”I had just turned twenty, and though my English is far from perfect I was working as a ‘nightlife guide’ for foreign tourists. Basically I specialize in what you might call sex tours, so it’s not as if my English needs to flawless. Since AIDS, the sex industry hasn’t exactly welcomed foreigners with open arms--in fact, most of the clubs are pretty blatant about refusing service to gaijin--but lots of visitors from overseas are still determined to play, and they’re the ones who pay me to guide them to relatively safe cabarets and massage parlors and S&M bars and what have you. I’m not employed by a company and don’t even have an office, but by running a simple ad in an English-language tourist magazine I make enough to rent a nice studio apartment in Meguro, take my girl out for Korean barbecue once in a while, and listen to the music I like and read the things I want to read. “ Red Light DistrictLife maybe wasn’t going well for Kenji, but it certainly wasn’t going poorly for him either, but there is most assuredly a before and after in his life. The after begins when he meets the American tourist Frank. There is something not quite right about Frank.Kenji has formed some opinions about Americans over the years. ”What’s good about Americans, if I can generalize a little, is that they have a kind of openhearted innocence. And what’ not so good is that they can’t imagine any world outside the States, or any value system different from their own. The Japanese have a similar defect, but Americans are even worse about trying to force others to do whatever they themselves believe to be right. American clients often forbid me to smoke and sometimes even make me accompany them on their daily jogs. In a word, they’re childish--but maybe that’s what makes their smile so appealing.”Usually Kenji just escorts guys around showing their options for “entertainment” and then if they insist, rarely so, he accompanies them into the clubs and service oriented places. Frank keeps him close, even starts to consider him a friend, and at one point insists on getting his picture taken with Kenji. This required very close contact. ”I’m not saying that Frank revolted me, but I wasn’t about to press my cheek against his. Just the fact that he was a man made it bad enough, but Frank also had that weird skin. No wrinkles, though he was supposedly in his mid-thirties, but his face wasn’t what you’d call smooth, either--it was shiny and flabby and artificial-looking.... Frank’s cheek was cold and felt like the silicone they use in diving masks.”There are new places springing up where men stand in line for a chance to talk to teenage girls. Good lord who would want to do that!!! Married women are going to clubs to talk to men who are willing to buy them food and drink for a chance to just be with them for a half hour. There are handjobs available. There are blowjobs available. There are places where you felt as if the dirt and grease and dead skin of all the previous horny, lonely customers were rubbing off on you.Frank seems to want to do it all and he wants Kenji with him every step of the way. Frank is starting to freak him out. When the body of a young Japanese girl is found horribly murdered Kenji can’t help but think that Frank was somehow involved even though he has no proof and no reason to think that he was except that Frank is getting weirder and weirder the longer Kenji knows him. This is a short book, but Ryu Murakami shows a great deal of patience with the plot. He lets the tension build like one of the better Alfred Hitchcock films. There are wonderful thoughtful observations about contemporary Japanese culture and even some unexpected levity. Some of the humor comes at those points, vintage Murakami, where you laugh and feel immediately guilty that you laughed at something so horrible. Ryu Murakami This is certainly not as uncomfortable to read as Almost Transparent Blue. The violence though graphic, Murakami knows no other kind, is contained to one scene and by the time it happens I’m already starting to wonder if the bad boy Murakami is going to show up. There is no sex, well plenty on stage left and right, but none on center stage. I know, shocking, especially given the nature of the plot. As Kenji is drawn further and further into circumstances that he couldn’t even imagine finding himself just days before, he scrambles to make his brain engage and either do the right thing or choose to live another day. The struggle is deciding which one. My Almost Transparent Blue review with more thoughts on the works of Ryu Murakami
There are few things more frustrating in a story than underdeveloped characters. This book provides two such examples: interesting characters that fail to develop; and characters hijacked by the author to serve as his (or, in this instance, her) voice.The concept of the story is promising enough: an american sex tourist hires a young, but disenchanted, japanese guide to explore the night attractions of the city. Add a neglected girlfriend, a murder, a splash of mystery and a passable translation and you have all the trappings of an enjoyable page-turner.Unfortunately, a strange pattern emerges as the story unfolds: every so often, one of the characters launches of into an internal soliloquy about the (sliding) social norms in Japan and the various preconceptions held by Americans towards the Japanese culture or vice versa. At first, this is relatively engaging. However, it soon becomes obvious that those monologues are a vehicle for the author's personal thoughts and the characters serve as little more than a transparent façade. Preconceptions are deconstructed, only to be replaced by others, colored by mildly moralizing comments and the same-old, tired questions ("Where is our society going? Why are young people acting like this?")[Spoiler warning! Everything after this point contains spoilers]As the first chapter closes to an end, we are no closer to an answer than before and any excitement in the story has quickly worn off. Fortunately, the second chapter picks up the pace with a brutal murder that takes place right in front of our eyes. The author takes the time to describe everything in vivid, uncompromising detail and does so with such a relish that the scene feels a little too uncomfortably close to gorn. There is some foreshadowing, yes, but nothing prepares you for the sheer brutality of the deed.The second chapter ends with the reader as dazed as the japanese guide who witnesses and unwittingly takes part in the murder. Both will be asking "why?", as the third chapter begins, searching for motives and an explanation. And that's where everything goes downhill: the explanations, when given, are laughable at best (satanists?) and downright ludicrous at worst (hypnotism, really?) As for motives? There are none, except for a passing phrase: "I am different".Ultimately, the murderer spares the witness because he doesn't give him to the police. The guide goes back to his girlfriend who is waiting, as the murderer rides away into the sunset.This is a book that doesn't work in almost any level: not as a mystery, not as a horror and certainly not as a character study. The story sucks, the characters suck, their motives are razor-thin, their character development non-existent and their actions defy all logic or explanation. Not only that, but the author spends time preaching and moralizing, while leaving significant plot-holes intact.My recommendation: read only for the shock value in the murder description (2/5 stars). There is little else of value here, so don't feel bad if you pass.Let me close with a rhetorical question: how does a known 12 year-old serial murderer escape notice for two decades? Don't expect a rational answer in this book.Peace!
What do You think about In The Miso Soup (2006)?
That`s not a book you read every day. Spooky, creepy, eerie, and yet, the closest to the actual human nature out of almost everything else I have ever read. Really makes you think.Just who is Frank? Was his childhood responsible for the creation of a man he is today? Or was it just something inside of him, that would have eventually emerged, regardless of his lifestyle? And, Kenji. He`s even more of a mystery than Frank himself. We all smelled a rat when it came to this odd American tourist who was later proved to be a psychopath. But, what about our protagonist? Have his choices drawn him so far away from the light (I`m not being religious, just metaphorical), that he is no longer able to come home? He seemed to have developed a kind of a Stockholm syndrome, making up all sorts of excuses for Frank`s behavior.Tokyo itself is a kind of a character. The real Tokyo, one might say. Not the one you are presented with in tourist agencies and travel brochures, but a darker, more sinister Tokyo. Kabuki-cho represents all the solitude, loneliness and isolation of every single Japanese person, only a hundred times bigger and more dangerous. Instead of just a single lost and lonely individual, here you have a place where they all gather themselves, in a pool of lies, deceit and despair. They just choose not to notice it. Maybe if they act happy, they might be able to convince themselves they are, even for just a moment.Frank is a crucial part of that wicked puzzle. I`m still not sure how to describe him. Is he pure evil, or just a lost boy, trapped in a body of a grown man? He is perhaps the most honest person in this novel. He doesn`t try to hide his true nature or his despicable acts. He openly discusses what it is that`s bothering him, human psyche, their cruel nature and the horrible deeds they are capable of. Kenji is the only person close to him, the only one he thinks of as a friend. Kenji slowly begins to understand, not justify, but understand Frank, as he too is lost in the facade of seemingly glamorous places and people. Jun may be the only one who can get him out of this, as she represents a symbol of morality and standards in a dying world surrounding them.Not an easy read, makes you question a lot of things. Gruesome at times, but certainly worthy of checking out.
—Ana Luković
Japan is a nation of extremes. Why does one of the richest nations on the planet have citizens who literally work themselves to death? Why do so many well-to-do Japanese teenagers turn to prostitution? How did Japan's intensely polite, buttoned-down society spawn one of the largest, most varied sex industries in the world? In the Miso Soup is a slim volume by Ryu Murakami that tries to grapple with the Big Questions, even as it presents a satisfying mystery. It concerns Kenji, a twenty-something slacker who's primary source of income is leading foriegn tourists around on sex tours, his specialty being his ability to grease palms and open doors in establishments where gaijin are normally forbidden. It takes place over the three nights he spends with Frank, an exceptionally strange American tourist who he begins to suspect may be behind a string of horrific murders that have occured locally in the last few days. In a novel of extremes, Frank is the living embodiment of Murakami's vision: alternately timid and exhuberant, waffling from an almost disinterest in sex to manic horndog antics, Frank's increasingly bizarre behavior and contradictory stories about America give Kenji ample reason to suspect him of something darker. Is Frank a repressed, partially disabled businessman who desperately wants a friend in Kenji more than he wants cheap sex? Or is he a psychopathic murderer on foreign holiday? (Why can't he be both?) In the Miso Soup is a taut, noir-as-fuck, entertaining as hell look at the underbelly of one of the world's supposedly squeaky-clean cultures and a book that left me thinking big thoughts. Highly recommended.Postscript: a little word of warning; if you couldn't tell from the plot description, this book deals pretty heavily with the Japanese sex industry, so it's pretty explicit. If you're squeamish or if frank depictions of people having weird, vaguely depressing sex offends you, you might want to skip.
—Greg Bates
Loved it, love it, loved it. I hated every second I wasn't reading this book. It's quickly paced, but I don't know if I'd call it a thriller, per se, or use Silence of the Lambs as a point of comparison/reference (the Kirkus blurb on the front does both).In the Miso Soup is tense and intelligent and sad and contemplative. I had any easier time with the gore than I thought I would. It was pretty explicit, yes, but maybe seeing it through Kenji's eyes--he's a very passive narrator--allowed for a certain distance. The characters are fascinating and I just liked hearing them talk. The writing is all I ask for in writing (no navel-gazing, yay!). The whole book reminded me of Robert Cormier, actually. The examination of loneliness and human condition recalled the best of Cormier's work, in my opinion. It's almost like if Cormier wrote 'adult' novels, they'd be something like this (maybe not so gorey) or if Murakami wrote YA they'd be something like Cormier's. I could be WAY off, but that's the feeling I got and is probably a huge part of the reason why I love love love love love this book. I don't know if I could freely recommend In the Miso Soup to just anyone--like I said, it's explicit and it's dark and it's gritty--but it's amazing and I'm so glad I read it and I will probably read it again. And again.
—Courtney
