Photo: samurai armour in Matsuyama castle.This vast novel by Haruki Murakami was my companion for most of my time in Japan. I was on my third reading when I finally, reluctantly, gave it up in Kyoto in exchange for some new material.
It's fascinating, absorbing - and despite multiple readings I don't understand it enough to say much about it except you should read it too. It's probably bad to make comparisons but the obvious one in my mind is Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, for the sweeping breadth and for the way that political and domestic history are intertwined; and for the surrealism. But this is Japan, not South America, and the comparison only goes so far.
It's about a young man abandoned at the bottom of a well, about his marriage and the strange machinations of his wife's family; it's about the atrocities committed by Japan before and during WWII, and the terrible fates that awaited the individuals that carried out the orders from on high, as well. It's about strange connections between strangers and the cost of letting go of reality in order to be able to heal.
I think it's probably a lot about the "soul" of modern Japan, except that I feel too ignorant to really understand; but happily the ignorant can feast on the book anyway. Ah, I am going to read so much once I come back to settle somewhere with a bookshelf and a library card again...
It's fascinating, absorbing - and despite multiple readings I don't understand it enough to say much about it except you should read it too. It's probably bad to make comparisons but the obvious one in my mind is Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, for the sweeping breadth and for the way that political and domestic history are intertwined; and for the surrealism. But this is Japan, not South America, and the comparison only goes so far.
It's about a young man abandoned at the bottom of a well, about his marriage and the strange machinations of his wife's family; it's about the atrocities committed by Japan before and during WWII, and the terrible fates that awaited the individuals that carried out the orders from on high, as well. It's about strange connections between strangers and the cost of letting go of reality in order to be able to heal.
I think it's probably a lot about the "soul" of modern Japan, except that I feel too ignorant to really understand; but happily the ignorant can feast on the book anyway. Ah, I am going to read so much once I come back to settle somewhere with a bookshelf and a library card again...
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