Junctions to be Aware of

There are a couple of intersections that we shouldn’t fail to notice in the book as they not only manifests Murakami’s intelligent schemes but also assists us in connecting the book into one full story. Half through dreams, and half through stumbling around, Okada is putting together pieces of his puzzle. However, he needs to bracket himself from the everyday flow of the modern world. The method by which he chooses to do this is by descending into the dry well of the yard in his neighborhood. There, he faces the historic flow of events, both individual and collective. One interesting piece of information is that getting deeper in history seems to have been professed to Mr. Toru Okada by Mr. Honda, the psychic friend of his wife’s family. Fascinatingly Mr. Honda had arranged a contact between Okada and Lt. Mamiya by having Lt. Mamiya deliver to Okada Honda’s keepsake, which turned out to be empty. Be that as it may, meeting Lt. Mamiya seems to be even more useful than an object owing to the fact that Lt. Mamiya has also spent some time in a different well on the Mongolian front as well as in a Soviet prison camp. Then there are stories of Malta and Creta Kano whose story parallels, then intersects, Kumiko’s as well as her sister’s. As you have read, we learn that like Creta, Kumiko’s sister was defiled by her brother Noboru Wataya and later committed suicide. Noboru Wataya himself is connected to World War II Japan through his profession (politics) and a position in a parliament inherited from his uncle. Keeping that in mind, Nutmeg tells Toru about the terrible event of the zoo killing during the Manchurian War and the role of her father in it, who captivatingly is in many ways similar to Okada. The most superficial yet obvious similarity is that they both bear dark marks on their cheeks. More importantly, such a mark seems associated with healing powers. For this reason he’s recognized and treated very appropriately by Nutmeg (she needs these powers as she’s getting tired). Healing becomes Okada’s new job. The story holds an enthralling story line in which Murakami ingeniously uses foreshadowing to trigger our senses and attempt to predict and make connections between the various characters of the book. His writing style is different for each of the characters and when he speaks of the ‘boy’ who sees these men digging a whole and placing a canvas inside we feel like we’re in Toru’s mind as the narrator is not the same it comes from the author himself rather than Toru’s observations through which we receive the story.