Alison Post 4

Finishing Norwegian Wood, I began to wonder if Toru had committed suicide like so many others in his life had. He had danced on the edge between life and death for the majority of the work, with his associations with Naoko, and seemed utterly through with the world once she died. After sleeping with Reiko four (the number symbolic of death) times he seemed to be in another world when trying to contact Midori. However, I remembered that the novel starts out in the future with the rest of the work essentially being a flashback, which put a hole in the idea that Toru committed suicide at the end of the novel. So, I looked online to see what other people thought, and found Jay Rubin's response to a reader who asked about this topic in a forum. (Quoted in a comment a little down on the page: https://www.flickr.com/groups/22186094@N00/discuss/72057594129000378/)

"Hmmm, Simon's view makes sense--and is certainly consistent with the presence of "death" in Murakami's "other world" (as in DANCE DANCE DANCE), but to conclude that he is a ghost (a ghost who can write)--and has been a ghost for eighteen years--seems to me to throw out too many of the ground rules of reality that the novel itself has established since its opening lines. I don't think Murakami is deliberately jerking his readers around the way some of those movie examples (which do not involve written--published--pages) do. 

If you look at my HARUKI MURAKAMI AND THE MUSIC OF WORDS, though, on pp. 158-59, I emphasize the presence of death at the end of the book. The "four" occasions of lovemaking with Reiko seem deliberately to evoke the traditional Japanese association between "four" (shi) and "death" (shi): "By sleeping (four times) with Reiko, a sexually functional surrogate for the sexually dysfunctional Naoko, he implicitly chooses death and negativity (Naoko) over life (Midori); Toru will live with his memories of Naoko rather than give himself over to the vitality of Midori."

As translator, I chose to encourage this interpretation by using the expression "dead center" in the last line. The Japanese word for "center" is strongly emphasized but English "dead center" may have been--dare I say?--overkill."

It seems reasonable to think that Toru may not have died and instead gone on to live his life with the actually living Midori, but while still keeping one foot in the world of death. As Toru explained, death is a part of life. I believe he chose life, though not to the exclusion of death.