Word: shimamoto
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...poor, misunderstood, only child Hajime meets just one other only child in his boyhood: Shimamoto, the beautiful girl with whom he shares a love for music and a rather precocious sense of his own sexuality. Their separation at the beginning of high school only adds to the turmoil of both lives, as we will see later in the book. For the time being however, we are left to watch the mildly painful spectacle of Hajime growing up, still slightly obsessed with the memory of Shimamoto...
Hajime gets married at 30, and here the meat of the story begins to take shape. Hajime is happy--he opens two successful bars, has a loving wife, two children and all that, it seems, he could possibly want. But when Shimamoto suddenly shows up again, after 25 years of separation, a whirlwind of uncertainty takes control. And if the book can be considered really to say anything, it is at this point: Murakami asks us to reconsider our notions of happiness and contentment, to reevaluate the priorities and the labeling of "successes" in our lives...
...climax of the story, Hajime has to decide between his contented domesticity and realizing his dream of life with Shimamoto. Typically, he's faced with the dissatisfaction of what he has to leave behind. Unfortunately the protagonist doesn't even develop into a tragic hero because he doesn't seem to realize the importance of the quandary before him. What is frustrating about all this is that we are left searching for a point. It's a good story, but not that good. And the statement, if there is any, is not clear--so the book leaves us wondering...