Norwegian Wood: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

As autumn turns to winter, Toru feels as if he is slogging along through time. Though everyone around him is talking about revolution, he doesn’t see any real changes occurring and doesn’t feel anything meaningful happening in his own life. He continues going to classes, working in the record store, writing to Naoko, and hanging out with Midori, who has moved into a new apartment in a more upscale neighborhood along with Momoko. He avoids going out with Nagasawa—Hatsumi’s words got to him, and he is trying to be loyal to Naoko.

At the winter break, Toru goes to Kyoto to visit Naoko and Reiko at the Ami Hostel. The mountains are beautiful and blanketed in snow, and the three of them spend their days hiking through the woods. The visit is enjoyable, but Toru notices that Naoko is incredibly quiet for most of it.

One afternoon, Reiko leaves the apartment to do some chores. As soon as Naoko and Toru are alone, they kiss and grope each other, and Naoko again uses her hands to bring Toru to climax. As they lie down holding each other afterwards, Naoko asks if Toru has slept with anyone else. He says he hasn’t, and, as a kind of reward, Naoko performs oral sex on Toru until he orgasms again.

Toru tells Naoko that he’s planning on moving out of the dorm at the end the end of the school year and finding a new apartment. He asks Naoko if she’s ready to come to Tokyo, reminding her that the longer she stays at the Ami Hostel, the harder it will be to leave. Naoko doesn’t answer him, and Toru tells her to take her time in making a decision, as his home will always be open to her. Naoko confesses that she’s worried about her inability to get aroused—she says she’s afraid she’ll never be able to have sex again. Toru promises that he’ll help her figure things out. After three days at the hostel, Toru departs with the promise that he’ll come back to visit in March.

1970 arrives, and Toru feels relieved to put both the ’60s and his teenage years behind him. He passes his final exams with ease, but in the weeks leading up to and following them, political tensions in the dormitory begin leading to small fights between some residents every day. Toru decides he needs to get out of the dorms. He quickly finds a small cottage to rent from a kindly landlord in another neighborhood. Toru describes his new apartment in a letter to Naoko, mentioning the spacious verandah and the neighborhood cats that gather on the lawn. He asks Naoko to come to live in Tokyo starting in April—he believes springtime is the best time to start new adventures—and offers, again, to come back to the Ami Hostel in March to visit.

Toru fixes up the cottage and builds himself a desk and some shelves. He also adopts a stray all-white kitten and names her Seagull. To help pay for his moving expenses, Toru gets a job as a painter’s assistant. One day, while working, he thinks about Midori and realizes he hasn’t reached out to her in nearly three weeks; she doesn’t even know he’s moved. After work, Toru heads to a phone booth to call Midori, but Momoko picks up and explains that Midori is too angry to talk. Toru begs to speak to Midori, but Momoko says that once Midori gets mad, she stays that way, “like an animal.” As Toru hangs up, he feels guilty for not telling Midori about his move. Though they’re not lovers, they do share a deep intimacy, and he is angry with himself for hurting her so callously. 

Toru spends the whole spring waiting for answers to letters he’s sent to Midori and Naoko, but neither of them write him back. Toru passes the weeks largely in solitude, fixing up his cottage and helping his landlord trim, prune, and mow the lawn. The landlord, in exchange, gives Toru permission to take anything he’d like from an old storage shed, and Toru finds a guitar inside. After repairing and restringing it, Toru spends his time playing music for himself in the evenings and enjoying a quiet existence.

In April, Toru gets a letter from Reiko. The letter explains that Naoko has had trouble writing, and so Reiko has offered to write Toru in her place. Reiko delivers the bad news that Naoko’s condition is not very good—she has begun to describe voices talking to her even as she struggles to form even sentences of her own. Reiko says that though there are doctors on staff at the Ami Hostel, it’s not a specialized hospital—she fears Naoko will have to transfer to another facility if she gets any worse.

Reiko’s letter sends Toru into a deep depression which lasts for several days. He can’t understand why someone as lovely and kind as Naoko is doomed to suffer such a terrible illness. He spends the better part of three days lying around his house, hardly able to even eat. After three days, Toru receives a letter from Midori. In the letter she admits how much she misses him and asks him to join her for lunch on campus in a few days. Toru knows that he has to snap himself out of his depression, and, in preparation for meeting with Midori, he shaves, does laundry, goes grocery shopping, and exercises.

As the days go by, Toru worries incessantly about Naoko. For so long, he’d thought she was steadily getting better—to realize that she isn’t has thrown him into a tailspin, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can wait for her to recover. At the same time, Toru doesn’t want to turn his back on Naoko like Kizuki did in killing himself. As Toru imagines conversations with both Kizuki and Naoko in his head, he finds himself torn between his “sense of responsibility” to his own future, and that same sense of responsibility to the people and memories from his past.

Toru meets up with Midori, who remarks on his emaciated appearance as soon as she sees him. Over lunch, Midori apologizes for icing Toru out, and Toru apologizes for failing to let her know about the move. Midori, he says, is the best friend he has, and he doesn’t want to lose her. Midori says she’s grateful for Toru’s friendship, too—but that if he wanted to sleep with her, she’d “probably do it with [him].”

Midori and Toru spend the entire afternoon together visiting a bookstore, a game center, a coffee shop, and a park. While sitting in the park, Midori tells Toru she’s thirsty, so he goes off to get them some sodas. When he comes back, he finds her writing in a notebook. A little after three, Midori says she has to go meet her sister, and Toru walks Midori to the train station. As they’re saying goodbye, Midori pulls a piece of paper from her pocket and gives it to Toru, telling him to read it when he gets home.

On the train, Toru opens Midori’s letter and reads it. In the letter, which she wrote while Toru was off buying them sodas, Midori tells him how terribly he treated her all afternoon. He didn’t notice her new hairstyle or her cute outfit. Midori says that having to meet her sister is a lie—she was planning on spending the night at Toru’s new place, and even packed her pajamas and toothbrush in her bag, but he never once mentioned inviting her over. Midori says she’s not mad at Toru, just sad for him. He helped her when she was going through problems, but now that he’s having troubles of his own, he’s “locked up in that little world of [his.]” Midori ends the letter by telling Toru he’s “as sensitive as a steel plate,” then adds a post-script telling him not to speak to her in class.

As soon as Toru gets off the train, he tries to call Midori from a payphone—but no one picks up at her apartment. After ambling around the neighborhood and eating dinner, Toru heads home and tries calling from there, but Momoko picks up and says that Midori hasn’t come home. Toru sits down to write to Midori but struggles to come up with the right words, so he decides to write to Naoko instead. In the letter, he writes that he thinks all the time about the last time Naoko touched him.

The next day, Toru takes a job waiting tables at a small Italian restaurant near his apartment. He tries calling Midori’s apartment again, and again Momoko answers. She reports that Midori has not been home since the day before, and that she is beginning to get worried. On Wednesday, though, Toru sees Midori in class. She is in the last row wearing dark sunglasses and talking with another girl. Toru approaches her and asks to talk to her after class, but Midori says she doesn’t want to talk to Toru.

Toru doesn’t talk to Midori for the rest of April and spends most of the month alone. He doesn’t hear from Naoko or Nagasawa, either, and he even starts to miss his old roommate, Storm Trooper. As May arrives, Toru feels a lonely “trembling” in his heart. Toru does makes friends with another student, Itoh, whom he meets through his job at the restaurant. Itoh is a painter who has similar taste in books and music to Toru, and the two of them bond over their girl troubles and their artistic preferences. One night, after getting drunk with Itoh, Toru calls Midori in a fit of loneliness and she finally picks up. He begs her to speak to him, but she tells him he has to wait until she feels like talking to him.

In the middle of May, Toru gets a letter from Reiko. Reiko reports that Naoko’s mother came from Kobe earlier in the week for a meeting with the doctor, after which it was determined that Naoko needed to move to a “real hospital” to receive more intensive treatment. Naoko has become “tremendously unstable,” Reiko writes, and must be supervised at all times. She is still hearing voices and has begun isolating herself from other patients. Reiko says she will be sad to see Naoko go, but believes deep down that Naoko needs more help than the Ami Hostel can provide. By the time Toru reads her letter, Reiko writes, Naoko will already be at a new hospital. Reiko includes the address of Naoko’s new facility but says she hopes Toru will still write to her, too.

Throughout the month, Toru continues writing letters to Reiko, Naoko, and Midori. He begins to feel as if writing letters is the only thing “hold[ing] together the pieces of [his] crumbling life.” He continues going to classes and working at the Italian restaurant and maintains a friendship with Itoh. In the middle of June, Midori sits down next to Toru one day after class and asks him if he likes her new hairstyle. Toru says it is “great enough to knock down all the trees in all the forests of the world.” Midori smiles and invites Toru to lunch.

Midori and Toru go to a department store to eat a special bento lunch—Midori complains that when she was a child, her parents never took her to department stores. After eating, they head up to the roof in spite of the fact that it’s raining. On the roof they walk around beneath their umbrellas, and Midori asks Toru to explain what’s been going on with him the last several months. Toru explains that he’s been sad and foggy, but that his sadness has been even worse without Midori. Midori says she’s missed Toru like crazy—she grew angry with him, she says, when she realized that he was spending all his time thinking about another girl.

Midori tells Toru that she broke up with her boyfriend after he gave her an ultimatum—him or Toru—on the last day she saw Toru. Toru asks why Midori would have chosen him, and Midori, calling Toru an idiot, tells him that she’s in love with him. Toru admits that he loves Midori, too, but can’t “make a move” because of another girl. Midori asks Toru if his girlfriend loves him, and Toru is forced to admit that he really doesn’t know.

Midori tells Toru that she is a “real, live girl” who loves him and would do anything for him. She warns Toru that if he doesn’t want to be with her, she won’t wait for him—and if he does, she expects him to be with her and her alone. Toru drops his umbrella, embraces Midori, and kisses her. After they break apart, he invites her back to his place.

Back at Toru’s cottage, Toru and Midori take turns showering and changing into dry clothes. They drink coffee and talk, and Midori asks Toru if there’s anything about her he wishes he could change. He tells her there isn’t a thing. They get into bed together, kiss, and talk some more about everything and nothing. Eventually Midori says she wants to have sex with Toru, but knows he probably wants to wait until his other situation is sorted out. Toru says that while he also wants to sleep with Midori, it “wouldn’t be right” just yet. Midori takes off her underwear and tells Toru to masturbate into them, and he does.

That evening, Midori goes grocery shopping and cooks dinner for the two of them. After they eat dinner Midori goes home, and Toru thinks about his feelings for her. He acknowledges that he’s known he was in love with her for a long time but could never admit it to himself—he has an intense desire for her and wants to be with her but doesn’t know how to abandon Naoko. He decides to write to Reiko for advice. In his letter, he tells her about the recent developments in his relationship with Midori, comparing his “quiet and gentle” love for Naoko to his “throbbing and shaking” love for Midori. He begs Reiko to tell him what to do.

Several days later, Reiko writes back and says that Naoko has improved greatly in her new facility—the two of them spoke on the phone just the other day, and Naoko is already looking forward to coming back to the Ami Hostel soon. Reiko says that her advice to Toru is simple: he needs to give himself over to his feelings for Midori and see where things go, but spare Naoko the pain of telling her about any of it. Toru, Reiko says, is “a great source of strength” for Naoko, and she’s too fragile right now for that to be disturbed. Reiko says she understands Toru’s attraction to Midori, and that he can’t put his life on hold for fear of hurting other people. She closes her letter by expressing her hope that one day, she will be able to play her guitar for both Toru and Naoko again.