The Wind- Up Bird Chronicle
Creta Kano
The Significance of Pain within characters
Creta Kano, who works for her older sister Malta Kano, has been shaped by her painful past. Pain, in both the physical and emotional sense, causes Creta to become who she is. A notable aspect about Creta is her relationship with pain. Growing up Creta felt pain at extreme heights and was very sensitive to pain. The pain that would come from injuries, would be unbearable to Creta. She says that she, “experienced every pain imaginable”. Malta knew that something was wrong with Creta because of this and there was something extraordinary about her sister, however Malta was unable to figure out what it was. At a young age, Creta was abandoned by her older sister Malta and felt the emotional detachment of not having someone to protect her or to confide in. In speaking about Malta, Creta says she, “had no way of contacting her. And so I had to solve these problems entirely by myself.” At this tender age, of course Creta felt alone and unpleasant. Growing up alone, and feeling some kind of separation from her sister made her feel dissatisfied at heart. When Creta turned twenty, as her sister instructed her to bear the pain until she was this age, she tried to kill herself. When she did so, a “deep, deep numbness came to replace the pain.” Killing yourself is an irreversible act with no uncertainties, and in Creta being so sure as to want to end her life, it can be suggested that the pain (and all other emotions that made up her life) also stopped. She stopped feeling any pain, and related herself “nothing”. Thereafter, Creta became a prostitute and when she talks about turning to prostitution to pay off her debts, Toru appears surprised and claims that Creta talked about being a prostitute “as if it were nothing at all”. Creta does not feel any unethical or immoral implications in giving away her body for money. Prostitution is commonly associated with loose morals and no other means of supporting yourself. Creta chooses this as an option to repay her debts and because of the stigma with prostitution, the reader empathises with her story. In not feeling anything and simply being “a prostitute of the flesh”, it is suggested that Creta feels no emotion- pain specifically- anymore. The intensity of pain that Creta felt and then became numb to, is an indication of her relationship with emotions and emotional connections. She felt emotions during her youth, but after that felt none. Creta is therefore a shell of a person.
Lieutenant Mamiya
"A prostitute?!"
"That's right," said Kano, as if it were nothing at all.
“Just imagine if you will: for twenty-six years, I was nothing.”
During all this long time, the person called ‘me’ was in fact nothing at all, I realized.”
"And after I turned twenty and the pain disappeared when I attempted to kill myself, a deep, deep numbness came to replace the pain.”
“I lived with pain at the center of my life. My only purpose in life was to find a way to coexist with intense pain.”
"I experienced every pain imaginable.”
Similarly, due to all of Lieutenant Mamiya’s painful past, he also resembles an empty shell. He was selected as a navigator on a special forces mission. During the time of war, Mamiya witnessed great pain in the team he was with and within himself. Mamiya is presented with one real arm, and one prosthetic arm. Already this tells the reader that the lieutenant was able to adjust his life after the pain he had gone through. Mamiya- unlike Creta Kano- carries on his life, with no significant changes and no burdens dragging him down emotionally or physically. During Mamiya’s mission, he sees the ruthless Russian forces skin another member of the mission alive. Mamiya describes the skinning process as one of the worst things that he has ever witnessed and dreams about it, claiming to still hear “his heartrending screams.” In this instance, as Mamiya is telling the story to Toru, Toru and the reader feel sorrow for Mamiya. Mamiya is clearly impacted by the pain of his friend and scarred forever with the memory. Having carried out that mission a long time ago, and thereafter losing his arm, Mamiya is also empty. He has nothing to live for- his potential wife married someone else when he was away, so he has no family either. He compares himself to living like “an empty shell”.