Norwegian Wood

Toru’s secondary love interest, Midori, is a bright, talkative, adventurous student at Waseda University. A free-spirited drama major who says whatever is on her mind—most of the time, at least—Midori is Naoko’s polar opposite in almost every way. Dramatic, provocative, and opinionated, Midori strikes up a friendship with Toru after borrowing some class notes from him one afternoon. Toru finds himself charmed by her easygoing nature, emotional openness, and ability to talk about the traumatic events in her past with humor rather than gravity. Midori attended a private girls’ school which left her feeling bitter and disdainful towards the upper-middle class—she is grateful to study at a public university where she can be around people like her. Midori helps to run her family’s shop, the Kobayashi Bookstore, and tells Toru that her father has been living in Uruguay since her mother’s death from a brain tumor years earlier. Toru eventually learns, however, that Midori’s father, Mr. Kobayashi, is actually in a local hospital, dying of the same malignancy that took her mother’s life. In spite of all the loss she’s faced, Midori opens her heart to Toru again and again, and seeks to fully enjoy her own life. In this regard, Midori struggles to teach Toru that he doesn’t have to be aloof and disconnected in the face of the losses he’s suffered—rather than resign himself to grave ponderings about death, everything about her suggests, she should instead radically commit to living while he’s able to do so. Ultimately, the novel remains ambiguous as to whether Toru ever lets Midori get through to him and whether they’re able to pursue the relationship they both seem to want—though Midori is frustrated by Toru’s constant prioritization of Naoko over her, it seems as if she might be open to reconciliation, and yet by the novel’s end Toru is so bewildered and isolated by everything he’s been through that he may very well be unable to even recognize the vital, vibrant Midori any longer.