Chapter summaries The City and Its Uncertain Walls Haruki Murakami

Chapter 13 (Chapter 12) Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

In his free time from the library, the narrator sets out to draw an accurate map of the walled town. He discovers that no resident—not even the Gatekeeper or the girl—knows or cares about the town’s shape; curiosity itself seems absent from the community. Over two weeks, he walks the inner perimeter, noting the wall’s contours despite his poor vision. The route is overgrown, littered with abandoned houses that suggest a past evacuation. The wall watches him but does not interfere. After completing his survey, he falls into a severe fever with pustules and dark dreams—dreams where the wall laughs at his mapping efforts. An old man nurses him back to health and recounts a wartime memory: as a wounded officer convalescing at a hot-spring inn, he nightly saw the ghost of a beautiful woman. Eventually he forced himself to walk around her chair to see her other side, and what he witnessed was so terrible that it could not be put into words—a scene from a hidden world inside everyone. The old man warns the narrator never to get close to such a sight.

Key Events

The narrator begins mapping the town’s shape, walking the inner wall on cloudy afternoons.
He asks residents (the girl, the Gatekeeper, old folk) about the town’s shape; they show no interest or comprehension.
The Gatekeeper warns him: “When you have a plate on top of your head it’s best not to look up at the sky.”
The route along the wall is in poor repair, with many abandoned dwellings and signs of a past depopulation.
The narrator senses the wall is alive, watching, but it does not obstruct his survey.
After two weeks of walking, he develops a high fever with pustules and vivid dreams; in the dreams, the wall constantly changes shape, mocking him.
An unnamed old man appears to nurse him, bringing porridge and drink.
Once the narrator is lucid, the old man tells his story: as a wounded officer in a past war, he stayed at a hot-spring inn and saw the ghost of a woman on the veranda every night.
The ghost only showed her left profile; possessed by the need to see the right side, the man returned to the inn, forced himself to walk around her, and glimpsed something unspeakable.
The old man describes the vision as “a scene from a world a person should never, ever lay eyes on” that exists inside everyone but must remain unseen.
He warns the narrator to be careful never to approach such a temptation.

Character Development

The Narrator: His curiosity drives him to defy the town’s passive norm. He is physically fragile (poor vision, succumbs to a fever) but intellectually stubborn. The mapping project reveals both his individuality and his vulnerability to the wall’s power.
The Gatekeeper: Reinforces the town’s anti-curiosity ethos. His cryptic warning about the plate and the sky, repeated at the chapter’s end, becomes a recurring motif—a prohibition on looking beyond one’s immediate role.
The Old Man: A former soldier who abandoned his shadow and entered the town carrying a traumatic memory. His tale of the ghost’s hidden side serves as a cautionary parable about forbidden knowledge. He functions as a surrogate guide or alter ego for the narrator, hinting at the price of peering into the unknown.

Themes, Symbols, and Motifs

Curiosity vs. Conformity: The narrator’s desire to map the town directly opposes the residents’ willed ignorance. The Gatekeeper and the girl cannot comprehend “simply curious,” revealing that the town suppresses horizontal and vertical curiosity alike.
The Wall as a Living Observer: The wall is personified—it watches, it could obstruct but chooses not to. Its power is both physical and psychological; it even invades the narrator’s dreams.
Abandonment and Erasure: The ruins of houses and the residents’ lost collective memory suggest a catastrophic past that has been deliberately forgotten. The old man’s story implies that the town may exist as a refuge for those who have seen something unbearable.
Forbidden Sight: The ghost’s hidden face parallels the narrator’s attempt to see the town’s true shape. The old man’s warning (“once you see it, a person can never go back”) echoes the Gatekeeper’s plate-and-sky proverb, creating a cautionary through-line about the danger of looking too deeply.
Illness as Initiation: The narrator’s fever may be an expected ordeal for newcomers, preparing him to receive the old man’s story. The town sends a caregiver, acknowledging the fever as part of its design.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter deepens the novel’s central tension between the desire for knowledge and the town’s mandate of placid ignorance. By having the narrator actively explore and map, Murakami shifts him from passive recorder to active investigator. The old man’s ghost story is the most extended embedded narrative so far, and it functions as a mythic warning that directly foreshadows the narrator’s possible fate. The chapter also explains the physical state of the town—its ruins, its depopulation—and suggests that the wall is not merely a boundary but a conscious entity. The repeated warning about looking up or around prepares the reader for a coming crisis in which the narrator will have to choose between safety and truth.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does the narrator’s mapping project meet with incomprehension from the other residents?
The town’s residents have lost both horizontal curiosity (about geography) and vertical curiosity (about history). To wonder about the shape of the wall threatens the sealed, static nature of the town, so the residents cannot grasp why anyone would want to know something that has no practical use or that might lead to a desire to leave.

2. What does the old man’s ghost story reveal about the nature of forbidden knowledge in the novel?
The story suggests that certain sights—the other side of the woman’s face—open onto an inner world that should never be viewed directly. Once seen, it cannot be unseen, and the witness is forever altered, possibly driven to seek refuge in the walled town. This mirrors the narrator’s own compulsion to see the town’s true shape, implying that his mapping may lead to a similarly irreversible revelation.

3. How does the wall respond to the narrator’s exploration, and what might that response indicate?
The wall watches the narrator without interfering; he senses its gaze but encounters no physical obstacles. In his fever dreams, however, the wall mocks him by constantly changing shape. This suggests that the wall is both indifferent and playful—it does not need to block him because his efforts are ultimately futile or because it wants to test his resolve. It may also be preparing him for a more significant encounter, such as the one the old man describes.