Mariko Minoguchi

Mariko Minoguchi

Screenwriter & Director

Mariko Minoguchi was born in 1988 in Munich. Her debut film as director "Relativity" premiered in cinemas in November 2019.

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami
For Toru Watanabe, the Beatles tune "Norwegian Woods" is a melancholy song of remembrance: he seeks to preserve and understand a pain- and fateful youth . Set in the troubled sixties in Tokyo, this stunning novel propelled Murakami to the forefront of the literary scene.

When I open this book, the first page contains four dates in my scrawly handwriting: 2010. 2011. 2013. 2016.

It's a strange thing with memory. I do not remember how I first got this book. Whether it was recommended to me, or if I found it myself. But I remember the moment when I fell in love with the story. I was 21 and for a few months in Tokyo. Alone and far away from everything that has shaped my life. Sitting in the park, looking up after a few chapters, it overwhelmed me. As if I finally remember something. Something I have not known yet and maybe always missed. At that moment, I sensed that this city was waiting for me.

I did not take the book back to Germany, but left it with my relatives. In all my subsequent trips to Japan, after some time, I ran out of reading material and I reached back to "Norwegian Wood". Four versions of my ego - in four different phases of my life - have read this book. Some things I've read differently over the years. But that one feeling kept coming back.

How many years will be added?

Mariko Minoguchi

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