In the Miso Soup
Murakami sets the tone of the novel when Kenji casually reads in the morning paper about pieces of a middle class high school girl, known to dabble in prostitution, discovered in several garbage cans. He finishes breakfast. A barbaric crime has occurred and it merely sells papers and provides fodder for the talking heads on the news. We're not so different after all.
Kenji has no future prospects other than a vague desire to go to America someday and is content to work as an unlicensed guide. Kenji lives on the fringes of the sex industry, showing American tourists where and how to gawk and get-off. Having put in a few years into his business there isn't much that phases him, but his latest customer, Frank, gets under his skin. Could Frank be connected with the murder, and what does he have in mind for his tour?
If I must disregard the flavor text of Pokémon cards, 'In the Miso Soup' is my first taste of Japanese literature. A night-club serial killer is the least that I would have expected. Its a common trope in our small web-bound world that Japan doesn't understand us (Americans*) and we think it is fucking weird. Like any translation, I'm not sure how much of the style survived translation, but the flat, noir tone suited the tired night-life atmosphere of the novel. It did not help me engage with Kenji at all. I didn't get too much of a feel for Japan either, perhaps its a symptom of a standardizing world, despite the efforts Murakami makes to contrast Japanese and Western culture I didn't gain much insight.
'In the Miso Soup' immerses the reader in a grey world where traditional morality has already taken a backseat to baser concerns, and soon abandons it entirely. It is gruesome, but so detached I couldn't associate with the violence. I'm feeling out a connection with Bret Easton Ellis' 'Glamorama' where a culturally deadened protagonist is forced into some thought by the horrors surrounding him, but I liked that book better. I could (and still can) see purpose and ambition behind that novel while 'In the Miso Soup' seems more like the source material behind the cheaper bent of slasher movies such as 'Saw'. Lots of violence and a slim coat of "I kill so that they feel alive" varnish. If that's your thing, have at it, but this is all I'll need.
(*Sorry for my assumption)
