Rain is employed throughout Norwegian Wood to create an emotionally charged atmosphere. It often represents the distance between characters and the distance created by memory. The novel starts in the rain, as Watanabe descends through the clouds in Hamburg, and rain appears again at key moments, such as Naoko’s fateful 20th birthday, the night Naoko, Reiko, and Watanabe spend together at Ami Hostel, and the afternoon when Midori and Watanabe confess their love for one another on the department store roof. Rain often works to erase the outside world and bring focus to the connection between characters, making them feel “as if [they’re] the only ones in the world” (161). It unites the pivotal emotional moments of the novel, creating a through line from the rainy landing in Germany to the final scene as Watanabe waits for Midori to break a silence like “the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new-mown lawns of the world” (293).

Beginning with the name of the novel, music is a motif that plays a vital role in Norwegian Wood. The title comes from the 1965 Beatles song “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” which appears multiple times throughout the novel.