I see this book everywhere I go, as though it's calling for me to read it

The definition of "wtf Japan". Haven't read 'audition' but in terms of structure both are similar. Both have a long setup to the actual horror and gore. Definitely deserves a read . It's quite short and leaves an impression. I read both this and coin locker babies (the latter was better in terms of characters) but the violence was much more surreal in 'miso'.
And, am I the only one who noticed that the Frank was practically the judge. I mean, the man even starts talking about the massacre of indians.

At last, I have finally become the miso soup.

I read it in university. It's very good if you like a mixture of pulp thrillers and psycho-sexual violence with a dusting on some japanese satire and psychology. It's nothing worthy of classic status but I would recommend Ryu nonetheless.

WTF DID HE MEAN BY THAT

>It's nothing worthy of classic status
I disagree.

Rampo might've invented eroguro nonsense, but Murakami made a new benchmark with In the Miso Soup.

By the way, if you like Ryu's stuff, check out Rampo. Specially The Caterpillar (collected in a bunch of books, but it's on Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination) and Mo-Ju The Blind Beast. They're in this collection too

That's the only book of his I've read and, yes, I'd say it resonated more with me than anything I've read by Haruki.

Haruki is a lovely writer but his ideas are dreamy and difficult to ascertain any meaning from outside of his worlds (ie in the day-to-day). Dare I say, he's an egotistic writer.

Obviously I'm not a Ryu fanatic but In The Miso Soup does at least offer criticism approaching the subject of people's behaviour in society.

Maybe it's just my taste showing, though.

Quote from the end of the book:
As I took the envelope, he added: “There’s just one thing I was hoping we could do that we never got around to. I wanted to have some miso soup with you, but it’s too late now. We won’t be meeting again.”
“Miso soup?”
“Yeah. I’m really interested in miso soup. I ordered it at a little sushi bar in Colorado once long ago, and I thought it was a darned peculiar kind of soup, the smell it had and everything, so I didn’t eat it, but it intrigued me. It had that funny brown color and smelled kind of like human sweat, but it also looked delicate and refined somehow. I came to this country hoping to find out what the people who eat that soup on a daily basis might be like. So I’m a little disappointed we didn’t get to have some together.”
I asked him if he was going back to America right away. No, not right away, he said, so I suggested we could still have miso soup together sometime. Even the smallest Japanese restaurant has it, I explained, and you can even buy it in convenience stores. That’s all right, Frank said with a smile—that peculiar smile of his which looked as if his features weren’t relaxing but collapsing.
“I don’t need to eat the stuff now because now I’m here—right in the middle of it! The soup I ordered in Colorado had all these little slices of vegetables and things, which at the time just looked like kitchen scrapings to me. But now I’m in the miso soup myself, just like those bits of vegetable. I’m floating around in this giant bowl of it, and that’s good enough for me.”

I think it's clear as fuck.

>Hideaki Anno's Love and Pop

I completely forgot about that. I remember watching it and thinking how much it reminded me of a Ryu Murakami setting before I even realised it was an adaptation.

I guess it shows that old wily master, Anno got something right for once.

misato > asuka > ritsuko > rei

Fair enough user, I'll have to check them out.

The Caterpillar is really short. Like, 30 pages or so.

... you will never be the same though.

bump

Correct, user.

>Haruki is kind of a Borges of Japan.
Confirmed to have never read a Borges story, please remove yourself from the premises.

>Haruki is kind of a Borges of Japan
Literally, off yourself

Ryu is mostly edgelord but 69 was different and good fun for middle school kiddos.

Also Yoko Ogawa is more nuanced wtf japan and better

how do you copy paste that mega link?

Piercing is great. It's about a guy who was beat as a kid, like really beat- his mom would rub amonia acid on his hands, but now he's just had a baby and he's having hallucinations of killing the baby. In order to avoid this he decides he needs to kill someone else and plans to murder an escort. The escort ends up being just as fucked up as him and thus wackiness ensues. Ryu is edgy but it never feels like he's doing it for the sake of it. In piercing the guy recollects about his time at the Home (a place for damaged children he spent his childhood at) and describes how one kid would kill his bunny. It is a very disturbing and sad scene yet within the context of traumatized children fits perfectly with the narrative.

It's not his strongest work. The blurb on the back about the woman's blood gushing everywhere was the best part of the book by far, which is unfortunate because it's really not that shocking or that stylish.
I couldn't help myself from imagining Frank as Eddie from Silent Hill though.

there are a lot of murakamis in japan it's like the name smith there my guy

>no pen pen
opinion discarded