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BOOK
REVIEW
Japanese sickos 'buy it' from American
psycho
In the Miso Soup
by Ryu Murakami
Reviewed by Gary LaMoshi
 Perhaps the Japanese
understood the danger intuitively, so for centuries they
kept their country shuttered to outsiders. Then
Commodore Matthew Perry landed in Yokohama Bay, pried
open the door, and began a mutually destructive
relationship between the United States and Japan. After
the horrors of Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, Ryu Murakami's In the Miso Soup, just
released in English translation, presents a postmodern
movement in a doomed tango between cultures that
simultaneously attract and repel each other.
Frank, a 35-year-old American tourist, comes to
Tokyo a few days before the new year and hires Kenji, a
20-year-old guide to the city's sex establishments who
is working to save enough money to go to America. Frank,
now "in the miso soup", wants to explore genuine
Japanese sleaze - lingerie bars to peep shows to
omiai (matchmaking) pubs where women from across
the social spectrum receive a free opportunity to
perform karaoke and a platform to "sell it", as they
flippantly say.
When the novel debuted in
Japanese in 1997, "compensated dating" among high-school
students had reached scandalous proportions. The book
opens with one practitioner of the trade found brutally
murdered, her dismembered body stuffed into trash bags
and dumped in an alley. Kenji and his
high-school-student girlfriend Jun, who vehemently
opposes "selling it", find the killing technique
decidedly un-Japanese and, within the first thousand
words of the book, Kenji is casting suspicion on his new
client.
The odd appearance of Frank's skin and
his strange behavior feed Kenji's apprehensions, but
that doesn't prevent them from sampling the sexual
thrills for sale in Tokyo beyond conventional
prostitution. Based on news accounts that the murdered
teen had been sexually assaulted, Kenji asks a peep
show's genital masseuse to divulge Frank's ejaculatory
volume. (At such moments readers feel they are in the
firm grip of true literature.) Kenji's source expresses
alarm about something unusual in Frank's equipment,
without actually mentioning the shocking oddity or
delivering the requested liquidity report.
At
one stage during their journey through the seedy
Kabuki-cho night, their talk turns to baseball. Frank's
inconsistent answers turn this connection between their
cultures into a source of mistrust and competition.
Kenji and Frank wind up in a frigid batting cage with
Kenji's guide fees riding on the outcome, while Frank
expresses his distaste for a homeless man finding warmth
in the radiation from the attendant's booth.
Kenji fails to deliver a home run, but Frank
forfeits his turn, stumbling obliviously into the path
of incoming pitches. Frank explains that his partial
lobotomy after a serious traffic accident sometimes
leaves him disoriented. Uniquely, though, Frank is
growing new brain cells to replace the ones that were
cut out. Coincidentally, a homeless man is found burned
to death the next morning. Ominously, Kenji is booked
for two more nights as Frank's tour guide.
Since
his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue, brimming
with sex and drugs near a US military base, won the
prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976, Ryu Murakami has
balanced on the cutting edge of Japanese popular
culture. His resume includes rock drumming, political
and economic commentary and a stint as a talk-show host,
but it is his novels and cult films that shock
audiences.
The material Murakami presents
throughout In the Miso Soup is often outrageous,
but it packs surprisingly little jolt. Relentless
foreshadowing of Frank's dark side diffuses the impact
of the ultimate revelations about him. So do large
chunks of sociological exposition on sex-industry
variants and a storytelling style that too often
features characters talking about things that happened
rather than things actually happening.
Also,
thanks in part to observers such as Murakami, we no
longer think of Japan simply as the land of the tea
ceremony, calligraphy, kabuki, kimono and cherry
blossoms. We know, for example, that Japan is one of the
world's hotbeds of pornography, inefficiency and
corruption. It's the place where you can buy
schoolgirls' saliva and panties from vending machines,
as well as (perhaps more shocking to 21st-century
Americans) cigarettes, beer, and 37 brands of canned
coffee, served hot or cold.
We also know that
more recent generations increasingly reject the postwar
formula of conformity and hard work in favor of doing
their own thing and looking for new values. Long before
and beyond today's parasaito shinguru no jidai
(age of the parasite single), women who "sell it" have
experienced a dollop of empowerment over those who "buy
it" along with their degradation. Just after the
Japanese release of In the Miso Soup, "no pan"
shabu-shabu - Japanese hot pot served by young
girls in skimpy outfits and no underwear - led to
scandal and resignations among top government financial
officials. In the novel, a wise streetwalker from South
America steers Frank toward a possible Japanese cure for
his woes, joya no kane, the traditional New
Year's Eve bells that toll 108 times to banish the same
number of bonno, worldly desires.
Postmodern Japanese society turns a deaf ear to
those bells in favor of "selling it" and to "buying it"
as a source of meaning in life. But In the Miso
Soup offers no alternative prescription, just
alternative noise. Former talk-show host Murakami
assaults readers with titillation from the fringes, like
a Japanese episode of America's toxic Jerry
Springer and similar programs. Once again, two great
nations meet to produce mutual degradation and
destruction.
In the Miso Soup by Ryu
Murakami (translated by Ralph McCarthy), Kodansha
International, Tokyo, 2004. ISBN: 4-7700-2957-8. Price:
US$22.95. 240 pages.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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