Haruki Murakami Winds-Up Hard-Boiled Ishihara

[Mulboyne]

Ishihara is on the right

Mainichi: Haruki Murakami says he's worried about Japanese nationalism
Famed Japanese author Haruki Murakami says he's worried about nationalism in his home country and plans to incorporate an anti-nationalist theme into his next novel, a Hong Kong newspaper reported Sunday. "I'm worried about my country," the 57-year-old Murakami was quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post. "I feel I have responsibility as a novelist to do something." Murakami singled out nationalist Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara for criticism. "Ishihara is a very dangerous man. He's an agitator. He hates China," Murakami reportedly said...more...

[Captain Japan]

What, if anything, does 'normal' mean?
Review of "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman"
Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf / 352 pages / $25.00

In this extraordinary new story collection by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore), reality is ever in danger of breaking loose of its moorings. People are sucked up into a void or drown in an unforgiving wave. Characters descend into wells. People are pursued by dark shadows. Man-eating cats, or morally indifferent cats, stalk the landscape. No matter the mayhem, there are never "reasons, causes." A "poor aunt" is suddenly affixed to a character's back. She is there, no explanation forthcoming.

The brilliant "Tony Takitani," which has been made into a film in Japan, reveals that Murakami is aware of how history, to which people pay no attention, shapes their psyches. Tony's jazz-musician father, who consorted with Japanese war criminals in China and allowed an American soldier to name his son, visits a "habitual solitude" on Tony that will endure as long as life itself. A woman marries an "Ice Man" with a "silent, transparent look that gleamed like an icicle on a winter's morning" and pays the price. Events bear inevitable consequences....more...

[Behan]

It's scary that such a foreigner-hater could be the governor/mayor of one of the world's largest cities. If Tokyo can't be international (or 'gaijin' tolerant) then I lose hope for the rest of the country.