Ray Pride

Novelist and director Ryu Murakami is one of Japan's renaissance provocateurs. Only a handful of his forty cinematic books have been translated into English, including the lavishly inventive cyber-fantasy "Coin Locker Babies." He's also directed four films, including "Tokyo Decadence" as well as writing Takashi Miike's twisted shocker "Audition." Even without knowing his background, a reader coming unprepared to "In the Miso Soup" would be impressed by the 52-year-old writer's aptitude for eerie and disturbing observation. (Ralph McCarthy's translation is unsettling for its fluid prose rhythms and precise, vivid word choices.) Kenji is a 20-year-old nightlife tour guide who shows tourists around Tokyo's red-light districts. As the story unfolds, he's upset by a new customer, a strange American who calls himself `Frank," but whose stories about himself are filled with contradictions. He immediately reads Frank, with his beady gaze and seemingly plastic features as the killer of several schoolgirls who make money through "compensated dating." (Kenji's own girlfriend, Jun, doesn't share that part of her past with him.) Kenji's mix of youthful naiveté and observational skills is a neat balancing trick, and Murakami outlines a meticulous handbook of the sights and scenes of Tokyo's nightworld. Readers of Thomas Harris' novels may recognize a similar spirit in Murakami's work: a cool, civilized description of food and etiquette and sexual rituals alternating with precise descriptions of barbaric brutality. There's a quiet lyricism throughout as Kenji politely mulls the increasingly mad demands of his client. "Malevolence is born of negative feelings like loneliness and sadness and anger. It comes from an emptiness inside you that feels as it's been carved out with a knife..." Of course, the killer's voice is far chillier, such as Frank's loving description of his first killings: "Have you ever swallowed somebody else's blood, Kenji?" Murakami lets himself off the hook a little by always underlining Kenji's nausea and disgust at the psychopath's loving recitations even as his fascination is undeterred. A form-and-function design note: Kodansha's lovingly produced books feature ribbon bookmarks; wouldn't you know the one for "In the Miso Soup" is an impudent blood red.

In the Miso Soup
Ryu Murakami
Kodansha, $22.95, 182 pages (2004-03-09)

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