Short story review: The Children – Junichiro Tanizaki

Junichiro Tanizaki is a giant of Japanese literature, but this is the first of his short stories that I’ve read. It tells of a ten-year-old Japanese boy who falls under the spell of one of his classmate and his older sister, members of a noble family who create humiliating role play games in which their thralls are tied up and physically abused.

It is shocking for its depiction not only of prepubescent and pubescent children engaged in highly sexualised play, but also for having them participate in what is essentially sadomasochism. With its class and gender themes, one doesn’t feel that this done gratuitously or for shock value, but with the intention of exploring power dynamics. The structure is also masterful, each episode coinciding with a cultural festival in which the children’s behaviour escalates, while also subtly establishing the framework for the conclusion. The story left me unsettled and intrigued, pondering its meaning and haunted by its imagery.

After the Quake – Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami wrote After the Quake in response to the 1995 Kobe earthquake.  In his characteristically unconventional memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, he states that the short story collection was a turning point in his fiction, when his writing become less introspective and more outward-looking.  His new perspective is evident in the greater range and depth of his characters, the third person narratives, and the more mature themes which he explores.

It deals with the earthquake very indirectly.  Rather than exploiting the tragedy for drama, he explores it as a psychological phenomenon. In most of the stories, it is ancillary to the main story, but pivotal.

Still present are all the things I love about the writer – the championing of mundane courage, the conversational prose, the off-beat sensibility.  My personal favourites in the collection are the last two stories, Super-Frog Saves Tokyo and Honey Pie.  In the latter, the main character, also an author, ends on a note that I suspect is autobiographical:

‘I want to write stories that are different from the ones I’ve written so far, Junpei thought: I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.’

From now on, I’ll be reading Mr Murakami’s later works with this in mind.

Dance Dance Dance – Haruki Murakami

Dance Dance Dance picks up where A Wild Sheep Chase left off.  The unnamed, everyman narrator is shell-shocked from the events of the previous novel and worried that he has no connection to the world except for his well-worn Subaru.  He makes a comfortable living on whatever freelance writing jobs come his way, or “shovelling cultural snow” as he puts it, and spends the rest of his time doing the things that Murakami protagonists do: drinking beer, walking the streets, making simple meals and listening to music.  He is, in a word, adrift.

But someone is crying out for him in the dark: his old girlfriend, Kiki, with the perfect ears, who disappeared at the end of the last novel.  To pick up the thread of his life, he knows he must find her.  His search takes him back to Sapporo, to the Dolphin Hotel, which sets in motion a chain of events that bring into his orbit a psychic fourteen-year-old Talking Heads fan, her world class photographer and space cadet mother, a depressive movie star who hates his dependable image, and the Sheep Man, who tells him one thing: “You gotta dance.”

Dance Dance Dance was published after Norwegian Wood, which earned Murakami such unwanted fame in Japan that he fled the country.  While it is a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase, it is not considered part of the Trilogy of the Rat books that made up Murakami’s first three novels, and it does not carry over any of the political and historical commentary.  Instead, it is a much more inward looking, psychological book that sees the author dealing with the trappings of success.

After Dark – Haruki Murakami

Considering some of Murakami’s stories involve dancing dwarves, talking cats and sheep with plans for world domination, you’d expect a novel in which he explores Tokyo’s dark side to be pretty damn strange.  But surprisingly, After Dark is one of his less weird novels.  Sure, a girl gets trapped inside a TV set for a bit, but that’s as mundane as a walk to the shops for this author.

Most of the action in After Dark takes place in an unnamed entertainment district, one of those places like Shibuya that lend themselves to stereotypical images of modern Japan, full of giant television screens, neon signs and pay-by-the-hour “love hotels”.  Murakami perfectly captures the nightlife and atmosphere of Tokyo: the salary men rushing for the last train; the constant traffic of kids heading between convenience stores and karaoke bars; the scavenging rats, cats and crows. 

A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

A sheep with a star shaped mark on its back and possibly nefarious designs for the human race.  A girl with supernaturally dazzling ears and a sixth sense.  A dying right-wing power broker.  A narrator haunted by a whale’s penis.  A slurring dwarf in a sheep outfit.  What could they all have to do with each other?  Why, they’re all part of the plot of one of Haruki Murakami’s earliest novels, A Wild Sheep Chase.  Naturally.

The Sound of the Mountain – Yasunari Kawabata

review by Gabriel

The Sound of the Mountain is depressing for all the right reasons.  It captures the longing, loneliness and disappointment of aging using characters that are so real you might expect to run into them in the street (at which point you’d probably want to give them a hug).  It’s depressing because it’s confronting – it makes you reflect on your life, where it’s going, and how far that might be from your dreams.

The Elephant Vanishes – Haruki Murakami

review by Gabriel

It’s Murakamipalooza!  By which I mean, I’ve read two Murakami short story collections in a row.  That probably doesn’t qualify for a palooza suffix, but I’m going with it anyway.  The Elephant Vanishes, like Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is a random collection of short stories, being neither chronologically nor thematically linked.  It is probably more consistent in quality than the latter, and contains everything you’d expect of the author – readability, weirdness, a sense of playfulness and gratuitous references to jazz, classical music and cats.  But it also contains a few stories that surprised me with their characterisation and perspective, and showed me that Murakami can be more flexible than I’d thought.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman – Haruki Murakami

Review by Gabriel

This collection includes the short story The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes, in which an unnamed narrator enters a contest to win a two million yen prize by inventing a new kind of confection.  To win, he must gain the approval of an unusual panel of judges – the Sharpie Crows, revered birds that live deep in the bowels of the company, and who feed only on genuine Sharpie Cakes.  When he presents his invention to the crows (*spoilers on*), they tear each other apart trying to decide if his product is the real deal.

 In the introduction to Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Murakami states that The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes was his reaction to the Japanese literary establishment.  When the narrator of the story walks away from the prize due to the savagery and ridiculousness of the judges, he says, “From now on I would make and eat the food I wanted to eat.  The damned Sharpie Crows could peck each other to death for all I cared.”  This pretty much sums up Murakami’s attitude to writing, and it’s what makes his books so damn enjoyable.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running – Haruki Murakami

Review by Gabriel

Before Murakami became a full-time writer, he was running a jazz bar in Tokyo.  While working long hours, he managed to have two novels published, and achieved some critical success and recognition.  Not the type to do things by halves, he decided to sell his business to devote himself to writing full time.

At this time, he also took up running to keep fit, a habit he maintains to this day.  But he doesn’t just run – he runs marathons.  He runs for around three hours a day, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred miles a month.  He competes in at least one marathon a year, and also trains for triathlons.  As I said, he’s not the type to do things by halves.  

South of the Border, West of the Sun – Haruki Murakami

review by Gabriel

South of the Border, West of the Sun has the same basic plot as another of Murakami’s novels, Norwegian Wood – a protagonist whose life is in turmoil because he is unable to forget his first love.  Published only five years apart, the former is a revisitation of many of the latter’s themes – death, love, sex, fate.  But there are a number of significant differences that make for a very different, though equally enjoyable, reading experience.