Facing wartime demons

THE WIND-UP BIRD CHRONICLE, Haruki Murakami Knopf, $260 In the heart of every Japanese lurks a dark and terrible secret. It is never mentioned in conversation, seldom discussed in the media, and almost completely excised from the school curriculum. It is the horrific brutality their compatriots showed in World War II. The Japanese have been trying to forget about it for more than half a century, but refusing to face the facts will not make them go away.

Haruki Murakami's latest and most ambitious novel is an oblique attempt to come to terms with Japan's wartime history. The story is told by Toru Okada, recently unemployed, who spends his days at the public library, the swimming pool, and cooking spaghetti at home. When his cat and then his wife vanish in quick succession, he is sucked into a surreal world of dreams and demonic forces, all ultimately connected to the bloody war in Manchuria.

Okada encounters several strange women during his search for his loved ones: the psychic Malta Kano, her sister Creta Kano - the 'prostitute of the mind' - and the mysterious healer Nutmeg.

With their help he gradually comes to realise that his sinister brother-in-law Noboru Wataya is somehow behind it all.

A graduate of Japan's elite schools, Wataya is a media demagogue and an aspiring politician. But, like so many of his contemporaries, concealed beneath the dapper clothes is a sadistic pervert who thrives on 'defiling' women.

Okada discovers, however, that his real purpose is not mere sexual gratification: Wataya is able 'to bring out something that the great mass of people keep hidden in the darkness of their unconscious. It's a tremendously dangerous thing, this thing he is trying to draw out: it's fatally smeared with violence and blood, and it's directly connected to the darkest depths of history'. Eventually Okada realises his only hope of saving his wife and himself is to confront and destroy the monstrous Wataya.