History Literature / TheWindUpBirdChronicle

* AffablyEvil: Boris the Manskinner in Lieutenant Mamiya's story. He's polite even as he's torturing a man and leaving another to die.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Noboru Wataya is more of a VillainWithGoodPublicity, but you have to admit, he has an excellent TV personality.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Sadly subverted, both with Kumiko and Creta Kano. [[spoiler: Kumiko is unable to enjoy sex with Toru due to deep-seeded emotional issues from her troubled childhood, while Creta Kano was literally physically incapable of feeling any physical sensations, including sexual pleasure, due to some sort of unexplained "curse".]]

* ArcSymbol: A few, including wells, water, and the wind-up bird itself.

* AuthorAppeal: Apparently, the author has quite a thing for wells and classical music. It's also pretty clear that he really loves cats.

* PutOnABus: [[spoiler: Kumiko leaves Toru fairly early on in the book and is never seen in person thereafter. They do talk to each other over the computer at one point and it's heavily implied that she's the woman in the hotel, though]].
** May Kasahara leaves for a boarding school about halfway through and is gone until the epilogue. Subverted in that she continues sending letters to Toru updating him on her situation. [[spoiler: And then double subverted when it turns out he never receives any of them]].

* YouCantFightFate: A recurring theme, symbolized by the wind-up bird. For example, in the middle of World War II, it was foretold to Mamiya by Mr. Honda that he would die back in Japan as an old man. After this, despite becoming a DeathSeeker and deliberately throwing himself into suicide missions where he absolutely should have died, he survived the entire war and returned home.
* YourCheatingHeart: [[spoiler: Kumiko informs Toru of her affair with an older man in a DearJohn letter. She later informs him that there were several other men.]]

** This is actually left very ambiguous. [[spoiler: Toru assumes that it is Kumiko, though her voice only changes to that of Kumiko's when he addresses this. Even still afterwards, she changes to two other voices and tries to make him doubt whether or not he had it right - though he is pretty sure.]] It doesn't help that [[spoiler: she is never actually seen, even going as far to make Toru promise not to shine the light from his pen upon her face.]]

* ThrownDownAWell: Toru spends a rather large amount of time in the well in the 'hanging house'.

* WeNamedTheMonkeyJack: The narrator named his cat Noburu Wataya after his hated brother-in-law. The cat gets a better name later on, after Toru decides that it was unfair to the animal.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: The woman who calls Toru for phone sex knows a LOT about him.

* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Noboru Wataya to Toru. [[ShutUpHannibal Toru responds in kind]], [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome warning Noboru Wataya not to be so quick to dismiss him.]]

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: See FlayingAlive, below.

* SympatheticAdulterer: [[spoiler: Kumiko cheats on Toru with ''a number'' of men after running away, apparently even contracting a venereal disease in the process, but her actions were the result of a psychological breakdown brought on by a crippling inferiority complex that she's had since childhood. Toru also counts when he sleeps with Creta Kano, as it was at her insistence and he did it because he felt sympathy for Creta after hearing about what a horrible life she's had]].

* VillainousIncest: [[spoiler: Noboru Wataya lusted after his older sister and is implied to do the same for Kumiko]].

* AffablyEvil: Noboru Wataya is more of a VillainWithGoodPublicity, but you have to admit, he has an excellent TV personality. Also Boris the Manskinner in Lieutenant Mamiya's story.

* EroticDream: Introducing Creta Kano: [[MentalAffair prostitute of the mind!]]

* AuthorTract: A good portion of the work concerns the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (Manchukuo) during the 1930's and WorldWarII. Murakami makes no bones about calling the whole affair out as having been a Very Bad Idea.

** Creta Kano was afflicted with chronic, inexplicable pain all over her entire body from the time she was a child. When she was 18, she had given up on it ever going away and tried to commit suicide by crashing her father's car into a concrete wall. She failed and escaped with only minor injuries and the pain miraculously went away, only to be replaced by absolute numbness to almost all physical sensation. To pay off the debts she had incurred for destroying the car, she turned to prostitution, and was eventually kidnapped, raped, and pressed into service by TheYakuza. While working as a prostitute, she was raped by Noboru Wataya.

* CoolOldGuy: Lieutenant Mamiya, who is unfailingly polite and respectful to everyone, but carries a lot of trauma from the things he saw at war.

** Lieutenant Mamiya was stationed in Japanese occupied Manchuria in World War II. While on a secret assignment escorting Yamamoto, a member of Japan's intelligence service, into enemy Soviet/Mongolian territory, they were captured by enemy soldiers, stripped naked, and interrogated. When Yamamoto refused to yield valuable information to Boris the Manskinner, the Soviet agent commanding the Mongolians, he was skinned alive while Mamiya watched. After this, Mamiya willingly threw himself [[ArcSymbol into a well]] to avoid being shot, and spent several days down there freezing, starving, and in pain from his broken bones. He only survived due to the help of one of his comrades who escaped the Mongolians. After the war, he was captured and spent over a decade in a gulag in Siberia, where he saw many more horrific things that continue to haunt him. In the present day he says he's an EmptyShell just waiting around to die, and that he feels he really died back in the well in Mongolia.