In the Miso Soup
by Ryū Murakami
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It is just before New Year's. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Frank's behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isn't until the second night, however, in a scene that will shock you and make you laugh and make you hate yourself for laughing, that Kenji learns show more exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life. Kenji's intimate knowledge of Tokyo's sex industry, his thoughtful observations and wisecracks about the emptiness and hypocrisy of contemporary Japan, and his insights into the shockingly widespread phenomena of "compensated dating" and selling it among Japanese schoolgirls, give us plenty to think about on every page. Kenji is our likable, if far from innocent, guide to the inferno of violence and evil into which he unwillingly descends - and from which only Jun, his sixteen-year-old, can possibly save him. show lessTags
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This was a tense, chilling, and creepy book with one section of explosive, very explicit violence. (Definitely not a book for the faint of heart.) Most of the action takes place in a red light district of Tokyo so there is also a lot of discussion of the sex trade, peep shows, etc....
I read a different Ryū Murakami book, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, earlier this year. While Popular Hits also included explosive violence, it also had funny moments and a level of outrageousness that gave it... not a levity exactly, but maybe a wink and a nod of acknowledgement that you were participating in a farce just by reading it. In the Miso Soup is more serious and philosophical, making it all the scarier and a much more soul-chilling book. show more There's quite a bit of commentary on society, materialism, loneliness, and more.
I don't always draw clear pictures in my head of characters (they're usually a vague person shape) but I had very clear pictures of both Kenji and Frank. In fact, I realized this morning that Frank (in my head) looks very much like Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Recommended if you like dark and disturbing books. I'd also recommend reading it in one sitting (which I wasn't able to do due to life circumstances) as I think it keeps you immersed in the tension better. "Liked" is not the right word for this book and I am not sure what word I am groping for; the book is excellent at building tension and is succinctly and skillfully written. show less
I read a different Ryū Murakami book, Popular Hits of the Showa Era, earlier this year. While Popular Hits also included explosive violence, it also had funny moments and a level of outrageousness that gave it... not a levity exactly, but maybe a wink and a nod of acknowledgement that you were participating in a farce just by reading it. In the Miso Soup is more serious and philosophical, making it all the scarier and a much more soul-chilling book. show more There's quite a bit of commentary on society, materialism, loneliness, and more.
I don't always draw clear pictures in my head of characters (they're usually a vague person shape) but I had very clear pictures of both Kenji and Frank. In fact, I realized this morning that Frank (in my head) looks very much like Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Recommended if you like dark and disturbing books. I'd also recommend reading it in one sitting (which I wasn't able to do due to life circumstances) as I think it keeps you immersed in the tension better. "Liked" is not the right word for this book and I am not sure what word I am groping for; the book is excellent at building tension and is succinctly and skillfully written. show less
Kenji, our protagonist, is a nightlife guide to the seedier parts of Tokyo's Kabuki-cho 'water trade'. Which is not an auspicious living, or a start to a novel, but he gradually comes to suspect that Frank, his latest client, could be beyond creepy and instead a full-blown psychopath and murderer. On the whole, Kenji wishes he hadn't started at all, especially not this particular episode.
Which is rather the experience of reading this book.
Which is rather the experience of reading this book.
The common element among miso soup, blood, and semen is the taste of salt. All three share the qualities of the wet and the sticky—and the sexual connotations of wet, sticky blood and semen are the dark ingredients in the “soup” of Ryu Murakami’s thriller. Murakami is no stranger to the dark side: Coin Locker Babies is cyberpunk for grownups that makes the efforts of Gibson and Sterling come off as the work of pampered babies, while the Burroughsian fever of the semi-autobiographical Almost Transparent Blue brutally yanks the chain of anyone who remembers the Seventies (the few that do) as boring.
In the Miso Soup is the stuff of nightmares, but its narrator, just-turned-twenty Kenji, is matter-of-fact. Kenji is a guide for show more foreign tourists to Tokyo’s sex trade, from the fetishistic to the unfettered by a longing for feet or fists. He’s just trying to make a living, so when the overweight American Frank contracts with him for a few nights’ worth of directions and interpretation, Kenji shakes off his feeling of dread and shows Frank around.
Dead bodies turn up soon after Kenji and Frank pass by. And not just dead, but cruelly and ritualistically murdered ones. Kenji can’t be certain, at least not at first, but he has a suspicion it’s the American with the metallic skin (and, we learn secondhand, the strangely lumpy penis) who is the psychotic culprit. Suspicion turns to certainty in the sex club where Frank, inexplicably, hypnotizes the patrons and then…blood and semen soup.
Frank, it turns out, is not just a psycho, he’s also a philosopher (that may be redundant). That, rather than the explicit scenes of gore and cruelty, is the real attraction of this novel. Like Susanna Moore’s brilliantly disturbed In the Cut, the fascination here is in the linguistic penetration of the dark, wet, sticky places of the human psyche. Like Frank, Murakami hypnotizes: we follow Kenji as Kenji, against his better judgment (and the wishes of his teenaged girlfriend, who wants Kenji to spend New Year’s Eve with her), follows Frank. We’re entranced by the, as Frank would say, anxiety of our imaginations.
Toward the end of the book, Frank tells Kenji that “people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves.” Horror movies “act as shock absorbers—and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination.” Without the mediating shock absorbers, “I bet you’d see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers.” So don’t blame violence on fiction, Frank concludes: “anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.”
No, the desire to murder comes from a place much less facile. Knowledge of that place is truly frightening, for it is knowledge of home itself. Not in the Freudian sense of the traumatic childhood (though, indeed, Frank began his bloody career while very young), but in self-knowledge, the true home, the one the dying Socrates urged us to strive to know. This is perverse indeed: the Socratic imperative’s bleeding edge, the touchy-feely New Age revealed as a stranglehold.
Murakami avoids the conclusion of Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey and their ilk: we’re not “killer apes.” Rather, it’s that we truly are ignorant of ourselves, our cultures, our histories. That’s the point of bringing into collision the ugly American and the naïve-cum-worldly Japanese. Forget the civilizational clash between Islam and Christianity: we’re at war with ourselves, but we don’t even know it. Indeed, we need the foreigner’s eyes in order to see our true selves. As Frank remembers for Kenji, “Like those girls in the pub… They didn’t know anything about their own country. Not only did they not know anything, they didn’t even seem to be interested. All they cared about was expensive bourbon and handbags and hotels.” It’s our grubby clutching at material things, our insistent, anxious suppression of imagination, that makes us cruel and stupid. And it’s just that sort of cruel stupidity that really pisses people like Frank off.
Originally published on Curled Up with a Good Book show less
In the Miso Soup is the stuff of nightmares, but its narrator, just-turned-twenty Kenji, is matter-of-fact. Kenji is a guide for show more foreign tourists to Tokyo’s sex trade, from the fetishistic to the unfettered by a longing for feet or fists. He’s just trying to make a living, so when the overweight American Frank contracts with him for a few nights’ worth of directions and interpretation, Kenji shakes off his feeling of dread and shows Frank around.
Dead bodies turn up soon after Kenji and Frank pass by. And not just dead, but cruelly and ritualistically murdered ones. Kenji can’t be certain, at least not at first, but he has a suspicion it’s the American with the metallic skin (and, we learn secondhand, the strangely lumpy penis) who is the psychotic culprit. Suspicion turns to certainty in the sex club where Frank, inexplicably, hypnotizes the patrons and then…blood and semen soup.
Frank, it turns out, is not just a psycho, he’s also a philosopher (that may be redundant). That, rather than the explicit scenes of gore and cruelty, is the real attraction of this novel. Like Susanna Moore’s brilliantly disturbed In the Cut, the fascination here is in the linguistic penetration of the dark, wet, sticky places of the human psyche. Like Frank, Murakami hypnotizes: we follow Kenji as Kenji, against his better judgment (and the wishes of his teenaged girlfriend, who wants Kenji to spend New Year’s Eve with her), follows Frank. We’re entranced by the, as Frank would say, anxiety of our imaginations.
Toward the end of the book, Frank tells Kenji that “people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves.” Horror movies “act as shock absorbers—and if they disappeared altogether it would mean losing one of the few ways we have to ease the anxiety of the imagination.” Without the mediating shock absorbers, “I bet you’d see a big leap in the number of serial killers and mass murderers.” So don’t blame violence on fiction, Frank concludes: “anyone stupid enough to get the idea of murdering people from a movie could get the same idea from watching the news.”
No, the desire to murder comes from a place much less facile. Knowledge of that place is truly frightening, for it is knowledge of home itself. Not in the Freudian sense of the traumatic childhood (though, indeed, Frank began his bloody career while very young), but in self-knowledge, the true home, the one the dying Socrates urged us to strive to know. This is perverse indeed: the Socratic imperative’s bleeding edge, the touchy-feely New Age revealed as a stranglehold.
Murakami avoids the conclusion of Desmond Morris, Robert Ardrey and their ilk: we’re not “killer apes.” Rather, it’s that we truly are ignorant of ourselves, our cultures, our histories. That’s the point of bringing into collision the ugly American and the naïve-cum-worldly Japanese. Forget the civilizational clash between Islam and Christianity: we’re at war with ourselves, but we don’t even know it. Indeed, we need the foreigner’s eyes in order to see our true selves. As Frank remembers for Kenji, “Like those girls in the pub… They didn’t know anything about their own country. Not only did they not know anything, they didn’t even seem to be interested. All they cared about was expensive bourbon and handbags and hotels.” It’s our grubby clutching at material things, our insistent, anxious suppression of imagination, that makes us cruel and stupid. And it’s just that sort of cruel stupidity that really pisses people like Frank off.
Originally published on Curled Up with a Good Book show less
Kenji is a "nightlife guide" for English-speaking tourists in Japan. Basically, he takes guys on tours of what the Japanese sex industry has to offer. Although Kenji gets quite a few customers via his little ad in Tokyo Pink Guide (a magazine about the sex industry in Tokyo), the work isn't as good as he expected it to be. He can never seem to save up enough for that trip to America he wants.
Kenji has seen a lot of foreigners, but his latest client, Frank, is different. On the surface, he's a loud and friendly New Yorker who wants to go everywhere and have some sex along the way. There are moments, however, when something dark and ugly peers out of Frank's eyes. Frank hired him for three nights, right up until New Year's Eve, and by show more the end of their first night together, Kenji becomes convinced that Frank is the serial killer who's been raping girls involved in compensated dating, killing them, and dismembering their bodies (not necessarily in this order).
This book could be divided into three parts. In the first part, Kenji is a guide and translator working with a strange and vaguely disturbing client. This section has a large amount of detail about how the various places Kenji and Frank visit work and takes place mostly during their first night together. I recall them going to a peep show, a lingerie bar (sounded a bit like a hostess club, only with the women dressed in nothing but lingerie), and some kind of club where they ended up going on a paid date that Frank had hoped would end with sex. They also spent some time at a batting cage, of all things. Considering what just the time with Kenji cost, it was a little surprising that Frank wanted to spend it just watching Kenji try to hit some baseballs. But Frank was weird, even at the very beginning.
The first part is surprisingly tame. No sex, on-page or otherwise. The closest Frank gets to having sex is a handjob at the peep show, which isn't on-page. Kenji asks the woman who did it for a few details, hoping for something that might tell him, one way or the other, whether Frank was the murderer. Some aspects of this part of the book could almost be viewed as darkly comedic. Even as Kenji worries that Frank might be a murderer, there are moments when Frank seems clownish and ridiculous.
In the second part, which occurs a little over halfway through, the violence and gore is cranked WAY up. It's basically just one scene, but it is not for the faint of heart. I didn't expect this level of nastiness and ended up skimming it for my own peace of mind. Even then, way more of this scene is burned into my brain than I'd like. There ison-page torture, as well as a character who is almost forced into necrophilia.
The third part returns to the pacing and overall content of the first part. Kenji continues to act as Frank's guide, although Frank is no longer interested in finding someone to have sex with. However, whereas the first part was filled with Kenji's suspicions, more a fear of what his gut told him Frank might be capable of that anything, in the second part Kenji isso far past fear that he's numb.
The last part also had a sharp increase in Frank's level of self-reflection, philosophizing, and societal analysis. Kenji, too, found himself thinking about what it is to be Japanese. And, to be honest, I really didn't care what sorts of insights Frank had or inspired in Kenji.I don't know if his explanation of his childhood was supposed to awaken in readers some sort of empathy or understanding for him, but I, personally, just kept coming back to the utter horror of what happened at the book's midway point. Several of those people were annoying, or liars, or scammers, but none of them deserved what happened to them, and Frank made it pretty clear that he planned to continue on as he had been, after he and Kenji parted ways.
I didn't like this book. I suppose it was intense and focused look at the emotional impact of three nights with a guy like Frank, but I don't know that that time was worthwhile.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less
Kenji has seen a lot of foreigners, but his latest client, Frank, is different. On the surface, he's a loud and friendly New Yorker who wants to go everywhere and have some sex along the way. There are moments, however, when something dark and ugly peers out of Frank's eyes. Frank hired him for three nights, right up until New Year's Eve, and by show more the end of their first night together, Kenji becomes convinced that Frank is the serial killer who's been raping girls involved in compensated dating, killing them, and dismembering their bodies (not necessarily in this order).
This book could be divided into three parts. In the first part, Kenji is a guide and translator working with a strange and vaguely disturbing client. This section has a large amount of detail about how the various places Kenji and Frank visit work and takes place mostly during their first night together. I recall them going to a peep show, a lingerie bar (sounded a bit like a hostess club, only with the women dressed in nothing but lingerie), and some kind of club where they ended up going on a paid date that Frank had hoped would end with sex. They also spent some time at a batting cage, of all things. Considering what just the time with Kenji cost, it was a little surprising that Frank wanted to spend it just watching Kenji try to hit some baseballs. But Frank was weird, even at the very beginning.
The first part is surprisingly tame. No sex, on-page or otherwise. The closest Frank gets to having sex is a handjob at the peep show, which isn't on-page. Kenji asks the woman who did it for a few details, hoping for something that might tell him, one way or the other, whether Frank was the murderer. Some aspects of this part of the book could almost be viewed as darkly comedic. Even as Kenji worries that Frank might be a murderer, there are moments when Frank seems clownish and ridiculous.
In the second part, which occurs a little over halfway through, the violence and gore is cranked WAY up. It's basically just one scene, but it is not for the faint of heart. I didn't expect this level of nastiness and ended up skimming it for my own peace of mind. Even then, way more of this scene is burned into my brain than I'd like. There is
The third part returns to the pacing and overall content of the first part. Kenji continues to act as Frank's guide, although Frank is no longer interested in finding someone to have sex with. However, whereas the first part was filled with Kenji's suspicions, more a fear of what his gut told him Frank might be capable of that anything, in the second part Kenji is
The last part also had a sharp increase in Frank's level of self-reflection, philosophizing, and societal analysis. Kenji, too, found himself thinking about what it is to be Japanese. And, to be honest, I really didn't care what sorts of insights Frank had or inspired in Kenji.
I didn't like this book. I suppose it was intense and focused look at the emotional impact of three nights with a guy like Frank, but I don't know that that time was worthwhile.
(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less
Well, that escalated quickly.
Kenji is a young man who makes his living giving tours of Tokyo's red light districts to foreigners. Over the New Year weekend, a time when the Japanese are focused on quiet family celebrations and many clubs are closed, Kenji is hired by Frank, an American businessman. He needs the money, but Kenji finds Frank off-putting and the things Frank says put him on edge. He tries telling his girlfriend about Frank, but what does he have beyond vague suspicions and a distrust of someone who isn't Japanese?
The novel begins so subtly. Kenji works illegally in an area that exists outside the mainstream, so is it any wonder that the kind of man who would hire a personal guide to the legal and less-than-legal parts of show more Japan's sex industry seems unsavory? And Kenji's suspicions are so vague that it seemed this novel was going to explore Japanese xenophobia, especially given that many of the sex workers are not Japanese. And then Kenji meets Frank for their second night of sex tourism and, well, every single thing I had thought for the first third of the novel was turned on its head and things begin to happen.
This is noir with a hard edge and plenty of undercurrent. show less
Kenji is a young man who makes his living giving tours of Tokyo's red light districts to foreigners. Over the New Year weekend, a time when the Japanese are focused on quiet family celebrations and many clubs are closed, Kenji is hired by Frank, an American businessman. He needs the money, but Kenji finds Frank off-putting and the things Frank says put him on edge. He tries telling his girlfriend about Frank, but what does he have beyond vague suspicions and a distrust of someone who isn't Japanese?
The novel begins so subtly. Kenji works illegally in an area that exists outside the mainstream, so is it any wonder that the kind of man who would hire a personal guide to the legal and less-than-legal parts of show more Japan's sex industry seems unsavory? And Kenji's suspicions are so vague that it seemed this novel was going to explore Japanese xenophobia, especially given that many of the sex workers are not Japanese. And then Kenji meets Frank for their second night of sex tourism and, well, every single thing I had thought for the first third of the novel was turned on its head and things begin to happen.
This is noir with a hard edge and plenty of undercurrent. show less
My introduction to Ryu Murakami was his first novel, Almost Transparent Blue; a lurid slice of contemporary surrealism swimming in grime, sex, and drugs. This novel was published twenty years later, and Murakami's growth as a writer and storyteller is easy to discern. He has crafted an arresting thriller, comparable to the better efforts of Thomas Harris, but retaining the author's knack for nightmarish imagery and unflinching social criticism. In the Miso Soup is a searing glance into the dark side of Japanese society and human nature alike.
I like weird books. And apparently when it comes to Japanese fiction, I like violent books. (I'm not really sure why I keep reading Japanese fiction where people are killed. Maybe that's just a lot of the Japanese fiction that gets translated into English?)
I'm not really sure if I can explain this book. show more Basically, a Japanese tour guide is hired to show an American around the seedy side of Tokyo's nightlife. The American ends up being a serial killer.
But even before the real violence sets in, it's just such a weird book. There's something about the writing style I supposed - it really sucked me in even though I'm pretty sure I had a shocked-to-horrified expression on my face while reading 90% of this book.
On a larger scale, it touches on the issues of loneliness, the disconnect of younger generations (compared to post-WW2 folks; this isn't a teenagers-are-the-bane-of-our-society type book), cultural differences, who's to blame for society's issues... It's not exactly the most flattering towards Americans, but then it isn't exactly a glowing review of the Japanese either. Murakami is critical of everyone, apparently.
Basically people who love horror movies are people with boring lives. They want to be stimulated, and they need to reassure themselves, because when a really scary movie is over, you’re reassured to see that you’re still alive and the world still exists as it did before.Earlier this year, I read Popular Hits of the Showa Era and it was weird and oddly entrancing, so I decided to read something else by Murakami. I picked this book.
I'm not really sure if I can explain this book. show more Basically, a Japanese tour guide is hired to show an American around the seedy side of Tokyo's nightlife. The American ends up being a serial killer.
“He’s checking out a Print Club booth.”It's a horrifically violent book. Do not read while eating. Most of it isn't gory, but there is one (long) scene that... You know, I have a strong stomach but I'm glad I didn't hit that part while I was eating lunch. For some reason, it was particularly gruesome.
“A what?”
“You know, that machine that takes photos of you and then prints them out on cute little stickers. I don’t think he knows how it works. He’s watching a group of girls posing for a picture.”
“I think you’re probably all right, then, Kenji. I can’t imagine a murderer making Print Club photos of himself.”
I’m not sure why, but that seemed to make sense.
Frank sighed as though bored and cut off his other ear as well. It fell to the floor soundlessly, like a slice of fishcake or something, and lay there among the loose strands of hair and cigarette ashes.And that doesn't even get into the really icky parts. (Let's not discuss a man's face begin set on fire.) One disadvantage of particularly evocative writing style, I suppose?
But even before the real violence sets in, it's just such a weird book. There's something about the writing style I supposed - it really sucked me in even though I'm pretty sure I had a shocked-to-horrified expression on my face while reading 90% of this book.
On a larger scale, it touches on the issues of loneliness, the disconnect of younger generations (compared to post-WW2 folks; this isn't a teenagers-are-the-bane-of-our-society type book), cultural differences, who's to blame for society's issues... It's not exactly the most flattering towards Americans, but then it isn't exactly a glowing review of the Japanese either. Murakami is critical of everyone, apparently.
What’s good about Americans, if I can generalize a little, is that they have a kind of openhearted innocence. And what’s not so good is that they can’t imagine any world outside the States, or any value system different from their own. The Japanese have a similar defect, but Americans are even worse about trying to force others to do whatever they themselves believe to be right.So yeah, this all probably really says nothing concrete about this book, but it's just weird. Did I like it? Yes, in a horrifying sort of way. The underlying issues were really interesting to think on and the actual plot was engaging in a rubbernecking-at-a-horrible-car-accident kind of way. I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone because if someone actually read it, they might think I had massive mental problems, but yeah, really fascinating read. I'm definitely going to have to read more Ryu Murakami books. Once I recover from this one. show less
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In the Miso Soup by Ryū Murakami in Author Theme Reads (August 2012)
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- Canonical title
- In the Miso Soup
- Original title
- イン ザ・ミソスープ; In za misosūpu
- Original publication date
- 1997 (original Japanese) (original Japanese); 2003 (English: McCarthy) (English: McCarthy)
- People/Characters
- Kenji; Frank; Jun; Lady #3; Lady #4; Lady #5 (show all 18); Madoka; Maki; Noriko; Reika; Rie; Satoshi; Akiko Takahashi; Yokoyama-san; Yuko; The Latin American woman; The manager; The waiter
- Important places
- Kabukichō, Tokyo, Japan; Tokyo, Japan
- First words
- My name is Kenji.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"The feather of a swan," I said.
- Original language
- Japanese
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 895.635 — Literature & rhetoric Literatures of other languages Literatures of East and Southeast Asia Japanese Japanese fiction 1945–2000
- LCC
- PL856 .U696 .I513 — Language and Literature Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Languages of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania Japanese language and literature Japanese literature Individual authors and works
- BISAC
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- Reviews
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- Rating
- (3.44)
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- 16 — Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 28
- ASINs
- 8