Norwegian Wood: Chapter 4 Summary & Analysis

Though students all around the world are rioting in attempts to “dismantle” the universities, over summer break, the protests at Toru’s school are disbanded and the leaders of the movement arrested. Toru doesn’t feel anything about his classmates’ failure, and when he returns to school in September to find the university in perfect shape, even starts to feel contemptuous of their failed attempts at revolt. “Kizuki,” Toru thinks to himself, “you’re not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit.” Toru believes college is “meaningless,” and that all he can do is suffer through his remaining years of boredom. Storm Trooper does not return to the dormitory, and Toru is grateful for the chance to live alone.

One Monday, after a History of Drama lecture, Toru goes to a restaurant near campus to eat lunch. While he’s eating, another group of students comes in and sits at a nearby table. Toru notices that one of the students, a girl with a pixie cut and large, dark sunglasses, keeps looking at him. Soon the girl approaches Toru and asks if she can sit. Toru asks if they know one another. The girl tells Toru that she’s in his History of Drama class. Toru recognizes her, realizing she’s recently gotten a drastic haircut. Toru compliments the change, and the girl exclaims that he’s the first guy to tell her he likes it—most men, she says, hate when women have short hair.

The girl asks Toru why he never answers to his name during roll call, and Toru says he often doesn’t feel like it. The girl mocks Toru’s “tough” demeanor. The girl, noticing that Toru is wearing green, asks him if he likes the color green. Toru says he doesn’t especially like it—he’ll “wear anything.” The girl once again mocks Toru’s aloof demeanor, then introduces herself as Midori, which means “green” in Japanese. Midori’s friends wave her over—their food has arrived. Before rejoining them, Midori asks if she can borrow Toru’s notes from class. He hands her his notebook, and she tells him that if he meets her here at noon the day after tomorrow, she’ll return it to him and buy him lunch for the favor.

On Wednesday at noon, however, Toru finds no sign of Midori at the restaurant. He waits for her while he eats alone, but after an hour gives up and heads to class. After his German lecture he goes to the student affairs office and looks Midori up in the directory. Her learns that her surname is Kobayashi and looks up her phone number. When he calls it, the Kobayashi Bookstore answers. Toru asks if Midori is at the store, and the voice on the other end says she’s “probably at the hospital.” Toru hangs up, confused, and returns to his dorm room to read.

Later that afternoon, Toru goes to Nagasawa’s room to return a book. The two of them eat in the dining hall, and Nagasawa tells Toru he’s recently taken a round of upper-level exams—if he passes, he says, he’ll take Toru out to a fancy dinner in October. As Toru asks Nagasawa about his career aspirations, the two discuss the values they want to employ as they move through life. They move from the dining hall to a nearby bar as the conversation continues. While Toru says he has no real aspirations in life, Nagasawa says he wants to prove himself as a “gentleman.”

The next week, Midori isn’t in History of Drama. While waiting for the lecture to begin, Toru pulls out a notebook and writes a letter to Naoko, telling her about his summer but admitting that “everything seems pointless since [she] left.” Toru asks Naoko if he can come visit her so that they can take a long walk, side-by-side, like they used to. A few minutes into the lesson, Midori enters the classroom and sits down next to Toru. She slides his notebook to him—inside is a note asking him if he’s mad about Wednesday. When two student protestors in helmets enter and matter-of-factly inform the professor that they’re taking over the lecture to announce a new strike, the professor leaves the room, and Toru and Midori hurry out after him.

Midori and Toru go to a restaurant and Midori apologizes for missing their lunch date on Wednesday. Toru tells Midori about calling her house, getting the bookstore, and being told she was at the hospital. Midori says she doesn’t want to talk about the hospital but promises to tell Toru everything next time they get together. After lunch, Midori and Toru walk through the neighborhood, and Midori shows Toru her old all-girls high school. She points out a cloud of smoke coming from the main building and tells Toru the smoke comes from the burning of sanitary napkins.

Midori tells Toru about her high school experience at length and in great detail, describing the embarrassment she felt at being one of the only middle-class students at a school full of wealthy girls. While her classmates were being driven to and from school by hired chauffeurs, Midori was helping out her family’s small bookstore, a tiny neighborhood business that sells mostly magazines. Toru tells Midori that he, too, comes from an average background and works a job at a record store to help with expenses. Midori invites Toru to come visit her at home and see the bookshop on Sunday, and Toru accepts. Midori draws Toru a map to her house, and Toru promises to arrive at lunchtime.

Sunday morning, Toru takes a streetcar to Midori’s neighborhood and follows her map to the Kobayashi Bookstore. Inside the apartment above the bookstore, Toru finds Midori busy cooking. He drinks beer and watches her nimbly move from dish to dish, boiling and pickling and frying up their lunch. When Midori is finished, she lays out the “delicate” Kyoto-style cooking and Toru hungrily begins eating. Toru asks Midori how she knows to cook so well, and Midori explains that her parents never cooked for her and her sister, Momoko, when they were younger. The young Midori, sick of takeout, purchased a huge cookbook and taught herself how to make everything in it. She spent all her allowance money on pots, pans, and knives, determined to have the best materials possible.

Midori tells Toru that when her mother died a couple of years ago, it was a “relief” to take over the family budget and buy the things she wanted. Toru asks how Midori’s mother died, and Midori explains that her mother died a slow death from a brain tumor. Midori apologizes for leading the conversation down a dark path, then picks at her food and lights up a Marlboro. Toru says he recently quit smoking because he doesn’t like having something “control” him. Midori puts her chin in her hand and remarks, again, about Toru’s strange aloofness.

After lunch, Toru helps Midori with the dishes and asks about her family. Midori explains that her sister, Momoko, has a fiancé whom she’s always out with, while her father has moved to Uruguay. Midori goes on and on about how, after her mother’s death, her father was plunged into sadness, and even admitted he wished that Midori and Momoko had died in his wife’s place. Midori says that though she was hurt by the comment at the time, she now finds it romantic to think about how much her father loved her mother.

As Midori and Toru enjoy coffee and some conversation, they hear sirens approaching. They go up to the roof to see that a nearby building is on fire—huge clouds of smoke are rising from it. Midori explains that the building, which once housed a small business, is empty and defunct. As firefighters begin putting out the blaze, Toru suggests Midori pack up her valuables in case the wind shifts and blows the fire in her building’s direction, but Midori insists that if the building caught fire she’d stay inside and burn up. Toru looks into Midori’s eyes, trying to determine if she’s joking or not, but her gaze remains impenetrable. Toru tells Midori that if she’s staying, he’s staying. The two of them bring some pillows and beers up to the roof, along with a guitar, and play music as they watch the fire.

Toru pokes fun at Midori for wanting to die in a fire, but Midori says she’d rather burn up than die a death that “slowly eats away at the region of life.” Midori leans against Toru, and the two share a kiss. After they break apart, Midori gently tells Toru that she’s been seeing someone and asks if Toru has a girlfriend, too. Toru says he is entangled in a “complicated” situation, but still wants to see Midori on Sundays.

The next day, Midori is not in History of Drama. After class, Toru eats lunch alone and then does some people-watching on the quad. He feels saddened as he watches his happy classmates going about their lives, realizing that he hasn’t really been a part of anything in the years since Kizuki’s death.

That Saturday, Nagasawa comes to Toru’s room and invites him out on the town. The two of them go to several bars trying to pick up women but have bad luck. As the night grows late, Nagasawa goes over to Hatsumi’s while Toru stays out. He sees a late-night showing of The Graduate and then, in the early hours of the morning, goes to a coffeehouse. He meets two girls there who want to get drunk, one of whom is going through a bad breakup. Toru agrees to accompany them to buy alcohol. After one of the girls goes home for the night, Toru takes the other to a hotel, and the two of them have sex.

Toru wakes up in the early afternoon feeling strange and lightheaded. He showers, shaves, and has some breakfast at the hotel, puzzled by the dreamlike events of the night before. He tries calling Midori, but she doesn’t answer, so he takes a bus back to his dorm. In the mailbox, there is a special delivery letter waiting for him—it is from Naoko.