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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami

Chapter 11,
Enter Lieutenant Mamiya / What Came from the Warm Mud / Eau de Cologne

I find it interesting that Kumiko discarded the box of perfume at home. Clearly she knows Toru will be doing the chores, and will find it. So it stands to reason she wanted him to find it. Toru doesn't seem to think of that though. Sometimes I think he's a little thick-headed in emotional matters.

Toru is thick-headed in emotional matters all right. He is also not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to judging human behavior. As we will see later, some of the many women in his life could have done him much more harm than they did while he was more or less just letting life happen.

Which begs the question: why is every significant character in Toru’s life a woman except the one truly evil guy and the guys who provide the back-stories?

Some thoughts:

The lack of men around emphasizes the alienation Toru is feeling - he has no one who can relate to him as a man. It is difficult for Toru to find anyone who he can connect with and this difficulty is surely due to the fact that he has no close male friends, at least in part. Even his father is not there for him, so he is someone who has been without a male role model for some time.

The issues that Toru is facing are issues of identity and emotional needs. These are things we would more typically associate with women, especially the latter.

The perception of women by the reader is different. What would we think of a male Malta, or a male May? The change in how we perceive those characters may be at odds to how Murakami wishes to present them.

The perfume thing . . . in real life, if a man's wife deliberately left a bottle of perfume out - something she couldn't really afford to buy herself - we'd think, gee - she really wants him to think about this.

Does the writer mean for us to think Kumiko is desperate for attention from her husband, and is trying to get it through suspicion and jealousy?

The writer doesn't give me the impression that Toru really gives a damn here in this part.