Norwegian Wood: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

The next day, Toru runs into Midori. She tells him she’s been trying to call him for days, and Toru explains he’s been out of town. Midori tells Toru he looks “spaced-out,” like he’s “seen a ghost.” She invites him to go for drinks with her after his next class, and Toru agrees. After class, Toru and Midori find an underground bar and start drinking. As Midori gets drunker and drunker, she speaks to Toru in an almost stream-of-consciousness manner about the thoughts flying through her head. She says she wants to give everything up and go to Uruguay and invites Toru to come with her. She says she wants a “pile of babies,” then describes in great detail her sexual fantasies about Toru. Toru is bashful, overwhelmed by her frankness.  

After five rounds of vodka and tonics, Midori and Toru leave the bar and walk through the streets of Tokyo. Toru says he's enjoying hanging out with Midori—she’s helping him feel “a little more adapted to the world.” Toru walks Midori to the train station, and as they bid each other goodbye, she loudly describes yet another sexual fantasy in which she and Toru are captured by pirates, stripped naked, and locked together in a brig. Toru is still embarrassed, but when she asks him to hang out again on Sunday, he agrees.  

On Sunday morning, Midori comes by Toru’s dorm to pick him up. She is wearing an impossibly short skirt and complains that all the men in Toru’s dormitory have been staring at her. She asks about the masturbation habits of Toru’s dormmates. Toru says Midori should ask her own boyfriend about how men masturbate, but Midori continues pressing him, and asks if Toru has ever thought of her while pleasuring himself. Toru says he hasn’t—he thinks of Midori as a friend. Midori says she longs to be in at least one of Toru’s sexual fantasies and begs him to think of her, just for a second, the next time he masturbates. Toru reluctantly agrees to humor Midori but quickly tries to steer the subject away from sex.

Toru and Midori get on a train bound for another neighborhood. When Toru asks where they’re going, Midori tells him not to worry about it. As they get off the train and begin walking, Midori talks about school, lamenting how pointless she sees so much of education to be. Midori is fed up with the “phonies” and faux revolutionaries within the university—all she wants to believe in from now on, she says, is love. Toru again asks Midori where they’re going, and Midori answers that they’re on the way to visit her father in the hospital. Toru is shocked and points out that Midori said her father was in Uruguay. “That was a lie,” Midori says blithely, and tells Toru that her father is not far from death—he has a brain tumor, just like her mother.

Toru and Midori arrive at the hospital and go to Midori’s father’s semiprivate room. Mr. Kobayashi is a small, frail man whose head is wrapped in bandages. His eyes are bloodshot and half-open, and he has trouble focusing them. Though Midori tries to talk to her father, he can barely speak. Midori examines a bag of things her sister has recently brought for their father, and laments that Momoko packed raw cucumbers for the dying man to eat.

Midori and Toru walk down the hall to the TV room to have a cigarette. Midori conspiratorially tells Toru that everyone in the hospital has been staring at her short skirt—but she doesn’t mind, since perhaps “the excitement helps them get well faster.” Midori begins opening up to Toru about her father. She explains that while he’s a weak man, he’s tried to live his life “with all the intensity he could muster.” She apologizes to Toru for lying to him and for bringing him to the hospital under false pretenses, but asks if he’ll stay with her a while longer. Toru says he’ll stay all day if Midori wants him to.

Midori asks Toru about his girlfriend, but Toru says he doesn’t think he could explain the situation very well. Midori says she has a guess about what’s going on—she believes Toru is sleeping with a wealthy married woman who “likes to do really yucky things.” Midori describes all the sexual things she imagines Toru and his rich older girlfriend doing. Toru tells Midori she’s been watching too many pornographic movies. Midori says she loves porno flicks and asks Toru to take her to a porno theater soon.

Toru and Midori return to Mr. Kobayashi’s room and meet with his doctor. The doctor doesn’t have any particularly good news for Midori, but upon seeing her short skirt, he jokes that one day they’ll have to open her head up, too, and see what’s “going on” inside. After the doctor leaves Midori tries to feed her father some lunch, but the feeble old man refuses to eat. Midori and Toru go down to the cafeteria themselves. Toru isn’t hungry, but Midori wolfs down a full plate. She explains that people who are new to hospitals are reluctant to eat because they’re not used to the environment, while people who spend a lot of time in hospitals caring for their relatives know it’s important to eat as much as one can whenever one gets the chance.

Midori explains that she and her sister each visit the hospital several days a week, but Midori does more work and comes more often. Toru, overcome with compassion for Midori, tells her she should go out and take a walk for an hour or two to clear her head and enjoy having no responsibilities for a while—he offers to take care of Mr. Kobayashi in her place. Midori, grateful for the chance to spend some time alone, takes Toru back to her father’s room, explains that she’s going out for a little, and leaves.

While Toru sits at the bedside of the sleeping Mr. Kobayashi, the wife of Mr. Kobayashi’s roommate whispers to Toru that Midori is wonderful, devoted, and kind. She warns Toru that he’d better treat Midori right and never let her go. After the woman leaves the room, Toru is left with the two sleeping patients, and his thoughts drift to Naoko. He wonders again about the night she came to his bed and showed him her body—he still can’t determine if it was real or a dream.

Soon, Mr. Kobayashi wakes up coughing. Toru helps him spit his phlegm out, wipes his brow, and gives him water. Toru manages to feed Mr. Kobayashi some hospital food, and Mr. Kobayashi reluctantly chokes the stuff down. As Mr. Kobayashi rests, Toru talks to the man about his usual Sunday laundry routine and describes the things he and Midori are studying in school. He talks about Euripides, and how in all of his plays, “things get so mixed up the characters are trapped,” unable to get through to or help one another.

 Soon, Toru starts to get hungry himself. He washes the cucumbers Momoko brought and begins eating bites of them wrapped in nori, or seaweed, and dipped in soy sauce. Soon, Mr. Kobayashi says he wants some, too. Toru helps Mr. Kobayashi eat little bites of cucumber and nori, and Mr. Kobayashi remarks how good the food tastes. After Mr. Kobayashi is finished eating, Toru helps him relieve himself. Mr. Kobayashi begins muttering something about Midori and a ticket to the Ueno Station, but Toru can’t figure out what he’s saying. Toru assures Mr. Kobayashi he’ll take care of the ticket for Midori, and soon, Mr. Kobayashi falls asleep.

Midori comes back to the room a little after three and tells Toru that she’s feeling better. Midori is impressed that Toru got her father to eat, but Toru tells her Mr. Kobayashi was easy to take care of. Midori says that a few weeks ago, her father was wild and angry, throwing things and cursing her—she knows, though, that it was all part of his sickness. Toru asks if getting a ticket at Ueno Station means anything to Midori—she thinks for a moment, then says that when she was little, she tried to run away from home, taking a train from Ueno to Fukushima to visit an aunt. Her father had to come collect her and bring her home. Toru says Mr. Kobayashi was muttering about the Ueno station, and Midori says he must have been trying to ask Toru to take care of her.

Around five, Toru tells Midori and her father that he has to leave for work. Midori walks Toru to the lobby and thanks him for his help. Toru says he’d be happy to come back and take care of Mr. Kobayashi any time. Midori reminds Toru of his promise to take her to a porno flick soon. Toru rolls his eyes and tells her to pick him up the following Sunday so that they can come back and visit with her father. On Friday, however, Midori calls Toru to tell him that her father has died. She tells him not to come to the funeral—but begs him to look up a “really disgusting” porno flick for the two of them to go to soon. She promises to call Toru up, but after a week, he has gotten no word from her and hasn’t seen her in class.

The following Sunday, Toru writes a letter to Naoko. He tells her that while he misses her all the time, he is trying to “go on living with all the energy [he] can muster.” Toru steps out to mail the letter and buy some lunch, then returns to his dorm and tries to study—but he is unable to concentrate on his book and keeps thinking of Midori and her father. Doing so puts him in a terrible mood, and he tries to distract himself by going out and running some errands. As he sits drinking in a jazz café, he wonders how many more lonely Sundays stretch ahead of him still.