami tackles again and again.
The desperate hunger of winter also brings out nature's predators. Horrifying because there are all too many people caught and suffering in exactly this state of suspended grief in our world. Even as an older man reflecting upon his life, Toru Watanabe remains horrifyingly ignorant of the sequence of deaths and suicides that have left him trapped in a state of half-life. And trapped in that ignorance, the natural processes of grief cannot unfold and heal their psyche. Caught in our cultural ignorance of death, they often fail to recognise the impact of loss on their lives. Death throws the characters in Murakami's fiction into the never-ending cold and dark of perpetual winter. Winter throws the world into cold and dark, freezing the rivers and sending life in to hibernation, until the sun returns and spring thaws the world out. Norwegian Wood's enduring popularity with adolescent and 20-something readers rests on the simple insights into death, loss and griefs it conveys, so absolutely lacking from the youth culture that dominates the mass media. The dying are kept out of sight in care homes and hospices, and when we represent death in popular culture it is as an aberration in the pantheon of immortals whose stellar lives fill our television screens. But like the young characters in Murakami's novels, we are born into a culture that hides and denies death. It reminds us that death is natural and inexorable. Shortly afterwards Naoko commits suicide in that frozen landscape, and while Toru's life continues, a part of him remains forever wandering in winter. Toru walks beside Naoko for the last time in the snow-blanketed woods surrounding the mental institution where she is undergoing intensive therapy.
When 30-something Toru Watanabe hears a fragment of the titular Beatles track after a long airplane flight, his memories are returned to his days as a young student and his love affair with the beautiful but damaged Naoko. T he novel that raised Haruki Murakami to literary superstardom ranges across the seasons, but the heart of its meaning is found in winter.
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