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Ryu Murakami (author), Ralph McCarthy (translator), In the Miso Soup, Kodansha International, 2003. 180 pgs.

Picture a dismembered corpse of a sixteen-year-old girl dumped at a trash collection site in a secluded Tokyo alley. We’re looking at it through the eyes of, Kenji, a twenty-year-old guide to Tokyo’s nightlife for foreign tourists, who is reading a newspaper when he receives a call from a man named Frank from the United States. For three nights across the New Year’s holiday, the author takes us to the bars and strip joints of the Kabuki-cho district of Shinjuku. Like watching women performing behind a one-way mirror in a peep show, we get a glimpse into the mind of a Japanese man born in 1952.

“Most Japanese girls sell it, not because they need money, but as a way of escaping loneliness.”

The book emphasises the superficiality and society’s negative perception of the sort of “compensated dating” that young Japanese women are engaged in, in the year 1997, the year of the book’s publication.

In contrast to other women in the story, like the Peruvian hooker, who wonders if Japanese people have ever suffered in any way, they can do nothing but surrender to a higher power.

“The Japanese had never experienced having their land taken over by another ethnic group or being slaughtered or driven out as refugees.”

As I watched the story unfold from a distance, I got lost in the contradictions and ironies. The imagery was palpable, like the rotting carcass of a cat. The elements are appalling, like the cat’s gas-filled stomach bursting, and its eyeball popping out and sticking to the end of a child’s shoe. I should have looked away, but I couldn’t.

Maybe it’s the malevolence in me, of the sort that the author beautifully describes as an emptiness like a black hole from which anything may come out.

“Everybody lives with a certain amount of confusion and indecision—never knowing which way the pendulum’s going to swing. That’s normal.”

As the author guides us to some unexplored territory, you may start questioning your morality. The prose is astonishing and provocative, line after line, like the teeth of homeless men pulled out one after another by kids who think they stink.

But who decides what stinks?

How to cite: Dutch, Jeremiah. “Floating Around in Ryu Murakami’s In the Miso Soup.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 21 Oct. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/10/21/miso-soup.

Anna Moon was born in a small and historic town in the Philippines. Growing up, she was fascinated by languages, traditions, and cultures, which led her to a lifelong journey of traveling the world and beyond. She currently resides in Manila, where she works as a Korean Research Associate and co-owns a furniture company with a friend.