Prostitute in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

     After the discussion in class yesterday on migrant sex workers, I was lead to contemplate a character in the novel I have read called "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" by Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's most highly regarded novelists. In the novel, main character Toru Okada has wet dreams of the woman who gives herself the alias Creta Kano. Creta became a prostitute in Japan because of her independent attitude and need of a quality wage which she can obtain through her classy body, and the recruitment by the mob's prostitution ring. Later, he finds himself sleeping with her but in the correct way, with a correct purpose. She was not defiled by Toru in the way she was defiled by a mysterious man named Noboru Wataya who still haunts her. She tells Toru of her last encounter as a prostitute, and her defilement by this man Noboru who happens to be the brother of his wife who had ran away (it's indeed a mystery novel).

     "It's as if they were looking over merchandise. It doesn't take long to get used to being looked at like that. They are paying money for flesh, after all; it makes sense for them to examine the goods. But the way that man looked at me was different. He seemed to be looking through my flesh to something on the other side. His eyes made me feel uneasy, as if I had become a half-transparent human being.
     Once I was naked, he told me to lie on the bed face down, which I did. He ordered me to stay still, to keep my eyes closed, and not to speak until I was spoken to. He sat down next to me with his clothes on. That was all he did: sit down. He did not lay a finger on me. He just sat and looked down at my naked body, He kept this up for some ten minutes, while I lay there, unmoving, face down.
     Then, after a very long time, and with me still lying face down, he put something inside me from behind. What it was, I still have no idea. It was huge and hard, but it was not his penis. I am certain of that. Whatever it was that he put inside me, it made me feel pain for the first time since my failed suicide attempt- real, intense pain that belonged to me and no one else. How can I put this? The pain was almost impossibly intense, as if my physical self were splitting in two from the inside out. And, like a crowbar, the pain was prying open the lid of my consciousness- prying it open with an irresistible force and dragging out the jellied contents of my memory without reference to my will. Strange as it may sound, this was like a dead person watching her own autopsy. Do you see what I mean? I felt as if I were watching from some vantage point as my body was being cut open and one slimy organ after another was being pulled out of me."

     But when she regained consciousness, she was a different person. She was damaged and ran away from the sex industry, because she was not a sex slave, however she feared her old pimp and any form of sexual intercourse for a very long time. Like Creta Kano and the Thai migrant workers we spoke of in class, there is a distinguishable difference in the sex they had for business and the sex they had for their own physical and emotional satisfaction. As one of the bar prostitutes in the textbook describes, they sell sexual access to their body but not themselves. However, when Creta Kano was abused by this mysterious client, she lost something that was very deeply herself. Having intercourse with Toru and the fact that she's so open and honest with him about her abuse, physically and psychologically, displays the strength of their new relationship, and the slow steps she takes to moving forward to overcome her past mistreatment, that is not so unique to sex work.