The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: Book 3, Chapter 30 Summary & Analysis

Toru experiences a bizarre and unsettling dream in which he’s having tea with Malta Kano in a room adorned with human scalps. In the dream, a dog with Ushikawa’s face taunts Toru. Malta retaliates by throwing a lump of sugar at the dog, causing it to bleed. Malta apologizes for not keeping in touch and reveals that she was away in Malta. Toru informs her that his cat, Mackerel, has returned, but Malta tells him it is not the same cat because its tail appears more bent than before. Then Malta claims to possess the cat’s real tail and reveals her naked body, which does indeed have a tail that looks like Mackerel’s. She also shares the news that Creta has given birth to a child named Corsica. Toru wakes up from this unsettling dream, feeling confused and concerned.

Later, Toru goes for a swim. Upon returning home, he finds a letter from Mamiya. The letter details Mamiya’s time in a Siberian prison camp. While in the camp, Mamiya’s knowledge of basic Russian spared him from manual labor because he could work as an interpreter. He describes the harsh conditions of the camp, where people died daily. Its prisoners included Russian captives and former convicts who chose to remain in Siberia for work. Mamiya recalls an incident where a Russian officer, the same one who had ordered Yamamoto to be skinned alive, encountered him at a checkpoint. Although the officer is now a prisoner, Mamiya worries problems could arise if the man recognizes him.

In the prison camp, Mamiya forms a friendship with a fellow cartographer named Nikolai. Mamiya seeks Nikolai’s advice about the Russian convicts. Nikolai warns him to avoid Boris the Manskinner, who gained infamy for his brutal torture methods during the war. Mamiya recognizes Boris as the man he knows—the man who had ordered Yamamoto’s death. Despite being a prisoner, Boris receives preferential treatment due to his connections and reputation within the Party.

One day, Mamiya is summoned to the stationmaster's office, where he meets Boris, who proposes a collaboration to improve relations between the Russian and Japanese prisoners in the camp. Acting as an intermediary, Mamiya facilitates communication between Boris and the unofficial leader of the Japanese prisoners. For some time, the camp is relatively peaceful. However, eventually someone finds the lynched bodies of three Japanese men, their deaths staged as suicides. Some of the men in the camp suspect they were informants for the Russians, which is why they were killed. This incident cements Boris’s reputation in the eyes of the Japanese soldiers.