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Coin Locker Babies
A surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today.
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.
Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.
Abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. Both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called Toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of this exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, Anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.
Together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of late-twentieth-century Japan.
393 pages, Trade Paperback
First published October 28, 1980
About the author
Ryū Murakami
253 books3,120 followersRyū Murakami (村上 龍) is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is not related to Haruki Murakami or Takashi Murakami.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
Murakami's first work, the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a student, deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected Japanese youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the newcomer's literature prize in 1976 despite some observers decrying it as decadent. Later the same year, Blue won the Akutagawa Prize, going on to become a best seller. In 1980, Murakami published the much longer novel Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim.
Takashi Miike's feature film Audition (1999) was based on one of his novels. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screen play was worked on by director Jordan Galland. However, Miike could not raise funding for the project. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.
Murakami has played drums for a rock group called Coelacanth and hosted a TV talk show.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 630 reviews
June 4, 2016
I had been wondering where my cat was when the phone rang. It was my brother who was now living as a woman in some part of Tokyo which recently had like a nuclear attack, as far as I remember, but don't quote me. I told him there was no point in ringing me any more as we were now living in the same room together. I don’t think he’d noticed. We were both coin locker babies you know. That’s where your mother is so out of it that when you’re just a new born itty bitty baby coo coo coo your mother shoves you in a coin locker at the bus station and legs it. Most of us coin locker babies asphyxiate horribly in a few hours but a few of us get rescued and that was me and my brother so we were like cool and weird. My brother left home first and me and my adoptive mother went to Tokyo to track him down but when we went to see The Sound of Music at the pictures my adoptive mother got so excited seeing Julie Andrews skipping and yodeling about goats that she had a brain aneurysm right on the spot and died but I couldn’t get my money back so I decided to learn about poisons so I could kill the entire human race because I hate them. So then I found my brother in the nuclear slag pile and noticed straight away that he was wearing make up and a dress and had fake breasts and high heels on so while he was out queening around with the weirdos I picked up the novel I was reading. It was a long one by a not especially modish Japanese writer called Ryu Murakami. It wasn’t the Murakami that writes all the really cool stuff like The Wind Up Chronicle (by the way, I read a review of that one on Goodreads and it cracked me up, it was by this English guy called Paul Bryant, you have to read it.) So anyway I guess these Murakami novelists must get mistaken for each other all the time until the point where at swish dinner parties they just take credit for everything – IQ84 – yeah that’s mine, Coin Locker Babies, mine too, they’re all mine, shut up I am the God damn greatest. Anyway the blurb says the Wind Up Murakami is like The Beatles of Japanese literary fiction and the Coin Locker guy is like The Rolling Stones but nah, I thought the first one was more the Grateful Dead of Japanese fiction, you know, so stoned you fall off the stage and can’t remember how many fingers should be on each hand, er is it five, five? and this Coin Locker guy was Kiss, you know that stupid band with cartoon faces with that guy with the disgusting long tongue, because all his characters are like thinner than paper and race around so fast like they’re trying to prove how lively they are but all the yelling and the manic just gets them frayed at the edges like I was getting so I deliberately left my copy on a bus when I went out to buy the poison to kill the whole human race. The only positive thing was that I never thought for a moment about paying my electricity bill.
November 27, 2012
I already knew that Ryu Murakami likes to delve into areas that most readers would find uncomfortable, but Coin Locker Babies leaps head first into a socio-psychological pool of toxics that will probably send most readers running for the relative safety of Fifty Shades of Gray. Coin Locker Babies is one of those books like American Psycho and We Need to Talk About Kevin that alternately repulses and amaze. I found it to be a surreal mixture of horror, social commentary and dark comedy that never let up and kept me dubiously entertained until the very bizarre end.
The plot involves two boys in an orphanage that were abandoned as infants and found in bus station coin lockers. I've been told that this was actually a real problem in Japan in the 80s. They are adopted together and become like brothers with a common goal of finding their mothers and killing them. Eventually them both end up in Tokyo with one becoming a cross-gendered rock star and the other taking up with a model with a crocodile obsession. The novel takes many detours often straying into back stories about the minor characters with exquisite detail. Much of Murakami's description of fictional parts of Tokyo, like an area called Toxitown, borders on the fantastical yet the plot remain depressingly mired in reality. I became very attached to the coin locker babies, Kiku and Tashi, who are both forbidding and likable. Many reviewers complained that the author sidetracked into rambles often yet I found his descriptive detours always entertaining and always adding something to the story.
Of Murakami's novels, I see this as being his current masterpiece. While In The Miso Soup may be the more readable and possibly even more shocking, Coin Locker Babies is his most involving novel combining the dark comedy of Miso Soup with the stream of consciousness of Almost Transparent Blue. Is Coin Locker Babies the one to start with? Probably not. But if you find yourself liking his other novels of insanity and horror, you should love this one.
The plot involves two boys in an orphanage that were abandoned as infants and found in bus station coin lockers. I've been told that this was actually a real problem in Japan in the 80s. They are adopted together and become like brothers with a common goal of finding their mothers and killing them. Eventually them both end up in Tokyo with one becoming a cross-gendered rock star and the other taking up with a model with a crocodile obsession. The novel takes many detours often straying into back stories about the minor characters with exquisite detail. Much of Murakami's description of fictional parts of Tokyo, like an area called Toxitown, borders on the fantastical yet the plot remain depressingly mired in reality. I became very attached to the coin locker babies, Kiku and Tashi, who are both forbidding and likable. Many reviewers complained that the author sidetracked into rambles often yet I found his descriptive detours always entertaining and always adding something to the story.
Of Murakami's novels, I see this as being his current masterpiece. While In The Miso Soup may be the more readable and possibly even more shocking, Coin Locker Babies is his most involving novel combining the dark comedy of Miso Soup with the stream of consciousness of Almost Transparent Blue. Is Coin Locker Babies the one to start with? Probably not. But if you find yourself liking his other novels of insanity and horror, you should love this one.
March 11, 2023
I'm just going to say it: This book is objectively disgusting from the very first sentence, and it doesn't get any better over its nearly 400 pages.
Ryu Murakami somehow manages to induce nausea in the reader through a unique combination of tedium and repulsive content. I was hoping that it would ultimately lead to some sort of payoff at the end.
Alas, it does not.
Ryu Murakami's other novels combine horror with some level of fun. But not here. This is my least favorite of his books.
Ryu Murakami somehow manages to induce nausea in the reader through a unique combination of tedium and repulsive content. I was hoping that it would ultimately lead to some sort of payoff at the end.
Alas, it does not.
Ryu Murakami's other novels combine horror with some level of fun. But not here. This is my least favorite of his books.
February 2, 2020
Ryū Murakami pulls a Haruki and gives us some serious surrealism, wrapped in a dystopia that in hindsight appears shockingly prescient. As infants, our protagonists Kiku and Hashi are abandoned in coin lockers, but fortunately, they are found and grow up in an orphanage and later a foster family. At 16, they live in Toxitown, a polluted ghetto in Tokyo and haven for all kinds of misfits and criminals. But the two outsiders fight the odds: Bisexual Hashi becomes a rockstar and marries his manager Neva, Kiku becomes a famous pole vaulter (hello, metaphor) and falls in love with Anemone, a model who lives with a pet crocodile. When Hashi meets a woman he deems to be the mother who abandoned him, both of their lives change yet again...
Murakami gives Kiku's and Hashi's date of birth as 1972, and the novel was first published in 1980, so the author wrote about the past, the present and the future. To abandon babies in coin lockers is a form of child abuse that really occurs in Japan, although it was more common during the time depicted (Japan legalized the contraceptive pill in 1999). When the book came out, the country was experiencing an economic boom, and Murakami wrote Toxitown as the ugly face of the corrupt and glittering metropolis of Tokyo - the underworld that exposes the clean image of a heartless town. We now know that in reality, the boom ended in a bursting economic bubble. The pollution and toxicity that are a recurring theme in the novel now make us think of Fukushima and the gas attack on the Tokyo subway, events that hadn't happened yet when the book was published.
Once again, it's intriguing how Murakami uses characters in order to illustrate milieus and make points: We meet beggers, prostitutes, greedy managers, drug addicts, preachers, and many others, and the whole plot revolves around the relationship between Kiku and Hashi. These two have been betrayed by their families and by society, and while they share many pivotal experiences, they are very different characters who, accordingly, are trying different paths in order to deal with their feelings of abandonment, alienation, sadness and anger. The author also puts a particular spotlight on female characters, as Neva lost both of her breasts to cancer and struggles with the consequences while Anemone is very aware of her role as a model in a capitalist world.
This book is wild and brutal and daring and over-the-top and addictive and bold - that's my kind of literature. I have to admit that with every Ryū Murakami I am reading, I find his works more intriguing. If you want to hear more about his themes and narrative strategies as well as how they compare to Haruki's, you can listen to our "Murakami vs. Murakami" podcast special (in German): https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
Murakami gives Kiku's and Hashi's date of birth as 1972, and the novel was first published in 1980, so the author wrote about the past, the present and the future. To abandon babies in coin lockers is a form of child abuse that really occurs in Japan, although it was more common during the time depicted (Japan legalized the contraceptive pill in 1999). When the book came out, the country was experiencing an economic boom, and Murakami wrote Toxitown as the ugly face of the corrupt and glittering metropolis of Tokyo - the underworld that exposes the clean image of a heartless town. We now know that in reality, the boom ended in a bursting economic bubble. The pollution and toxicity that are a recurring theme in the novel now make us think of Fukushima and the gas attack on the Tokyo subway, events that hadn't happened yet when the book was published.
Once again, it's intriguing how Murakami uses characters in order to illustrate milieus and make points: We meet beggers, prostitutes, greedy managers, drug addicts, preachers, and many others, and the whole plot revolves around the relationship between Kiku and Hashi. These two have been betrayed by their families and by society, and while they share many pivotal experiences, they are very different characters who, accordingly, are trying different paths in order to deal with their feelings of abandonment, alienation, sadness and anger. The author also puts a particular spotlight on female characters, as Neva lost both of her breasts to cancer and struggles with the consequences while Anemone is very aware of her role as a model in a capitalist world.
This book is wild and brutal and daring and over-the-top and addictive and bold - that's my kind of literature. I have to admit that with every Ryū Murakami I am reading, I find his works more intriguing. If you want to hear more about his themes and narrative strategies as well as how they compare to Haruki's, you can listen to our "Murakami vs. Murakami" podcast special (in German): https://papierstaupodcast.de/podcast/...
May 9, 2024
Бесен Мураками, толкова различен от другия, но на мен много ми допадна!
Мрачна до "ноар", феерична, жестока и завладяваща история, самата идея да оставиш да се задуши нежеланото ти дете в багажно отделение на гаровия сейф е чудовищно и уникално японска! Както и много от другите сюжетни линии развити в романа.
Струва си да се прочете, не че ще ви помогне да ги разберете по-добре тия пусти японци.
Мрачна до "ноар", феерична, жестока и завладяваща история, самата идея да оставиш да се задуши нежеланото ти дете в багажно отделение на гаровия сейф е чудовищно и уникално японска! Както и много от другите сюжетни линии развити в романа.
Струва си да се прочете, не че ще ви помогне да ги разберете по-добре тия пусти японци.
July 28, 2011
It's the sound of a coin dropping. It's so loud you could hear a lot of dimes that you get for all the times shitty stuff happens. Those dimes can buy a chinese finger trap of societal problems, or a coloring book. The sound of a baby wailing. The moms aren't going about their business and pissing off everybody else because they have left them in the coin lockers in the train stations of Japan. That's WAY worse than the parents who leave their kids in libraries or toy stores and expect the employees there to watch their kids. Chinese finger trap, I said? I feel some pity for the baby (I feel more pity for the bored kid without even a stinking coloring book) and more pity for my ears picking up the sounds of forced responsibility in forced reception of the misery of others. Bark! Lassie found little orphan Timmy in the well. The smell of vomit and talcum makes a glue that sticks in the nostrils and in the toes stepping on the coast to coast of the ghost you love the most. Sniffing model glue and getting high on rain dances and sacrificing small animals. Hashi was on the serial killer path. Maybe his mom was a prostitute too. What do you do if you don't know where you came from? You could have two out of three serial killer signs. No wonder he had murder in his heart. Put a stethoscope to the heart and it goes like this muuur....murrrrrdeeer. That's what the doctors call a heart murmur. The locker combination to Kiku's heart is voice recognizable. Living on an island Hashi's murmur says that yes, a man can be an island. Say it again with feeling! Bitterness, hate, weeds growing too close together in a garden of vipers and feral dogs. The cat is in the cradle and the silver spoon in the mouth or something. Cat Stevens became somebody else. Hashi destroys without creating and pretends there was a silver spoon in his mouth instead of a plated coin.
Bam! My Japanese coloring book (I'm not making this up for the sake of a goodreads review. I honestly have a Japanese language coloring book) says jump! Kiku the pole vaulter leaps the pages to find his brother. Sticks, stones and names hurt. Hashi sold out! But the dream! We were going to grow up and enact revenge on Japan for what our mothers did! Revenge on people like Mariel who silently pray for that baby to shut the hell up already. We're gonna make her eat nasty eggplant. She hates eggplant. (I'm not being weird, I swear. Kiku really does want to kill Japan with poison extracted from a special kind of eggplant. Eggplant is bad enough already!) When I was a weird kid I wrote (well, mostly they were verbal. Writing is hard) stories about orphans in a fucked up town I called "Bikini Town" that was an awful lot like Toxitown area of Tokyo in this book, complete with radioactive town dump (I was disappointed by how little Toxitown actually features in this book. It'd stroke my ego a bit to read something that reminded me of how perverted young me was). My pimp wasn't a music producer gorging on fat to stifle his homosexual sex drive so he could get down to the business of knowing what will SELL SELL SELL, but a pimp dog (named "Pimp Pup. That's right. He had bitches!). It is hard to be unoriginal, I tell you. Coin Locker Babies beat me by several years. That's the sound of me sighing with the pain of being unoriginal. Maybe the radioactive vibes carried on the air to my ears. I used to "visit" Ryu Murakami's books back when my town had actual bookstores that weren't dropping off like the dead flies with the faces of Hashi's potential murder victims. It was in the back of mind to read him, I swear. Right next to some perversions 'cause that's what the back of the mind is for. I did see Audition years ago. I'm pretty sure that I liked it. *
Coin Locker Babies is about hitting the right note. The book jacket says it's about a bisexual glam rocker ruling over Toxitown and a pole vaulter and his crocodile loving model girlfriend. Those things are in the book but it isn't what Murakami was trying to masturbate like the reader was his glockenspiel and xylophone and keytar all in one Dick Van Dyke's dick (I mean accordian). It didn't. Hit the right note, that is. You know how tough it is to be a rapper who butters your bread with the selling power of the fat of the streets and then the margarine isn't the same as the butter because it's not fatty enough and just imitation pain? Maybe the public doesn't fancy Fabio's chest hair as much as they used to. That's too much of Coin Locker Babies. Selling out. The nature of celebrity is one of the story types that interests me into the negative. Coloring with glitter scratch and sniff toxic crayons. If they had been whiter crayons they could have sold more records (all of those crying infants has turned me into a cynic). Did Hashi and Kiku's mothers sell them out by leaving them in those lockers? Sure, why not. Hashi sold himself out when he denied the not regulation carnation pink family he did have (Kiku) for the electric blue identity of the self he wanted to see. Maybe he had unrequited desire for the athletic brother from another mother (I bet my coloring book he did). It could be a problem that the famous face that they forget where they came from. I should have listened to the movie stars crying. It didn't bang my gong that Hashi and Kiku remembered how to imagine the dum dum dum of their mother's imagined hearts. They were in side by side coin operated prisons! Orphanages and dog blood. I was unmoved. (I wasn't alone in the womb. I should remember what it feels like!)
Kiku's girlfriend is the teenaged fashion model Anemone. Anemone is the untouchable colored in by everyone who sees her pretty girl that couldn't possibly have any problems. Lights! Camera! Action! What's that sound? It sounds like money like Daisy from The Great Gatsby. You know how your own voice doesn't sound like your own when you hear a recording of yourself? That's Anemone in the eyes of others. It could have been like a celebrity, or Jesus. Everybody's got their hands out. Murakami did a better job of Anemone's boredom (the sound of all the voices that I can add my own to in the perfect broken record recording) than Hashi's the problems of gangsta rappers. Will anything good ever happen? Did anything good ever happen? Let's play that record again for clues. I'll visit Murakami again because the boredom feels someplace like the back of my mind. That's like a return from the creature of the black womb. Yeah, I'm still feeling sorrier for the kid without the coloring book than for the screaming kid. I relate more to frustration than to rage, maybe.
Things that I learned from Coin Locker Babies because this is a MOVIE and if this were the IMDB there would be a thread about all of the things that I learned from Kindergarten. Everything I ever needed to know, that's what. (And I turned out just fine!) There would also be two hundred threads like this: "Hashi: Gay?".
1. Eggplant can kill you. No kidding. I can't stand this stuff. I once ate eggplant just to be polite. It was exactly like this. (That's a youtube link of me/Tom Hanks eating eggplant/sardines and not enjoying it very much.)
2. Dogs are heroes.
3. The shaved eyebrow look was popular in the 1980s.
4. Jeff Goldblum's face appears on one out of a million flies and if you are a mouth breather one of these WILL fly into that fly trap of an open mouth and you'll go insane.
5. Taxi drivers looooove to talk your ear off. If they don't, you'll run into a toxic dump and it'll finish the job.
6. Crocodiles are expensive to maintain if you don't already live in the appropriate swamp-like environment. Luckily my pet alligator is a hand puppet and only bites the hand that feeds it.
7. Filipino character Tatsuo would have made more money as a prostitute than his girlfriend if he knew what I knew (I lied! There is ONE thing I didn't learn in Kindergarten) that his toothlessness would have made a nice simulation for a vagina. They could have gone home sooner in half the time. That made him...rootless!
8. Mark the spot with some kind of a reminder if you are going to bury guns. It's not as easy as you'd think it'd be to find them again.
9. Answer "Music" as an interest because your John just might also be a music producer. If he's a politician don't give a straight answer. You like every man kind of things.
10. Eating fat cures homosexuality. So that's why there's an obesity problem in the American south!
11. Jocks are stupid.
12. Prison isn't so bad as long as you stay busy.
13. Dolphins are heroes.
14. DATURA is the deplorable word from C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew.
15. Women who abandon their children like to take it up the ass.
*Footnote- I heard of this Murakami years ago because of the film Audition and my interest in the phenomenon of child abandonment in Japan. I'll tell you what isn't a good story of this. The film Noriko's Dinner Table (a veeery loose sequel to the same director's Suicide Circle. The movie with the gross skin roll and backwards messages in teeny bopper musicc). She was a pimp! Not to mention an accomplice to murder. The buddhist shit just didn't work. A mother fucking pimp. Thank you. Nobody Knows is a good film even though they changed some of the worst details to make a happier sorta film (yeah right).
Bam! My Japanese coloring book (I'm not making this up for the sake of a goodreads review. I honestly have a Japanese language coloring book) says jump! Kiku the pole vaulter leaps the pages to find his brother. Sticks, stones and names hurt. Hashi sold out! But the dream! We were going to grow up and enact revenge on Japan for what our mothers did! Revenge on people like Mariel who silently pray for that baby to shut the hell up already. We're gonna make her eat nasty eggplant. She hates eggplant. (I'm not being weird, I swear. Kiku really does want to kill Japan with poison extracted from a special kind of eggplant. Eggplant is bad enough already!) When I was a weird kid I wrote (well, mostly they were verbal. Writing is hard) stories about orphans in a fucked up town I called "Bikini Town" that was an awful lot like Toxitown area of Tokyo in this book, complete with radioactive town dump (I was disappointed by how little Toxitown actually features in this book. It'd stroke my ego a bit to read something that reminded me of how perverted young me was). My pimp wasn't a music producer gorging on fat to stifle his homosexual sex drive so he could get down to the business of knowing what will SELL SELL SELL, but a pimp dog (named "Pimp Pup. That's right. He had bitches!). It is hard to be unoriginal, I tell you. Coin Locker Babies beat me by several years. That's the sound of me sighing with the pain of being unoriginal. Maybe the radioactive vibes carried on the air to my ears. I used to "visit" Ryu Murakami's books back when my town had actual bookstores that weren't dropping off like the dead flies with the faces of Hashi's potential murder victims. It was in the back of mind to read him, I swear. Right next to some perversions 'cause that's what the back of the mind is for. I did see Audition years ago. I'm pretty sure that I liked it. *
Coin Locker Babies is about hitting the right note. The book jacket says it's about a bisexual glam rocker ruling over Toxitown and a pole vaulter and his crocodile loving model girlfriend. Those things are in the book but it isn't what Murakami was trying to masturbate like the reader was his glockenspiel and xylophone and keytar all in one Dick Van Dyke's dick (I mean accordian). It didn't. Hit the right note, that is. You know how tough it is to be a rapper who butters your bread with the selling power of the fat of the streets and then the margarine isn't the same as the butter because it's not fatty enough and just imitation pain? Maybe the public doesn't fancy Fabio's chest hair as much as they used to. That's too much of Coin Locker Babies. Selling out. The nature of celebrity is one of the story types that interests me into the negative. Coloring with glitter scratch and sniff toxic crayons. If they had been whiter crayons they could have sold more records (all of those crying infants has turned me into a cynic). Did Hashi and Kiku's mothers sell them out by leaving them in those lockers? Sure, why not. Hashi sold himself out when he denied the not regulation carnation pink family he did have (Kiku) for the electric blue identity of the self he wanted to see. Maybe he had unrequited desire for the athletic brother from another mother (I bet my coloring book he did). It could be a problem that the famous face that they forget where they came from. I should have listened to the movie stars crying. It didn't bang my gong that Hashi and Kiku remembered how to imagine the dum dum dum of their mother's imagined hearts. They were in side by side coin operated prisons! Orphanages and dog blood. I was unmoved. (I wasn't alone in the womb. I should remember what it feels like!)
Kiku's girlfriend is the teenaged fashion model Anemone. Anemone is the untouchable colored in by everyone who sees her pretty girl that couldn't possibly have any problems. Lights! Camera! Action! What's that sound? It sounds like money like Daisy from The Great Gatsby. You know how your own voice doesn't sound like your own when you hear a recording of yourself? That's Anemone in the eyes of others. It could have been like a celebrity, or Jesus. Everybody's got their hands out. Murakami did a better job of Anemone's boredom (the sound of all the voices that I can add my own to in the perfect broken record recording) than Hashi's the problems of gangsta rappers. Will anything good ever happen? Did anything good ever happen? Let's play that record again for clues. I'll visit Murakami again because the boredom feels someplace like the back of my mind. That's like a return from the creature of the black womb. Yeah, I'm still feeling sorrier for the kid without the coloring book than for the screaming kid. I relate more to frustration than to rage, maybe.
Things that I learned from Coin Locker Babies because this is a MOVIE and if this were the IMDB there would be a thread about all of the things that I learned from Kindergarten. Everything I ever needed to know, that's what. (And I turned out just fine!) There would also be two hundred threads like this: "Hashi: Gay?".
1. Eggplant can kill you. No kidding. I can't stand this stuff. I once ate eggplant just to be polite. It was exactly like this. (That's a youtube link of me/Tom Hanks eating eggplant/sardines and not enjoying it very much.)
2. Dogs are heroes.
3. The shaved eyebrow look was popular in the 1980s.
4. Jeff Goldblum's face appears on one out of a million flies and if you are a mouth breather one of these WILL fly into that fly trap of an open mouth and you'll go insane.
5. Taxi drivers looooove to talk your ear off. If they don't, you'll run into a toxic dump and it'll finish the job.
6. Crocodiles are expensive to maintain if you don't already live in the appropriate swamp-like environment. Luckily my pet alligator is a hand puppet and only bites the hand that feeds it.
7. Filipino character Tatsuo would have made more money as a prostitute than his girlfriend if he knew what I knew (I lied! There is ONE thing I didn't learn in Kindergarten) that his toothlessness would have made a nice simulation for a vagina. They could have gone home sooner in half the time. That made him...rootless!
8. Mark the spot with some kind of a reminder if you are going to bury guns. It's not as easy as you'd think it'd be to find them again.
9. Answer "Music" as an interest because your John just might also be a music producer. If he's a politician don't give a straight answer. You like every man kind of things.
10. Eating fat cures homosexuality. So that's why there's an obesity problem in the American south!
11. Jocks are stupid.
12. Prison isn't so bad as long as you stay busy.
13. Dolphins are heroes.
14. DATURA is the deplorable word from C.S. Lewis' The Magician's Nephew.
15. Women who abandon their children like to take it up the ass.
*Footnote- I heard of this Murakami years ago because of the film Audition and my interest in the phenomenon of child abandonment in Japan. I'll tell you what isn't a good story of this. The film Noriko's Dinner Table (a veeery loose sequel to the same director's Suicide Circle. The movie with the gross skin roll and backwards messages in teeny bopper musicc). She was a pimp! Not to mention an accomplice to murder. The buddhist shit just didn't work. A mother fucking pimp. Thank you. Nobody Knows is a good film even though they changed some of the worst details to make a happier sorta film (yeah right).
July 28, 2021
Adentrarse en una novela de Ryu Murakami siempre es una aventura. Uno nunca sabe hasta donde puede llegar el autor, pero lo que si sabe es que el viaje no va a ser apto para todos los públicos. Y es lo que pasa con "Los chicos de las taquillas", que pese a tener una premisa mucho más dramática que otras obras del autor como "Sopa de miso", "Piercing" o "Azul casi transparente", acaba dando el mismo mal rollo que estas.
Kiku y Hashi son "Los chicos de las taquillas", ya que de recién nacidos fueron abandonados en las taquillas de una estación de tren. Este suceso marcará y unirá su camino de por vida: de niños se criarán juntos en un orfanato, serán adoptados como hermanos e irán creciendo, mientras desarrollan una extraña y hermética relación entre ellos, hasta que un día se separen. Por otra parte tenemos a Anémona, una extraña e inadaptada joven que tiene un cocodrilo viviendo en su casa.
Existen otros personajes interesantes, pero los dilemas de Hashi, Kiku y Anémona destacan sobre el resto. Ambos tres comparten esa sensación de no encajar, de no entender el mundo que los rodea y de tratar de huir de él. Me han gustado mucho los tres. Desde luego, uno de los puntos fuertes de Ryu es la creación de sus personajes. Todos están tocados, ninguno está sano, pero son increíbles. El autor consigue siempre hacerme empatizar con personajes rotos que hacen cosas malas, casi psicópatas. No sé como es posible, pero me ha pasado en todos sus libros. La mayoría de sus personajes son personas horribles, pero te los construye de una forma que te los crees y los entiendes.
Me flipa la habilidad que tiene este hombre de traernos historias que dan mal rollo, que son terroríficas dentro de cosas reales. Ya no solo con sus personajes, si no también en los escenarios donde los enmarca. En el caso de esta novela, Tokio es el telón de fondo, un Tokio actual, moderno y decadente. Pero lo más interesante es el Toxicentro, un lugar aislado dentro de la ciudad, donde acaban todas las personas que la sociedad no ve con buenos ojos: drogadíctos, prostitutos y todo tipo de delincuentes. Una de las partes más interesantes.
Otra cosa que siempre encuentro en la obra de Murakami, y que en esta destaca especialmente por ser su libro más largo, es la gran crítica social. Esa sociedad donde todos se aprovechan del que pueden sin remordimientos, como se aparta a estos inadaptados y solo se repara en ellos cuando son un peligro. Me gusta mucho ver reflejada la más baja miseria humana y la hipocresía de la sociedad, y hablando de esto Murakami es un genio.
"Azul casi transparente", "Sopa de miso" y "Piercing" me parecieron obras maravillosas e indispensables, pero "Los chicos de las taquillas" se ha convertido en mi historia favorita del autor. ¿Recomiendo al autor? Siempre. ¿Es para todo el mundo? Ni de coña. Pero si le coges el punto, lo vas a disfrutar como pocos autores. Ojalá las editoriales españolas se dignaran a traer más cositas del autor, porque solo tenemos los cuatro libros que mencioné.
Kiku y Hashi son "Los chicos de las taquillas", ya que de recién nacidos fueron abandonados en las taquillas de una estación de tren. Este suceso marcará y unirá su camino de por vida: de niños se criarán juntos en un orfanato, serán adoptados como hermanos e irán creciendo, mientras desarrollan una extraña y hermética relación entre ellos, hasta que un día se separen. Por otra parte tenemos a Anémona, una extraña e inadaptada joven que tiene un cocodrilo viviendo en su casa.
Existen otros personajes interesantes, pero los dilemas de Hashi, Kiku y Anémona destacan sobre el resto. Ambos tres comparten esa sensación de no encajar, de no entender el mundo que los rodea y de tratar de huir de él. Me han gustado mucho los tres. Desde luego, uno de los puntos fuertes de Ryu es la creación de sus personajes. Todos están tocados, ninguno está sano, pero son increíbles. El autor consigue siempre hacerme empatizar con personajes rotos que hacen cosas malas, casi psicópatas. No sé como es posible, pero me ha pasado en todos sus libros. La mayoría de sus personajes son personas horribles, pero te los construye de una forma que te los crees y los entiendes.
Me flipa la habilidad que tiene este hombre de traernos historias que dan mal rollo, que son terroríficas dentro de cosas reales. Ya no solo con sus personajes, si no también en los escenarios donde los enmarca. En el caso de esta novela, Tokio es el telón de fondo, un Tokio actual, moderno y decadente. Pero lo más interesante es el Toxicentro, un lugar aislado dentro de la ciudad, donde acaban todas las personas que la sociedad no ve con buenos ojos: drogadíctos, prostitutos y todo tipo de delincuentes. Una de las partes más interesantes.
Otra cosa que siempre encuentro en la obra de Murakami, y que en esta destaca especialmente por ser su libro más largo, es la gran crítica social. Esa sociedad donde todos se aprovechan del que pueden sin remordimientos, como se aparta a estos inadaptados y solo se repara en ellos cuando son un peligro. Me gusta mucho ver reflejada la más baja miseria humana y la hipocresía de la sociedad, y hablando de esto Murakami es un genio.
"Azul casi transparente", "Sopa de miso" y "Piercing" me parecieron obras maravillosas e indispensables, pero "Los chicos de las taquillas" se ha convertido en mi historia favorita del autor. ¿Recomiendo al autor? Siempre. ¿Es para todo el mundo? Ni de coña. Pero si le coges el punto, lo vas a disfrutar como pocos autores. Ojalá las editoriales españolas se dignaran a traer más cositas del autor, porque solo tenemos los cuatro libros que mencioné.
September 22, 2023
Such a disappointing novel compared to ‘In the Miso Soup’ which I thought was a very thrilling novel and cynical in just the right way. I kept on reading ‘Coin Locker Babies’ till the end, constantly with an optimistic disposition that the book would soon improve drastically, but it did not. Perhaps it was the lack of irony that made the novel so unappealing to me. Pity, I expected perhaps too much.
March 29, 2009
I'm guessing a lot of people wouldn't make it past the first sentence of Ryu Murakami's novel "Coin Locker Babies." On the other hand, it serves as a sort of litmus test: if you can get past that sentence, you can get through the rest of it. The gauged eyeballs, exposed brains that look like tofu, and part where a character takes a scissors to his own tongue.
This novel is the anti-coming of age novel. It's the story of Kiku and Hashi. Both were discovered stuffed into boxes and left for dead in coin lockers. They meet at an orphanage and forge a friendship through their shared survival. Kiku plays the role of fixer: he kicks some asses and becomes really good at the pole vault; Hashi is more timid. And when he leaves home to find his birth mother, he lands in an uninhabitable area in Tokyo called "Toxitown" where he sells his body to men, and eventually meets one who can help further his career as a singer.
Chaos follows. Kiku ends up in jail, Hashi goes crazy. Kiku's girlfriend Anemone watches a truck run over her pet alligator. Hashi decides he is straight. It's all very complicated, and at parts becomes too much to handle. My favorite moments involve rice omelets, the favorite meal of both Kiku and Hashi: mix rice with ketchup and peas, put it in an omelet. And also descriptions of Hashi's voice, which seeps into the core of the listener and brings back their most primal memories. He is able to manipulate emotions through his tunes.
I love Ryu Murakami. In the days after reading "In the Miso Soup," I missed the story. The entire world felt like those minutes after you take off your roller skates and still kind of feel like you're skating, while you're trying to adjust to normal, lackluster walking. I had read the book while I walked from here to there in the skyway downtown, and even now, when I'm walking that route it reminds me of the feeling of reading that book.
I'm trying to think of something to compare Murakami's work to, and the only thing I can think of in pop culture is the TV show "Nip/Tuck." Graphic, barfing, seedy mattresses, unpredictable, stabbing, gory, and -- surprisingly -- funny. Murakami doesn't blink when a character sticks a knife into his pregnant wife's protruding belly. His characters have a sexual repertoire where missionary style doesn't even register. And where a lesser writer wouldn't be capable of writing a believable character with a pet alligator, he invents a model who's entire apartment caters to the beast -- humidifiers, tropical plants, raw meat dangling from a stick -- and makes it less likely that she wouldn't have a pet alligator.
This book isn't as great as "In the Miso Soup," but that is the fault of the length and the plot -- which gets a little too WTF in the wrong kind of way. The writing remains stunningly descriptive and still made me want to barf.
This novel is the anti-coming of age novel. It's the story of Kiku and Hashi. Both were discovered stuffed into boxes and left for dead in coin lockers. They meet at an orphanage and forge a friendship through their shared survival. Kiku plays the role of fixer: he kicks some asses and becomes really good at the pole vault; Hashi is more timid. And when he leaves home to find his birth mother, he lands in an uninhabitable area in Tokyo called "Toxitown" where he sells his body to men, and eventually meets one who can help further his career as a singer.
Chaos follows. Kiku ends up in jail, Hashi goes crazy. Kiku's girlfriend Anemone watches a truck run over her pet alligator. Hashi decides he is straight. It's all very complicated, and at parts becomes too much to handle. My favorite moments involve rice omelets, the favorite meal of both Kiku and Hashi: mix rice with ketchup and peas, put it in an omelet. And also descriptions of Hashi's voice, which seeps into the core of the listener and brings back their most primal memories. He is able to manipulate emotions through his tunes.
I love Ryu Murakami. In the days after reading "In the Miso Soup," I missed the story. The entire world felt like those minutes after you take off your roller skates and still kind of feel like you're skating, while you're trying to adjust to normal, lackluster walking. I had read the book while I walked from here to there in the skyway downtown, and even now, when I'm walking that route it reminds me of the feeling of reading that book.
I'm trying to think of something to compare Murakami's work to, and the only thing I can think of in pop culture is the TV show "Nip/Tuck." Graphic, barfing, seedy mattresses, unpredictable, stabbing, gory, and -- surprisingly -- funny. Murakami doesn't blink when a character sticks a knife into his pregnant wife's protruding belly. His characters have a sexual repertoire where missionary style doesn't even register. And where a lesser writer wouldn't be capable of writing a believable character with a pet alligator, he invents a model who's entire apartment caters to the beast -- humidifiers, tropical plants, raw meat dangling from a stick -- and makes it less likely that she wouldn't have a pet alligator.
This book isn't as great as "In the Miso Soup," but that is the fault of the length and the plot -- which gets a little too WTF in the wrong kind of way. The writing remains stunningly descriptive and still made me want to barf.
March 7, 2016
4.5/5.
There are currently no words to sum up how I feel about this.
There are currently no words to sum up how I feel about this.
December 22, 2015
*** Spoiler Alert ***
Their mothers left them to die in coin lockers when they were born, but they survived. Kiku and Hashi grew up together in a foster home as brothers, but must deal with their own demons.
Kiku becomes a pole vaulter and eventually kills his mother, landing him in jail. But he escapes and goes to the Garagi Island to search for a substance call “DATURA,” which he would use to destroy Tokyo.
Hashi becomes a bisexual singer and rises to stardom on the heel of Kiku’s killing his mother. But the trauma of surviving the coin locker continues to haunt him and it destroys his career. He kills his pregnant wife and journeys into a surreal world, and he couldn’t escape the nightmare.
In Coin Locker Babies, Ryu Murakami ventures into the fringes of society. And Toxitown is a symbol of the darkness in the protagonists and an entire society. Kiku hears the murmuring, perhaps recalling his mother’s beating while he was in the womb. And Hashi believes he has swallowed a fly with a human face and he must kill to continue his success. Two broken individuals reflecting Toxitown reflecting society. But we would find Toxitown not just in Tokyo but also in New York, London, Paris, etc. Murakami’s graphic description of its mutated denizens and their activities matches the story’s theme and his commentary of contemporary society. He means to shock the readers, and moviegoers, and he succeeds. The kid with the hole in his head is only the beginning.
The surrealist, and dreamlike, ending blunts the horror but leaves the reader wondering whether Kuku will use “DATURA” on Tokyo and whether Hashi has become insane. Still, whatever happens, Murakami makes his point and the reader will recall Toxitown’s landscape, the crocodile’s death in the highway, Kiku shooting his mother on live TV, Hashi stabbing his wife in the shower, and all the while D, the producer, looking to sell more and more of Hashi’s records. Not everyone will be able to stomach the book, but if a reader can pass the first paragraph, then he or she will be ready to enter Murakami’s dark world and glimpse into contemporary society’s tormented souls.
June 11, 2009
I can't quite date when I first picked up Murakami's 'Coin Locker Babies'. During the long period of reading this book I had to force myself to put it down and not touch it for a decent period of time. Coin Locker Babies is so dark and desperate that I thought it better if I didn't read it for a while. The images it conjures up - though impossible - are so vivid, and will stay with me for a long time.
Japanese rockstar 'Miyavi' wrote a song 'Coin-lockers baby'. The song and the book by Murakami are in no way related, besides their similar sinister subject matter. After I had heard that Ryu Murakami had written a book about new-born babies abandoned in train station coin lockers, I began researching where these artists may have got their inspiration from.
There is an urban myth in Japan, that a mother abandons her new-born in a coin locker in a crowded Tokyo train station. Years later the woman returns to find a boy sitting alone by the lockers, crying. She is surprised that no one is comforting him, and asks him where his father is. The child replies "I have no father!". When the woman asks where his mother is, the boy points to the woman, and vanishes.
Like most myths, they are based loosely on fact. Babies have been found in coin lockers, the most recent found in a Shinjuku train station.
Murakami takes many urban legends and alters them to suit this story. Anemone's pet crocodile is reminiscent of the sewer alligators of America. The abandoned mining village protagonists Hashi and Kiku play in as children is not uncommon in Japan, as many buildings (haikyo) were abandoned after the Japanese economy slump. Many chemical weapons are still being discovered in Okinawa, although none so horrific as the novel's DATURA, due to the American occupation of Japan during and after the war. Although the events in the novel itself are somewhat unbelievable, Murakami truly suspends disbelief, and allows you to enter a world that is probably better left untouched.
Although I am tempted to rate this book five stars, the middle did loose its stamina a little. However, my desire to know how it would end kept me reading.
Like many Japanese authors - Haruki Murakami a good example - the characters in Coin Locker Babies are apathetic to their surroundings. Although desperate to find their mothers who abandoned them, they seem to have little involvement with their environment. The separateness of the characters adds to the mood of the novel, as both the characters and the metropolis Tokyo seem hopeless and somewhat pathetic.
On the topic of translation, I loved Stephen Snyder's interpretation of this work. It did not feel like I was reading a translation, and it had the right amount of obscene language (which is less common in Japanese) to make it believable in English. With such capable Japanese translators out there, it makes me wonder why Alfred Birnbaum's name appears on so many translated Japanese novels.
This book is beautiful in its description of Tokyo, of mother-son amae relationships, and being alone in a big city. If you can handle the graphic first page, you can probably manage the rest of the book. Japan, although it has one of the lowest crime-rates, and one of the highest levels of life expectancy, Murakami shows that there is still a sense of hopelessness which is presented perfectly in the act of silently abandoning your baby in a crowded coin locker.
Japanese rockstar 'Miyavi' wrote a song 'Coin-lockers baby'. The song and the book by Murakami are in no way related, besides their similar sinister subject matter. After I had heard that Ryu Murakami had written a book about new-born babies abandoned in train station coin lockers, I began researching where these artists may have got their inspiration from.
There is an urban myth in Japan, that a mother abandons her new-born in a coin locker in a crowded Tokyo train station. Years later the woman returns to find a boy sitting alone by the lockers, crying. She is surprised that no one is comforting him, and asks him where his father is. The child replies "I have no father!". When the woman asks where his mother is, the boy points to the woman, and vanishes.
Like most myths, they are based loosely on fact. Babies have been found in coin lockers, the most recent found in a Shinjuku train station.
Murakami takes many urban legends and alters them to suit this story. Anemone's pet crocodile is reminiscent of the sewer alligators of America. The abandoned mining village protagonists Hashi and Kiku play in as children is not uncommon in Japan, as many buildings (haikyo) were abandoned after the Japanese economy slump. Many chemical weapons are still being discovered in Okinawa, although none so horrific as the novel's DATURA, due to the American occupation of Japan during and after the war. Although the events in the novel itself are somewhat unbelievable, Murakami truly suspends disbelief, and allows you to enter a world that is probably better left untouched.
Although I am tempted to rate this book five stars, the middle did loose its stamina a little. However, my desire to know how it would end kept me reading.
Like many Japanese authors - Haruki Murakami a good example - the characters in Coin Locker Babies are apathetic to their surroundings. Although desperate to find their mothers who abandoned them, they seem to have little involvement with their environment. The separateness of the characters adds to the mood of the novel, as both the characters and the metropolis Tokyo seem hopeless and somewhat pathetic.
On the topic of translation, I loved Stephen Snyder's interpretation of this work. It did not feel like I was reading a translation, and it had the right amount of obscene language (which is less common in Japanese) to make it believable in English. With such capable Japanese translators out there, it makes me wonder why Alfred Birnbaum's name appears on so many translated Japanese novels.
This book is beautiful in its description of Tokyo, of mother-son amae relationships, and being alone in a big city. If you can handle the graphic first page, you can probably manage the rest of the book. Japan, although it has one of the lowest crime-rates, and one of the highest levels of life expectancy, Murakami shows that there is still a sense of hopelessness which is presented perfectly in the act of silently abandoning your baby in a crowded coin locker.
May 22, 2012
DATURA. PENIS. RICE OMELETTE. DATURA. HASHI. COIN LOCKER. KIKU. DATURA.
If you were thinking about reading this book, don't bother. I've just summed it up for you.
This is quite simply one of the most pointless, irrelevant, and disheartening books I've read. In fact, I gave up after 200 or so pages. While Murakami can certainly string sentences together to create labyrinthian descriptions and the plot is original, there's no heart or soul. There's little to captivate or move the reader, in fact, I found myself only mildly disgusted and apathetic during my reading.
Kiku and Hashi are found abandoned in coin lockers as infants. They are brought up in a GOOD orphanage and are well-provided for, even taken on trips and given presents. Their good fortune extends to being adopted by a perfectly sane, nice couple who live on an island. They're given every opportunity to thrive and become normal adults, but the two are so self-pitying that all they can do is bemoan the fact that they were abandoned as infants. Kiku takes up pole-vaulting and beating people up, but not much else... No personality, no long-term goals. Hashi, somewhat more interesting than his brother, becomes a singer/prostitute and pursues a music career. They both wind up in Toxitown, a BIZARRE chemically-treated area of Tokyo teeming with freaks and hobos.
Honestly, why should anyone give a shit about these two freaks? They've been given everything they need to have decent lives, and they do nothing but fixate on their biological mothers. They're not interesting, kind, humorous, or driven to do anything but whine and moon around. Kiku and Hashi lead dirty, aimless lives. They don't seem to care much about other people, and Murakami's insane side characters are far more interesting.
I can only guess that they cling to their coin locker beginnings as a way of holding themselves apart, as something special. Hashi replaces much of that with his singing career, enjoying the illusion, living on the recognition and "uniqueness" of being a singer. He becomes furious when he runs into anyone who knew him before his star rose, only because he can't stand being seen as anything but a musical prodigy. Ego. Kiku is simply a dullard. I couldn't figure out why Anemone even wanted him around. He was a freakish premature ejaculator during their first sexual encounter, does nothing but let her cook for him, and what does he get her for Christmas? AN OMELETTE RECIPE BOOK, so she'll know how to make HIS favorite dish: rice omelettes. Why should a gorgeous, interesting, and eccentric woman like Anemone want a boring, selfish dud like Kiku? It boggles me, but then again a Japanese man wrote this book. I'm assuming there's a cultural difference that I'm just not understanding.
To top it off, Kiku comes face to face with his birth mother and blows her head off. Great! No answers, no explanations, no apologies. Wham bam, thank you, ma'm! Way to go, buddy.
I sound like I hate this book, but that's not the case. I simply can't fathom how someone as lauded as Murakami created something so utterly lacking, so pointless that I had to fight to keep my eyes on the page. I've read worse, but I finished THOSE books. This book is hollow in a way I'm not accustomed to. My advice? Move along because there's nothing to see here.
If you were thinking about reading this book, don't bother. I've just summed it up for you.
This is quite simply one of the most pointless, irrelevant, and disheartening books I've read. In fact, I gave up after 200 or so pages. While Murakami can certainly string sentences together to create labyrinthian descriptions and the plot is original, there's no heart or soul. There's little to captivate or move the reader, in fact, I found myself only mildly disgusted and apathetic during my reading.
Kiku and Hashi are found abandoned in coin lockers as infants. They are brought up in a GOOD orphanage and are well-provided for, even taken on trips and given presents. Their good fortune extends to being adopted by a perfectly sane, nice couple who live on an island. They're given every opportunity to thrive and become normal adults, but the two are so self-pitying that all they can do is bemoan the fact that they were abandoned as infants. Kiku takes up pole-vaulting and beating people up, but not much else... No personality, no long-term goals. Hashi, somewhat more interesting than his brother, becomes a singer/prostitute and pursues a music career. They both wind up in Toxitown, a BIZARRE chemically-treated area of Tokyo teeming with freaks and hobos.
Honestly, why should anyone give a shit about these two freaks? They've been given everything they need to have decent lives, and they do nothing but fixate on their biological mothers. They're not interesting, kind, humorous, or driven to do anything but whine and moon around. Kiku and Hashi lead dirty, aimless lives. They don't seem to care much about other people, and Murakami's insane side characters are far more interesting.
I can only guess that they cling to their coin locker beginnings as a way of holding themselves apart, as something special. Hashi replaces much of that with his singing career, enjoying the illusion, living on the recognition and "uniqueness" of being a singer. He becomes furious when he runs into anyone who knew him before his star rose, only because he can't stand being seen as anything but a musical prodigy. Ego. Kiku is simply a dullard. I couldn't figure out why Anemone even wanted him around. He was a freakish premature ejaculator during their first sexual encounter, does nothing but let her cook for him, and what does he get her for Christmas? AN OMELETTE RECIPE BOOK, so she'll know how to make HIS favorite dish: rice omelettes. Why should a gorgeous, interesting, and eccentric woman like Anemone want a boring, selfish dud like Kiku? It boggles me, but then again a Japanese man wrote this book. I'm assuming there's a cultural difference that I'm just not understanding.
To top it off, Kiku comes face to face with his birth mother and blows her head off. Great! No answers, no explanations, no apologies. Wham bam, thank you, ma'm! Way to go, buddy.
I sound like I hate this book, but that's not the case. I simply can't fathom how someone as lauded as Murakami created something so utterly lacking, so pointless that I had to fight to keep my eyes on the page. I've read worse, but I finished THOSE books. This book is hollow in a way I'm not accustomed to. My advice? Move along because there's nothing to see here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 10, 2016
Müthişti!
Neden bu kadar uzun süre beklemişim Ryu Murakami'yi okumak için bilmiyorum. Modern edebiyatının bence en dişli kitaplarından birini yazmış Ryu. Kitabı almadan önce Oliver Stone'un kitabın ön kısmına konulmuş olan "Olağanüstü yetenekli bir yazar. Fellini ve Günter Grass, David Bowie ve Dostoyevski, MArquez ve Mike Leigh'in Naked'i... Hepsini içinde barındırıyor." yazısı bana çok iddialı gelmişti. Bu tarz tanıtım yazıları biraz alla beni, pulla beni isteğinin sonuçları gibi gelir genelde bana, yine öyle hissetmiştim. Ancak Oliver Stone haklıymış. Hatta daha fazlasını da içinde barındırıyor. Haruki Murakami'nin bu kadar popülerken, Ryu Murakami'nin daha çok sevilmemesine şok geçiriyorum şuan. Kat be kat daha fazla içine çeken, insanı yormayan mis gibi bir kitap bu. Lütfen okuyun.
Özellikle 60 yılları kültür evriminin edebiyata yansımasını hep Amerika üzerinden okumaktayız. En çok Amerikan Edebiyatı'nda farklı seslerle karşılaşıyoruz.. Ryu Murakami, Japonya'nın bir ayağı Avrupa'da diğer ayağı Amerika'da olan yazarı olmuş bence. Her sayfasında kendi ülkesinin, savaş sonrası değişen mekanik halini de eleştiriyor, yansıtıyor; hem de evrensel bir dil oluşturabiliyor. Hemde imgeleri çok fazlı örtük ve anlaşılmaz değil.
Çok güçlü, çok görsel bir kitap bu. Hikayenin giriftleri elinizden kitabı bırakmanızı biraz zorluyor.
Ayrıca sonradan araştırdığım üzere; Ryu Hakan Günday'ın en sevdiği yazarlardanmış. Hatta lise yıllarında fransızcasını okumuş ilk olarak. Ve tesadüfe bakın ki, ilk 4 romanının konuları Ryu'nun belli dönemlerde yazdığı romanın konuları ile benzeşiyor. Onu da bir kenara bırakacak olursak; anlatım tarzı, alt metinler, imgeler, hayal gücü her şey çok benziyor. Beni biraz hayal kırıklığına uğrattı elbette bu. Mesela Emanet Dolabı Bebekleri, Kinyas ve Kayra ile olağandışı bir şekilde benzeşiyor(!!!)
Son zamanlarda okuduğum en kendine has ve güçlü romanlardan biriydi. Hayalgücünün kesin zaferi bu kitap.
Kesinlikle okumanızı tavsiye ederim. İyi okumalar.
5/5
Neden bu kadar uzun süre beklemişim Ryu Murakami'yi okumak için bilmiyorum. Modern edebiyatının bence en dişli kitaplarından birini yazmış Ryu. Kitabı almadan önce Oliver Stone'un kitabın ön kısmına konulmuş olan "Olağanüstü yetenekli bir yazar. Fellini ve Günter Grass, David Bowie ve Dostoyevski, MArquez ve Mike Leigh'in Naked'i... Hepsini içinde barındırıyor." yazısı bana çok iddialı gelmişti. Bu tarz tanıtım yazıları biraz alla beni, pulla beni isteğinin sonuçları gibi gelir genelde bana, yine öyle hissetmiştim. Ancak Oliver Stone haklıymış. Hatta daha fazlasını da içinde barındırıyor. Haruki Murakami'nin bu kadar popülerken, Ryu Murakami'nin daha çok sevilmemesine şok geçiriyorum şuan. Kat be kat daha fazla içine çeken, insanı yormayan mis gibi bir kitap bu. Lütfen okuyun.
Özellikle 60 yılları kültür evriminin edebiyata yansımasını hep Amerika üzerinden okumaktayız. En çok Amerikan Edebiyatı'nda farklı seslerle karşılaşıyoruz.. Ryu Murakami, Japonya'nın bir ayağı Avrupa'da diğer ayağı Amerika'da olan yazarı olmuş bence. Her sayfasında kendi ülkesinin, savaş sonrası değişen mekanik halini de eleştiriyor, yansıtıyor; hem de evrensel bir dil oluşturabiliyor. Hemde imgeleri çok fazlı örtük ve anlaşılmaz değil.
Çok güçlü, çok görsel bir kitap bu. Hikayenin giriftleri elinizden kitabı bırakmanızı biraz zorluyor.
Ayrıca sonradan araştırdığım üzere; Ryu Hakan Günday'ın en sevdiği yazarlardanmış. Hatta lise yıllarında fransızcasını okumuş ilk olarak. Ve tesadüfe bakın ki, ilk 4 romanının konuları Ryu'nun belli dönemlerde yazdığı romanın konuları ile benzeşiyor. Onu da bir kenara bırakacak olursak; anlatım tarzı, alt metinler, imgeler, hayal gücü her şey çok benziyor. Beni biraz hayal kırıklığına uğrattı elbette bu. Mesela Emanet Dolabı Bebekleri, Kinyas ve Kayra ile olağandışı bir şekilde benzeşiyor(!!!)
Son zamanlarda okuduğum en kendine has ve güçlü romanlardan biriydi. Hayalgücünün kesin zaferi bu kitap.
Kesinlikle okumanızı tavsiye ederim. İyi okumalar.
5/5
January 8, 2023
Leí Sopa de miso el año pasado y ese libro definitivamente se quedó conmigo; era extraño y la mente del personaje psicópata me fascinó. Los chicos de las taquillas no se quedó atrás para nada, es más, le hizo carrera y se impulso muy arriba, así como un salto con pertiga. Ahora, ¿qué decir? Es raro, turbio y parece que no tiene mucho sentido, pero sí lo tiene. Dentro de su locura se encuentra el comfort, y con detalles vas viendo la imagen completa que dibuja el autor. Mientras tanto, en el proceso conoces lugares, personas y te encuentras con situaciones muy bizarras, que te hacen cuestionar tu propia sanidad. El mundo de Hashi y Kiku, los protagonistas, estos chicos que quedan marcados para siempre por sus primeros días de vida, se podría decir que es injusto con ellos y los pisotea porque ellos se lo buscan. Sus resentimientos y odio hacia si mismos y las personas que los rodean no están completamente justificados, es algo que los acompañó desde las taquillas. Sin embargo, yo tengo simpatía y un cariño raro hacia ellos, en especial con Hashi. Me gusta que busquen venganza, la destrucción, que se vea retratado esa inquietud de que el rechazo a una temprana edad sí se queda con uno cuando crece y no siempre se busca la mejor manera de lidiar con ello. Sí, quizás me esté poniendo muy sentimental con una historia que no busca ser tanto de ese tipo, o quizás sí. Dejando eso de lado, también me fascinó y me diviertieron muchísimo las escenas turbias, las cuales son muchas, y esto parece un engaño, porque yo pensé al principio que este libro no tenía trama (lo cual no tiene nada de malo, algunas historias son así y se las disfruta igual) pero después me puse a recalcular y me digo ¿qué NO pasó en este libro? Por supuesto que no es perfecto, siento que el ritmo es un poco tedioso y no por el número de páginas, sino por algunas partes tediosas y un poco largas. Aun así, hay algo en mi interior que me dice que lo amé más de lo que pienso: tengo ganas de gritar a los cuatro vientos toda la trama, todo, siento que esta historia pasó de verdad y todo el mundo debería conocerla, quedarse fascinado y prendado por ella. En mi mente esto es un true crime. Raro, porque sí es un poco fantasioso e imaginativo, pero no me importa. Los fanáticos de este autor me caen bien, porque son igual que yo, y no tienen que ser necesariamente lectores de terror o thiller, así que no sé muy bien cómo calificarlos... fans de la literatura japonesa chalada. Es lo mejor que se me ocurrió.
《Lo cierto era que necesitaba a Hashi tanto como Hashi a él, del mismo modo que una persona sana necesita a veces una enfermedad, aunque sea imaginaria, como una forma de retiro, un puerto seguro en el que resguardarse de los problemas del mundo real.》
《Lo cierto era que necesitaba a Hashi tanto como Hashi a él, del mismo modo que una persona sana necesita a veces una enfermedad, aunque sea imaginaria, como una forma de retiro, un puerto seguro en el que resguardarse de los problemas del mundo real.》
January 27, 2015
Big, bold, and violent: now this is a novel. The opening makes abundantly clear the twisted imagination at work: “The woman pushed on the baby’s stomach and sucked its penis into her mouth; it was thinner than the American menthols she smoked and a bit slimy, like raw fish.” A newborn is being abandoned in a coin-operated locker; this was a serious issue in Japan in the 1970s. The novel focuses on two such boys, each abandoned by his mother, and the strange, twin-like relationship that develops between them. To grow up with the knowledge that you were left for dead by your own mother: these boys become creatures of pathology and obsession, violent and self-destructive impulses, and existential dread.
The world the boys grow up in is the near future; the novel was originally published in Japan in 1980 but the story continues into the late 80s. It is a future marked by urban decay and environmental degradation, somewhat reminiscent of the dystopian grunge of vintage cyberpunk, which the novel actually preceded. A comparison could also be made with the setting of another work of Japanese proto-cyberpunk: the Neo-Tokyo of Akira. (In fact, Coin Locker Babies could make for an amazing anime flick.)
Coin Locker Babies is an unpredictable read. The playful digressiveness, formal experimentation (news clippings, song lyrics, etc.), and almost obsessive sense of detail bring to mind postmodern maximalism a la Pynchon. At the same time there’s cinematic set pieces and sections where the story moves with the momentum of a thriller. Above all there is the turbulent melodrama of two boys going insane from a very young age, as Murakami plunges the reader into a miasma of brutal violence, emotional histrionics, sexual confusion, and apocalyptic fantasies. Murakami’s characters are so unhinged, and his style so audacious, that it feels like the story could go anywhere. It’s a hell of a trip if you have the stomach for it.
The world the boys grow up in is the near future; the novel was originally published in Japan in 1980 but the story continues into the late 80s. It is a future marked by urban decay and environmental degradation, somewhat reminiscent of the dystopian grunge of vintage cyberpunk, which the novel actually preceded. A comparison could also be made with the setting of another work of Japanese proto-cyberpunk: the Neo-Tokyo of Akira. (In fact, Coin Locker Babies could make for an amazing anime flick.)
Coin Locker Babies is an unpredictable read. The playful digressiveness, formal experimentation (news clippings, song lyrics, etc.), and almost obsessive sense of detail bring to mind postmodern maximalism a la Pynchon. At the same time there’s cinematic set pieces and sections where the story moves with the momentum of a thriller. Above all there is the turbulent melodrama of two boys going insane from a very young age, as Murakami plunges the reader into a miasma of brutal violence, emotional histrionics, sexual confusion, and apocalyptic fantasies. Murakami’s characters are so unhinged, and his style so audacious, that it feels like the story could go anywhere. It’s a hell of a trip if you have the stomach for it.
February 7, 2017
Man! Stories don't come more messed up than this one. I have no idea how to put this book into a genre, let alone give it a review. It is a futuristic psychological horror maybe?
The story is about two babies abandoned in a locker, not related instances, fate pushes them together at the same orphanage and they become brothers. Eventually they get adopted by a nice couple and things go well. It seems to me all is calm until one runs away and they become separated. The future that Murakami has created here is bizarre, Toxicity is one messed up place, you gotta read the book to fully grasp how mad it is. If you have watched one of those bizarre Asian films, Audition (based a Murakami book), Gozu or Tokyo Gore Police then that will give you an idea of the tone of this book. Anemone's relationship with her pet Alligator is crazy, she turns her apartment into a swamp for it. The sex is very surreal too, the bloke with the massive tumour on his neck leaking white puss will make you queasy.
I have enjoyed reading this even though at times it did feel a tad long winded. Still you gotta read this book! If you're feeling brave then Ryū Murakami is well worth reading.
The story is about two babies abandoned in a locker, not related instances, fate pushes them together at the same orphanage and they become brothers. Eventually they get adopted by a nice couple and things go well. It seems to me all is calm until one runs away and they become separated. The future that Murakami has created here is bizarre, Toxicity is one messed up place, you gotta read the book to fully grasp how mad it is. If you have watched one of those bizarre Asian films, Audition (based a Murakami book), Gozu or Tokyo Gore Police then that will give you an idea of the tone of this book. Anemone's relationship with her pet Alligator is crazy, she turns her apartment into a swamp for it. The sex is very surreal too, the bloke with the massive tumour on his neck leaking white puss will make you queasy.
I have enjoyed reading this even though at times it did feel a tad long winded. Still you gotta read this book! If you're feeling brave then Ryū Murakami is well worth reading.
August 20, 2022
Тази класическа за съвременната японска литература книга е чист пънк. Наслаждавах й се безкрайно въпреки минорното й въздействие върху психиката ми.
July 22, 2017
Coin Locker Babies is one of most surreal books I've ever read. An angry, postmodern existentialist tale told with such detailed descriptive power, Ryū Murakami has crafted an utterly compelling novel about two adopted brothers, both abandoned in coin lockers, and their mentally and physically destructive upbringing into young adults. Hashi becomes a famous bisexual singer with an ever growing need to stab his pregnant wife and Kiku becomes a physically intimidating pole vaulter who, with his model girlfriend Anemone, wants to destroy Tokyo with an illegal chemical called DATURA. Sound weird? The funny this is: This synopsis is not even really the story. Those things are in the novel, but the novel is more about the destructive, terrifying lives of the brothers and their alienation from life and themselves. Right from the first page to the viscerally surreal final chapter, we are thrown into a socio-psychological analysis of the modern day Japanese soul, where everything is inverted, satirised and nonetheless intriguing. Throughout this, we get treated to savagely dark humour, social commentary, philosophical rambling and, unexpectedly, a very touching story.
Murakami has us strolling through the narrative with a weird set of characters: An oddball music producer and manager of Hashi, Hashi's all-gay touring band, a sweet model who has a pet crocodile, an array of pimps, thugs, lowlifes and prostitutes in an abandoned, cordoned off area in Tokyo, hilarious prison inmates of Kiku and so many others. A vast set of characters are dropped into an almost dystopian Japan and the crazy thing is that these repulsive characters are so interesting. Ryū Murakami creates these uncontrollably violent characters with unhappy, troubled upbringings, full of disillusion and sorrow, but we still feel for them and completely understand why they commit the actions, say certain things and act in certain ways. We somehow empathize with these men and women, despite their destructive behavior.
The final pages bombard you with an array of feelings: Positive, inspiring, hope, despite the previous 400 pages of despair, surrealism and violence. It's a wild ride with wild characters, but still one of the most touching stories you'll ever read.
"The streets, crowded during the summer holidays, smelled of melting rubber in the heat, making Hashi feel as if heavy, glutinous strings were stretching out behind his feet- as if everyone he passed in this canyon of glass and steel and concrete was trailing these strings, weaving a great white chrysalis. The whole town was a shiny chrysalis, wrapped around the heat radiating from the earth, and slowly swelling; but when would the giant butterfly emerge? He knew at least that when it did, it would float up into the sky and there its belly would split open, releasing millions of flies with human faces that would bury the city. He could already hear the buzzing of their wings..."
Murakami has us strolling through the narrative with a weird set of characters: An oddball music producer and manager of Hashi, Hashi's all-gay touring band, a sweet model who has a pet crocodile, an array of pimps, thugs, lowlifes and prostitutes in an abandoned, cordoned off area in Tokyo, hilarious prison inmates of Kiku and so many others. A vast set of characters are dropped into an almost dystopian Japan and the crazy thing is that these repulsive characters are so interesting. Ryū Murakami creates these uncontrollably violent characters with unhappy, troubled upbringings, full of disillusion and sorrow, but we still feel for them and completely understand why they commit the actions, say certain things and act in certain ways. We somehow empathize with these men and women, despite their destructive behavior.
The final pages bombard you with an array of feelings: Positive, inspiring, hope, despite the previous 400 pages of despair, surrealism and violence. It's a wild ride with wild characters, but still one of the most touching stories you'll ever read.
August 4, 2021
Was für ein verstörender Roman. Zwischendurch hatte ich mehrmals das Gefühl, ich schaue einen Tarantino Film.....abgedreht, actionreich und wieder extrem abgedreht. Soetwas skuriles hab ich noch nicht gelesen. Es war für mich zu überzogen. Ich fand die Thematik, dass Babys tatsächlich in Schließfächern ausgesetzt wurden, total erschreckend und emotional und ich kann mir natürlich vorstellen, dass sich im Unterbewusstsein der beiden Protagonisten Hashi und Kiku der essentielle Verlust von Urvertrauen, Einsamkeit und das Gefühl des Verlorenseins einbrennen. Aber der Trip, den die beiden dann unternehmen, ihre Handlungen und Gedanken waren mir final zu abgedreht und krank. Eigentlich kann man sagen, dass beide aufgrund ihres wahnsinnig schlimmen Start ins Leben total wahnsinnig geworden sind. Und Anemone...... was war mit ihr los? Ein 4 Meter langes Krokodil halten und die Wohnung zu einer Sumpflandschaft umgestalten????? Whaaaaat??????
Wer auf skurriles steht, für den muss das ein Schmankerl sein🤣. Für mich war es unterhaltsam, manchmal langatmig aber einfach zu durchgeknallt....... Ich brauche nun erstmal eine seichte, erholsame Lektüre. 🤪 Zumindest bleibt mit das Buch aber definitiv noch länger im Kopf. 🤯😂
Wer auf skurriles steht, für den muss das ein Schmankerl sein🤣. Für mich war es unterhaltsam, manchmal langatmig aber einfach zu durchgeknallt....... Ich brauche nun erstmal eine seichte, erholsame Lektüre. 🤪 Zumindest bleibt mit das Buch aber definitiv noch länger im Kopf. 🤯😂
Read
April 21, 2012Well.......
no rating because I only read 300 of the 400 pages. There was nothing particularly horrible about it, but it was taking me too much time to read and it's overdue, collecting fines. What can you do? C'est la vie.
It had its moments. Every now and then it would strike a certain theme or comment on something particularly profound. So this experience hasn't taken out any creditability on Murakami #2 which I'm glad about because I don't want my time with Ryu to be over.
That being said, this book is a tough read. It tests a number of different readerly limits. One: gore, sex and general gross-out factor. Two: long stretches of seemingly unimportant exposition. Three: unrelentingly bleak tone. Four: An emotionally callousness narrator (for the characters and the reader).
If these four things have never given you trouble in the past, then I'd say that you'd fair a lot better than I did with this one. If not, then I'm not ready to shove this book into your hands and send you on your way.
no rating because I only read 300 of the 400 pages. There was nothing particularly horrible about it, but it was taking me too much time to read and it's overdue, collecting fines. What can you do? C'est la vie.
It had its moments. Every now and then it would strike a certain theme or comment on something particularly profound. So this experience hasn't taken out any creditability on Murakami #2 which I'm glad about because I don't want my time with Ryu to be over.
That being said, this book is a tough read. It tests a number of different readerly limits. One: gore, sex and general gross-out factor. Two: long stretches of seemingly unimportant exposition. Three: unrelentingly bleak tone. Four: An emotionally callousness narrator (for the characters and the reader).
If these four things have never given you trouble in the past, then I'd say that you'd fair a lot better than I did with this one. If not, then I'm not ready to shove this book into your hands and send you on your way.
February 27, 2017
Мисля, че само японец може да пише така, за да ни каже накрая: "Не умирай! Не се предавай на смъртта! Живей!"
Книгата е тежка, но по много особен начин. Мисля, че самият Рю Мураками би се учудил за това, че романът е определян като тежък и мрачен. Все пак той е написал една книга за чудото на живота, за това, че не трябва да се предаваме пред трудностите. Написал я е по онзи, особен за нас "не-японците" начин, но е силна история.
Историята на две момчета с труден живот от самото начало. За да бъде възприета тази история, трябва да се чете без предразсъдъци, а спокойно и уверено, че няма да е такава, каквато очакваш. И ще е разказна по онзи начин, по който разказват японците - без милост и с обстоятелства, които често за нас са немислими. В момента, в който ги приемеш и се потопиш в тях, остава само страхотния стил и език на Мураками и жестокото му присъствие, което на моменти усещаш като физически реално.
Ами хареса ми, искам още.
Книгата е тежка, но по много особен начин. Мисля, че самият Рю Мураками би се учудил за това, че романът е определян като тежък и мрачен. Все пак той е написал една книга за чудото на живота, за това, че не трябва да се предаваме пред трудностите. Написал я е по онзи, особен за нас "не-японците" начин, но е силна история.
Историята на две момчета с труден живот от самото начало. За да бъде възприета тази история, трябва да се чете без предразсъдъци, а спокойно и уверено, че няма да е такава, каквато очакваш. И ще е разказна по онзи начин, по който разказват японците - без милост и с обстоятелства, които често за нас са немислими. В момента, в който ги приемеш и се потопиш в тях, остава само страхотния стил и език на Мураками и жестокото му присъствие, което на моменти усещаш като физически реално.
Ами хареса ми, искам още.
August 21, 2022
After reading Almost Transparent Blue I think I may have given Ryu Murakami a bit of a tough ride, and could be worth revisiting that particular book after reading this one... or perhaps the translation wasn't great on Almost Transparent Blue. Also I think the subject matter feels much less derivitive of your typical druggy prose. I'll give it a tentative 4 star rating as it's not my favourite but still very much enjoyed it, and actually got a little emotionally connected with it too, which is rare with this kind of edgy prose.
June 5, 2016
This one blew my mind. ... An intriguing plot with some insane twists and a striking exposition results in a shocking yet fascinating novel which is Coin Locker Babies. If you have the guts, have a taste of the bizarre and read this book.
July 9, 2021
Im Gegensatz zu Murakamis Kurzromanen, die jeweils nur einen kleinen Auschnitt aus dem Leben der Protagonisten zeigen, begleitet man hier Kiku und Hashi von ihrem grausamen Start ins Leben bis ins frühe Erwachsenenalter, was die Charaktere ungleich vielschichtiger und lebendiger erscheinen lässt. Wohl auch deswegen ein Roman, der besonders an Herz und Nieren geht und nur schwer zu verdauen ist.
December 14, 2016
A patchwork quilt of a book. There were some passages I liked - the author does extreme violence very well for instance - but lots of stodge and some really strange plot strands/blind avenues. This being Murakami (not that one) it all goes a bit surreal at times too.
There was a paint by numbers tinge too, as the author put in shocking bits from time to time. It was as if he occasionally remembered that he was an enfant terrible and really needed to impress/revolt the reader.
Two boys are abandoned in coin lockers in a railway station. They are adopted by the same family. One becomes sporty, whilst the other is arty and sensitive. Watch the action as they both grow up to be murderers, all garnished with a healthy dollop of environmental decay and destruction.
Overall not one of his best 2.217/5
There was a paint by numbers tinge too, as the author put in shocking bits from time to time. It was as if he occasionally remembered that he was an enfant terrible and really needed to impress/revolt the reader.
Two boys are abandoned in coin lockers in a railway station. They are adopted by the same family. One becomes sporty, whilst the other is arty and sensitive. Watch the action as they both grow up to be murderers, all garnished with a healthy dollop of environmental decay and destruction.
Overall not one of his best 2.217/5
April 22, 2019
"Kiku climbed the stairs of a pedestrian overpass and looked around; Tokyo was a mass of concrete in all directions, as far as the eye could see in the smoggy haze. The cluster of skyscrapers, thirteen in all, loomed up in front of him like a great towered fortress rather than office buildings. Now and then, the sun reflecting on the walls of glass transformed them into tall pillars of light, the shafts of searchlights in daytime, drawing him toward them. So he set out in that direction, mumbling to himself that even they would soon be full of stray dogs."
February 7, 2013
This is it:
"His tongue clicking sharply into the mike, Hashi reeled off the names of the band members as shreds of glittering foil rained from the ceiling marking the end of the concert. 'Thank you. Thank you,' he murmured. 'We couldn't do it without your love. Tonight I want you to pray with me for the souls of three girls attacked in a park in Yokohama almost seventy years ago. A sailor on leave butchered them, gouged out their stomachs, and jerked off inside those hollow things. Tonight, let's pray for their soulds; let's pray for love, as only love is going to save this world, my friends. Thank you.' As Hashi finished, a line of club-wielding security guards with attack dogs flanked the stage and headed toward the front row of the audience"
Isn't it incredible? At a glitzy pop concert: the gruesome truth of our hideousness, a trite message about love ... enter snarling dogs and men with clubs. Isn't that who we are?
Or perhaps we are better seen as the vacuous guests at the end of a celebrity party:
"By now, the skinny boy with the armful of muscle relaxant was just finishing his act and acknowledging the applause; in the course of it he had managed to fill himself with a solid gold dildo as big around as a newborn baby. And on that note the party broke up,"
That's the world.
The first time I read this I felt there was something hopeful in Hashi's singing to the towers at the end. I believed that his singing would save everyone who heard it. But now I'm not so sure.
Woop! Kiku's mum was from Kochi! Perhaps.
Other bits:
"The truth was, he needed Hashi as much as Hashi needed him, the way a healthy person sometimes needs a disease, imaginary though it may be, as a kind of retreat, a safe haven from the problems of the real world."
"Kiku suddenly wanted to scream, to turn himself into a huge jet plane and bomb the hell out of the bugs, the leaves, this window, Kuwayama's machine, the lighthouse."
"the bike collapsed with a rusty squeal, like a pig having a spike driven into its head,"
Funny (we are the useless screaming audience):
"For some reason, their uncaring eyes made Kiku furious, and in an instant he had left Hashi, decked the emcee with one punch, and was kicking the woman in the stomach. The audience continued to scream until he was subdued by the doddery band."
"I'm bored, he thought, standing on the practice field. The warm, soft breeze blowing from the sea was particularly unbearable."
This made me cry, speech from adopted mum:
"'I know you're feeling burned -up inside,' she said at last. 'I wish you'd tell me if there's something that's happened since you came to us to make you and Hashi feel this way. If you told me what we've done, I could apologize, try to find a way to make it up to you.'"
"Kiku felt a bit let down: the magic formula for annihilating the human race, for wiping out the entire planet, was ... a kind of eggplant."
"'Break his arm!' D urged. 'See if you can make him cry.'
Make me cry? thought Kiku to himself – that's all they've done since the day we were born."
First orgasm:
"Suddenly a feeling not unlike the urge to pee swept through his body and gathered behind his eyes. From his eyes it invaded his brain, eating away at a wall of cartilage that had been concealing a part of him that now quivered to life; and with that quiver, Hashi realized that his whole body was trembling."
Hashi's singing:
"'Who else you ever heard could crawl inside people's heads and stroke their brains?'"
"Hashi on tour sounds more like a seal in full rut. The 'new' voice … clings to you like a coating of oily sludge that refuses to be washed away in even the longest, hottest shower."
This made me cry#2, speech from adopted dad:
"'I guess I haven't been much of a father,' he said.
'Why do you say that?' laughed Hashi, looking back over his shoulder. Kuwayama was rubbing his eyes.
'Well, what I mean is ... you with so much on your mind and all ...' He waved as Hashi walked away ... feebly, like the leg of a bug stripped of its wings and antennae, wriggling in a dark hole. 'Take care of yourself now!' Kuwayama called. 'Take care!'"
"His tongue clicking sharply into the mike, Hashi reeled off the names of the band members as shreds of glittering foil rained from the ceiling marking the end of the concert. 'Thank you. Thank you,' he murmured. 'We couldn't do it without your love. Tonight I want you to pray with me for the souls of three girls attacked in a park in Yokohama almost seventy years ago. A sailor on leave butchered them, gouged out their stomachs, and jerked off inside those hollow things. Tonight, let's pray for their soulds; let's pray for love, as only love is going to save this world, my friends. Thank you.' As Hashi finished, a line of club-wielding security guards with attack dogs flanked the stage and headed toward the front row of the audience"
Isn't it incredible? At a glitzy pop concert: the gruesome truth of our hideousness, a trite message about love ... enter snarling dogs and men with clubs. Isn't that who we are?
Or perhaps we are better seen as the vacuous guests at the end of a celebrity party:
"By now, the skinny boy with the armful of muscle relaxant was just finishing his act and acknowledging the applause; in the course of it he had managed to fill himself with a solid gold dildo as big around as a newborn baby. And on that note the party broke up,"
That's the world.
The first time I read this I felt there was something hopeful in Hashi's singing to the towers at the end. I believed that his singing would save everyone who heard it. But now I'm not so sure.
Woop! Kiku's mum was from Kochi! Perhaps.
Other bits:
"The truth was, he needed Hashi as much as Hashi needed him, the way a healthy person sometimes needs a disease, imaginary though it may be, as a kind of retreat, a safe haven from the problems of the real world."
"Kiku suddenly wanted to scream, to turn himself into a huge jet plane and bomb the hell out of the bugs, the leaves, this window, Kuwayama's machine, the lighthouse."
"the bike collapsed with a rusty squeal, like a pig having a spike driven into its head,"
Funny (we are the useless screaming audience):
"For some reason, their uncaring eyes made Kiku furious, and in an instant he had left Hashi, decked the emcee with one punch, and was kicking the woman in the stomach. The audience continued to scream until he was subdued by the doddery band."
"I'm bored, he thought, standing on the practice field. The warm, soft breeze blowing from the sea was particularly unbearable."
This made me cry, speech from adopted mum:
"'I know you're feeling burned -up inside,' she said at last. 'I wish you'd tell me if there's something that's happened since you came to us to make you and Hashi feel this way. If you told me what we've done, I could apologize, try to find a way to make it up to you.'"
"Kiku felt a bit let down: the magic formula for annihilating the human race, for wiping out the entire planet, was ... a kind of eggplant."
"'Break his arm!' D urged. 'See if you can make him cry.'
Make me cry? thought Kiku to himself – that's all they've done since the day we were born."
First orgasm:
"Suddenly a feeling not unlike the urge to pee swept through his body and gathered behind his eyes. From his eyes it invaded his brain, eating away at a wall of cartilage that had been concealing a part of him that now quivered to life; and with that quiver, Hashi realized that his whole body was trembling."
Hashi's singing:
"'Who else you ever heard could crawl inside people's heads and stroke their brains?'"
"Hashi on tour sounds more like a seal in full rut. The 'new' voice … clings to you like a coating of oily sludge that refuses to be washed away in even the longest, hottest shower."
This made me cry#2, speech from adopted dad:
"'I guess I haven't been much of a father,' he said.
'Why do you say that?' laughed Hashi, looking back over his shoulder. Kuwayama was rubbing his eyes.
'Well, what I mean is ... you with so much on your mind and all ...' He waved as Hashi walked away ... feebly, like the leg of a bug stripped of its wings and antennae, wriggling in a dark hole. 'Take care of yourself now!' Kuwayama called. 'Take care!'"
November 12, 2008
This book is full of ‘what the…?’ moments that catch you totally off guard. But these moments do not come across as gimmicky. Murakami, the Ryu one, not the Haruki one, weaves a pretty dark, yet humorous Japanese landscape. Two babies are found locked in station coin lockers and grow up together; first in an orphanage, then on an island, then splitting ways, both terribly messed up.
The opening line was the most disturbing I’ve ever read in a book and the story took off full of gristle and bone. Unfortunately, Ryu lost focus around the middle of the book. His pace fell off, the texture turned from gritty and gristly to a bland, tasteless pudding. He did regain a little form in the end but by then it was too late.
Still an enjoyable read. Here's a passage before the book turned to pudding:
They went back to the hotel exhausted. In the elevator, the cleaning woman was wiping down the walls. Though quite elderly, her hair was dyed, and she wore dark eyeliner and bright red lipstick that filled the deep wrinkles around her mouth.
"Hot, isn’t it?" she said to Kazuyo.
"And terribly sticky, " answered Kazuyo pleasantly as the old woman spat in her mop bucket.
"Hey, by the way, you two find anything weird in you toilet?" she asked suddenly. "Those Filipino whores been throwing some pretty strange stuff down the johns. It’s a bitch having to clean them out. Rubbers you expect, but this is getting ridiculous."
The elevator had reached the fifth floor, but when Kazuyo and Kiku got off, the woman left her bucket and mop and followed them.
"Good night, then - we’re pretty tired, " said Kazuyo, trying to slip into the room, but she grabbed her arm.
"I’m finding these big wads of pubic hair - must be shaving down there. Clogs up the pipes and I have to clean it out by hand. But that’s not the worst of it. A while back I found eggs stopping up one toilet, and I don’t mean chicken eggs. It was frog eggs - these huge frog eggs. Well, I thought that was a bit peculiar, so I did some asking around and found out those Filipino girls keeps the frogs as sort of special pets, real special. Seems they like to stick them up inside themselves... feels good and squishy. But somebody’s got to clean up after them, and what kind of job is that - pulling frog eggs out of a toilet?... Goddamn Filipino hookers and theri goddamn frogs... I ask you!" Bursting into tears, the maid held tight to Kazuyo’s arm. Her mascara began to run and black canals formed along her wrinkles.
The opening line was the most disturbing I’ve ever read in a book and the story took off full of gristle and bone. Unfortunately, Ryu lost focus around the middle of the book. His pace fell off, the texture turned from gritty and gristly to a bland, tasteless pudding. He did regain a little form in the end but by then it was too late.
Still an enjoyable read. Here's a passage before the book turned to pudding:
They went back to the hotel exhausted. In the elevator, the cleaning woman was wiping down the walls. Though quite elderly, her hair was dyed, and she wore dark eyeliner and bright red lipstick that filled the deep wrinkles around her mouth.
"Hot, isn’t it?" she said to Kazuyo.
"And terribly sticky, " answered Kazuyo pleasantly as the old woman spat in her mop bucket.
"Hey, by the way, you two find anything weird in you toilet?" she asked suddenly. "Those Filipino whores been throwing some pretty strange stuff down the johns. It’s a bitch having to clean them out. Rubbers you expect, but this is getting ridiculous."
The elevator had reached the fifth floor, but when Kazuyo and Kiku got off, the woman left her bucket and mop and followed them.
"Good night, then - we’re pretty tired, " said Kazuyo, trying to slip into the room, but she grabbed her arm.
"I’m finding these big wads of pubic hair - must be shaving down there. Clogs up the pipes and I have to clean it out by hand. But that’s not the worst of it. A while back I found eggs stopping up one toilet, and I don’t mean chicken eggs. It was frog eggs - these huge frog eggs. Well, I thought that was a bit peculiar, so I did some asking around and found out those Filipino girls keeps the frogs as sort of special pets, real special. Seems they like to stick them up inside themselves... feels good and squishy. But somebody’s got to clean up after them, and what kind of job is that - pulling frog eggs out of a toilet?... Goddamn Filipino hookers and theri goddamn frogs... I ask you!" Bursting into tears, the maid held tight to Kazuyo’s arm. Her mascara began to run and black canals formed along her wrinkles.
December 1, 2011
Ryu Murakami is one of the best writers to come out of the 20th century. While everyone else was poncing around griping about causes and who should be occupying what, Murakami, like Ginsberg with a sense of humor, was willing to quietly watch all the people he knew descend into hysteria and madness before either killing themselves or getting jobs with ties. His work focuses on disaffection, and the lengths people will go to - individually and culturally - to find out what the hell they're doing here.
His breakout novel, "Almost Transparent Blue", was a semi-autobiographical description of being a teenager in a hyper-industrialized, unidentifiable Japan. It's a poignantly disturbing story of an otherworldly young man watching the private hells of others expand to take over the world. In "Coin Locker Babies," he writes a fictional account of what that world would ultimately look like.
In a word: Unpleasant.
"Coin Locker Babies" is one of those novels that is genuinely subversive, which is a shame because you can't use that word anymore without sounding pretentious. It concerns the lives of two boys who were found abandoned in adjoining coin lockers, and how they go about making sense of the world they've unwillingly inherited - one by becoming a gay pop star, the other by becoming a champion pole vaulter who teams up with a japanese model to destroy all life on earth.
It'll make sense when you read it.
It's a funny, apocalyptic romp from a writer whose life philosophy is a paradoxical mix of just go with it and burn, baby, burn. "Coin Locker Babies" ultimately resolves nothing and absolves no one, but it's also satisfying. The book's message seems to be that if ending the world is the only way to reclaim your personhood, than you should do it. And someone else should stop you.
His breakout novel, "Almost Transparent Blue", was a semi-autobiographical description of being a teenager in a hyper-industrialized, unidentifiable Japan. It's a poignantly disturbing story of an otherworldly young man watching the private hells of others expand to take over the world. In "Coin Locker Babies," he writes a fictional account of what that world would ultimately look like.
In a word: Unpleasant.
"Coin Locker Babies" is one of those novels that is genuinely subversive, which is a shame because you can't use that word anymore without sounding pretentious. It concerns the lives of two boys who were found abandoned in adjoining coin lockers, and how they go about making sense of the world they've unwillingly inherited - one by becoming a gay pop star, the other by becoming a champion pole vaulter who teams up with a japanese model to destroy all life on earth.
It'll make sense when you read it.
It's a funny, apocalyptic romp from a writer whose life philosophy is a paradoxical mix of just go with it and burn, baby, burn. "Coin Locker Babies" ultimately resolves nothing and absolves no one, but it's also satisfying. The book's message seems to be that if ending the world is the only way to reclaim your personhood, than you should do it. And someone else should stop you.
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