Blog Post #2

 Hi all, I wanted to explore Murakami's the use of sex throughout Norwegian Wood. Upon finishing the novel, some of the sex scenes and portrayal of women left a bad impression on me. Often times, sex was removed from hints of romance or love, even between Toru and Naoko. I noted previously that there is often an imbalance between the participants when sex occurs, but these imbalances do not seem to get resolved, so it feels that women are reduced to their sexuality. When Toru has sex with the "small girl" that he meets in Shinjuku, somehow being around Toru makes her personality do a 180 and she becomes like "a different person", a theme that continues on throughout the novel as the women seem to find sex with Toru irresistible, but for unwarranted reasons, as Toru emphasizes his own ordinariness and does not do anything particularly appealing or romantic. This has the effect of reducing the women as two-dimensional and irrational in the face of a male's presence. Reiko's sexual encounter with the thirteen-year-old girl also strikes the reader as discomforting and assailing. The disconnect between Reiko's physical description of the girl, saying she had "big breasts" and was "picture-perfect beautiful", and the wrongness of the situation sexualizes a young girl, paints lesbianism in a predatory nature, while Reiko's character of being an older sister, mentor-like figure to Naoko becomes corrupted. Similar with Midori stripping her clothes off and showing off her private parts to her father's altar photo, these scenes felt out-of-place to what the reader knows of the characters thus far, and portrays women as hyper-sexual to the point of ignoring rationale. 

Toru having sex with Reiko also somewhat tarnished the ending of the novel for me. The age difference was unsettling, but also the fact that Reiko was one of his friends and for him to have sex with almost all the women he encountered throughout the novel seemed like the women were put there for male gratification. I did find it interesting however, that though Toru stops having sex with other girls because of his love for Naoko, after Naoko dies, he has sex with Reiko, so he is no longer waiting for Naoko. There could be something to be said about sex being used as a means of escape, but characters like Nagasawa consistently engage in sex with no implication that he uses it as a reprieve. As a natural activity, sex could also be used to make the characters more human, but because of some of the morally wrong contexts in which sex appears, it makes the characters less relatable and alienates them from the reader. On another note, Murakami could be using sex as an instinctual and natural process that demonstrates how characters choose life and a process related to life, birth, etc., over death. I do believe deeper meanings can be found in how sex is used throughout the novel, but it often seems to come at the expense of putting down women in some form. 

- Alice Liao