Sex and Love Theme Analysis

Norwegian Wood is a coming-of-age novel, and as Toru Watanabe grows older and grows up, his experiences with love and sex inform the kind of man he will be. Torn between Naoko, a troubled girl from his past, and Midori, a bright and vibrant student at his university in Tokyo, Toru finds himself struggling with lovesickness yet unable to define what he wants out of love or why. Throughout the novel, Toru and other characters experiment with relationships and sex in an attempt to discover themselves and their place in the world, with both positive and negative outcomes. However, Murakami doesn’t give a definitive opinion on sex and love—his argument is not that sex and love are benign, healing forces or painful, destructive ones. Instead, by examining how romance and sexuality affect all of his major characters, Murakami shows just how impactful and transformative sexual or romantic relationships can be.

The unpredictable forces of sex and love shape the lives of Norwegian Wood’s three central characters: Toru, Naoko, and Midori. Their shared and separate experiences show that sex and love, central and powerful forces within the human experience, can also be destructive in the lives of those who mishandle or abuse them. Much of the novel is concerned with the love triangle in which Toru finds himself. He is torn between his serious, almost grave love for the chronically depressed Naoko, a childhood friend whose shared grief over their beloved Kizuki’s death bonds them together, and his bright, enthusiastic interest in the irreverent, daring, and the highly sexual Midori. Toru finds himself turning to one-night stands to relieve his physical desire while waffling emotionally between his feelings for the two women in his life, nearly derailing his life in the process. Toru and Naoko are old friends whose shared grief bonds them deeply. Their friendship turns sexual when, on the night of Naoko’s 20th birthday, she breaks down and turns to Toru for physical and emotional comfort. Naoko loses her virginity to Toru that night, and leaves Tokyo for a mental sanatorium, the Ami Hostel, soon thereafter. When Toru visits her at the Ami Hostel they engage in sexual relations (but not intercourse) several times, and Naoko comes to Toru’s bedside in the middle of the night to show him her naked body. At the same time, Naoko lives in constant fear of the idea that she’ll never be able to have sex again—and Murakami suggests that Naoko’s framing of sex as an act she must submit to or prove herself through is, ultimately, so exhausting and destructive that it causes her to take her own life.

Toru’s relationship with Midori is mostly platonic, though he admits he is emotionally and romantically drawn to her and though they share a kiss here and there. Toru knows he can’t be with Naoko as long as she’s away at the sanatorium, and though he yearns for the intimacy and love they share, he finds himself nourished in equal measure by the exuberance, frankness, and openness that defines his relationship with Midori. Midori loves going to pornographic films in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district and embarrassing everyone around her by wearing obscenely short skirts to provoke a reaction. She is bold where Naoko is quiet, adventurous where Naoko is reserved, and, essentially, provides Toru with another perspective on the possibilities of romance. Whereas Toru’s relationship with Naoko allows him to feel serious, deep, and connected to his past, his relationship with Midori allows him to feel the freedom of the future’s possibilities. While sex and the fear of it are part of the reason Naoko chooses to take her own life, the possibility of happiness in both sex and romance with Midori is what actually brings Toru back from the brink of his own suicide. He chooses the vitality Midori represents over the darkness Naoko represents, and this decision ties in metaphorically with the ways in which sex and love have the power to destroy lives—but also to heal them. 

Other characters, too, find their worlds rocked by sex and love, both physically and emotionally. Toru’s dormmate, Nagasawa, is a serial womanizer who engages in weekly one-night stands in spite of the fact that he’s been in a relationship with the demure, traditional Hatsumi for most of their tie at college. Ultimately, after breaking up with Nagasawa and marrying another man, Hatsumi kills herself. Though Nagasawa and Hatsumi are minor characters, Murakami uses the ways in which sex tears them apart—when it should bring them together—to show just how unstable and destructive sexual relationships can be. Nagasawa sees sex as a game, while Hatsumi sees it as a sacred bond. Their divergent attitudes toward sex are very different, but the way in which they let sex control them is much the same, and both of them ultimately suffer for it. Reiko Ishida, Naoko’s roommate at the Ami Hostel, finds herself divulging to Toru the secrets of her dark backstory in which an unfortunate sexual encounter devastated her entire life. One of Reiko’s classical piano students, a 13-year-old pupil, lied her way into Reiko’s home and seduced her one afternoon using wiles and tactics far beyond the realm of what any schoolgirl should be able to grasp. Reiko’s painful experiences with sex—experiences that ruined her reputation, her family life, and her trust in herself—have turned her into a person so afraid of human connection that she’s stayed at the Ami Hostel for upwards of seven years. When Reiko does finally leave the hostel after Naoko’s death, she travels to Tokyo, where she and Toru sleep together. The act is joyful and sensual and serves to represent Reiko’s leap of faith in leaving the hostel. A terrible sexual encounter derailed Reiko’s life—but at the end of the novel, as she seduces Toru, she reclaims agency over her own sexuality. 

Sex and love, Murakami concedes, define and shape many peoples’ lives and identities. By showing how Toru, Midori, Naoko, and several other characters have their lives saved, doomed, and derailed by desire, Murakami forms Norwegian Wood into a cautionary tale about the dangers of romance—while also making room for the possibility that when shared mutually and cared for correctly, sexual relationships have the power to heal and transform a human life.