Ryu Murakami's "Hanto-wo Ideyo" is just overwhelming
I hadn't read a single Japanese book in the last 4 decades until I somehow came across Ryu Murakami's most recent novel titled "Hanto-wo Ideyo" (my tentative translation: "Leaving the Peninsula behind".)
With a pleasant surprise I was overwhelmed by his exceptional analytical/inductive ability that gives him a good insight into who we really are, and unparalleled imaginative/intuitive ability that gives him a good foresight of where we are heading.
And what a painstaking research work he did! He is particular about minute details because details are where the two different abilities meet.
Judging from customer reviews on the Amazon.co.jp's website, there are very few readers who have understood the real message Murakami wanted to convey. Even those who give this book a 5-star rating sounded just like some of those loyal fans of this extremely popular and prolific writer.
Fortunately or unfortunately this novel (923-pages long) is practically untranslatable, not only because of thousands of proper nouns for North Korean and Japanese names, places and weaponry, but because of the fact Murakami apparently did not intend to have this book translated into foreign languages.
Traditionally Japanese fiction writers have been enthusiastic about being understood by Western critics and general population, and to that end, letting them share the "profound" literary assets they are creating.
In response to this burning desire for being understood abroad, a bunch of Japanophiles in the West, who claim to be able to appreciate esoteric, exotic and mysterious Japanese literature, have applauded the likes of Yukio Mishima, Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, etc.
As a result most of these "great" Japanese writers ended up depicting typical, or sometimes atypical, Japanese figures just as they look in the mirror held up against them by American or European "japonistes." They have always asked the question of "What our 'unique' mirror images are like", instead of "What we really are, unique or not."
These characters created by Japanese "great" writers are, thus, quite predictable and boring, if not stereotypical, just like the rest of us Japanese are.
In December 8, 1941 (JST) the world's most predictable people all of a sudden turned the world's most unpredictable people. (Remember the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor?)
Today the Japanese people are, once again, at a loss over where to be heading in the face of an uncertain world. Nobody can tell for sure where we are heading.
Against this backdrop Ryu Murakami took out his own crystal ball, instead of looking at our mirror images, to foretell our next destination. That's why I say his horrible, but plausible, scenario is almost untranslatable.
On May 30 LATimes Online carried a report titled ﾂ"Japan Focuses on One Enemy at a Timeﾂ" in which the staff writer cited this book to prove his shallow view that the Japanese have a tendency to overestimate the threat from N-Korea as Japan's public enemy No. 1, while underestimating that from China. Obviously he hadn't (been able to) read this book himself.
Murakami doesn't think Pyongyang is an imminent threat. Neither does he think Beijing is posing a greater threat on us.
The real message he wanted to convey is: Our public enemy No.1 is inside ourselves.
If you have a certain amount of Japanese literacy and read a chapter titled "Zombi-no mure" (Herd of Zombies), you will be overwhelmed. In this chapter, Murakami depicts how a small North Korean commando unit (of only 9) successfully seizes the Yahoo Dome packed with a capacity crowd of 30,000 spectators attending the season-opening ballgame. The commandos are not suicide bombers carrying nuclear weapons or sarin gas. And yet the 30,000 people turn into a herd of zombies in a matter of minutes.
It will be great if some of you give me their feedback on this groundbreaking novel.
Sorry for my lengthy recommendation.
UnjapaneseYY