In the Miso Soup - Ryu Murakami

Sex, deviance and murder in ample measure

I am going to be kind and give you a 'heads-up' that nobody gave me before I bought this book. If you are of a delicate disposition you have been forewarned, the nightlife mentioned in the blurb is not your regular overcrowded bars and sweaty nightclubs with sticky floors, Ryu Murakami is referring to Tokyo's roaring sex nightlife. If strip clubs, love hotels and endless references to prostitution aren't things you want to read about then just walk right on by this cover on the shelves of your local bookshop. That being said the seedy alleys of the sex district are really just the setting for Murakami's wonderfully sinister and disturbing examination of deviant behaviour and Japanese society.

'In the Miso Soup' follows Kenji a young tour guide as he begins to suspect that his American client Frank has a dark side, and a big secret. As they spend more time together, Kenji is dragged into a world where the shocking becomes the everyday, and fear is a constant.

There is no doubt that Murakami has mastered the chilling and unnerving. Throughout the book you can't help but be horrified, but simultaneously impressed at the skill with which he creates an atmosphere of pure terror and psychological turmoil. His language and imagery are dark and graphic, bordering the obscene, and in all honestly can make you queasy at times. Though it is only a short book you would have to have a strong stomach to get through it quickly, and despite that the ending leaves you wanting more.

This book is an education in shock value, but it also manages to astutely critique Japanese society, addressing the system of tanshinfunin (where Japanese men relocate away from their wives and families to work), and the warped values and aspirations of many of Japan's youth among others, from the perspective of a native.

I needed to take a minute and decompress after reading this, but Murakami is a great author and I will be adding some of his other works to my wish list!

H x