Murakami Ryu: In The Miso Soup

[Gem]

In a dark and brooding Tokyo Kenji, our narrator, is a guide for foreigners who wish to partake in the ‘delights’ offered by the red light district. One such gaijin is Frank; an American who hires Kenji for three days.

There’s something odd about Frank, odder than his unnatural, plastic skin that is and within minutes of meeting him, Kenji begins to wonder whether there is a connection between the American and the recent grisly murders that have been making the news. A quiet tension builds gradually and then explodes into the brutal violence that has become Murakami‘s trademark.

The narrator acts as guide to the reader, giving us the insider’s view of the more unsavoury aspects of Japanese culture. As ever with Murakami, the theme of disaffection is rife – underneath the pulsing hub of society lays an emptiness that is common to both Eastern and Western ways of life.

Frank, the Patrick Batemanesque character, aside from being a personified look at how America and its culture impacts Japan, also offers us the thought provoking idea of the misfit who lives outside the bounds of acceptability having more purpose and intent than an entire generation of normal society dwellers.

Overall, In The Miso Soup is a quick, clinical and at times stomach churning read. While it does feel over laboured at times, this a minor flaw that is more than compensated for by its provocative ideas and matter of fact approach to the unpalatable elements of society.

[Bjorn]

I read this a couple of years ago, and I can only agree with your review. Not perfect, but a very strong short sharp shock striking at both societies and the way they interact, failing to understand each other - I seem to recall him making much of the way Japan has imported and adapted American culture (from Nike shoes to baseball) to the point where it's become a natural part of Japanese life - Frank doesn't recognize it as American - yet it still seems foreign to the Japanese, which just adds to the disaffection and emptiness you mention. As do the teenage girls selling themselves not out of need, but out of boredom.

At the time, I found myself comparing it to Ellis as well, but in retrospect it's probably closer to Chuck Palahniuk; it's only in the most extreme circumstances that Kenji sees the bare bones of the world he lives in. It becomes a critical incident study of the Japanese society, just as effective as namesake Haruki's non-fiction examination of the Tokyo gas attacks in Underground.

[Gem]

Aside from the short story Guts, I haven't read any of Palahniuk's work. I saw similarities to Ellis because of the themes and the exploration of culture. I realise now, that the difference is that whereas Ellis seems to almost actively indict society, Murakami tends to, in my opinion, present things without condemning or indeed condoning anything.

[nnyhav]

The most comparable author for me isn't among the above-mentioned, nor the blurbed The Silence of the Lambs (also mentioned within the text), but early Ian McEwan, like The Concrete Garden. One might almost say an adaptation (as Almost Transparent Blue more pastichely seemed to be of Burroughs) which is self-aware of this very process (even parodizing it in Frank as ersatz representative American psycho: I am tempted to think there's a hint of Lolita's Humbert Humbert here too), raising it above mere rape/murder thriller.