There’s his precocious sixteen-year-old neighbour, May Kasahara, and Lieutenant Mamiya, an elderly man with stories of Japanese atrocities during the continental war in the 1930s and 1940s. However, the sisters are far from the only new acquaintances he makes on his search for the cat. Bad things that seem good at first, and good things that seem bad at first.” The disappearance of your cat is only the beginning.” Okada,” she said, “I believe that you are entering a new phase of your life in which many different things will occur.

Kumiko arranges for a psychic, Malta Kano, and her beautiful sister, Creta, to get involved, and from the start the unusually-named Malta has a clear message for Toru: You see, Toru’s wife, Kumiko, is upset about the disappearance of their cat, and this seemingly simple concern soon spirals into something rather strange. He soon hangs up, but this odd intrusion into a very ordinary day is merely the start of a string of unusual occurrences. While waiting for his spaghetti to get to just the right texture, he’s interrupted by a telephone call, in which a seductive female voice urges him to give her ten minutes of his time. Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (translated by Jay Rubin) begins with the epitome of the everyman, Toru Okada, making pasta and listening to Rossini in his suburban Tokyo home. It’s a book you will almost certainly have heard of, by a writer you can’t possible be unaware of, and as well as being a work that launched a thousand memes, it’s actually a very, very good read 🙂

To kick the month off, though, I’m looking at a book I’ve read several times before, albeit in pre-blogging times, so it’s a perfect opportunity to rectify what looks like a surprising oversight in my catalogue of reviews. I’ve got a lot of books lined up (too many, if I’m honest), and I think you’ll all be interested in my selections, even if they’re probably slanted more towards older, even classic, works. Having finally got all of my posts on 2021 out of the way, I’m now free to start a new year of reviewing, and as most of you will be aware, round these parts that means only one thing – #JanuaryInJapan! Yes, as has been the case for many years now, I’ll be focusing on Japanese literature for a month or so, and I’m looking forward to this annual opportunity to indulge my love of J-Lit immensely.

Kumiko okada the wind up bird chronicle