Norwegian Wood follows Toru, a Waseda college student and a pretentious Kafka fan defining his life story is the suicide of his best friend Kizuki two-years before the story and his hook-up with his highschool sweetheart, Naoko. Curious about the “Murakami’s World” emphatically sold on the hardcover, I took a copy. The last time I read a book from a Japanese author was in high school. This book still lines the “steady seller” section in bookstores, where it caught my eye. They would’ve been unaware of the contrast between the book’s chromatic cover and its hefty story-a contrast not unlike the time’s outward prosperity and inward confusion. Nobody knew how to use the cash earned through skyrocketing stocks and salaries, but some spent it on these colorful copies of Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, a two-volume set in holiday-themed scarlet and green. Murakami Haruki’s Norwegian Wood reached such shelves in the Christmas of ’87, with two delightfully themed scarlet and green volumes.Īround the Christmas of 1987, Tokyo citizens were witnessing the exponential increase in property prices the Tokyo Tower chromatically defined the scintillating night skyline Asahi released his popular Super Dry beer and with two years left in the Shōwa period, an unprecedented decade of prosperity.
The tight shelves of alleyway bookstores and large chains likewise were lined with such collections, all of standard size and format, with the occasional customer standing reading, halfway through a book held on a single hand.
It wasn’t many decades ago when commuters in Tokyo subways would have in their hands, in place of a phone, a similarly small-sized book-a bunko-bon.
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