Dipping yet again into the Japanese noir fiction I’ve been drawn to ever since I read Natsuo Kirino’s Out, I just finished In the Miso Soup while at the beach this past week. Ryu Murakami tells the dark story of a few days in the life of an unlicensed Japanese tour guide. Kenji, the narrator, is hired to show people the seedier, red-light districts of Tokyo. In the short time-span of the book, Kenji meets and starts working with his newest client, Frank. Frank is almost indescribable, in how he looks and what he does. Through Kenji, the reader explores the darker sides of humanity.

Murakami explores the logo-based, consumer-driven, and short-term focus of modern day Tokyo. I’d offer that his analysis equally applies to contemporary Americans and probably many other groups across the globe. Technology, markets, and globalization have brought us together as a brand-based world society, but we aren’t any closer to our core humanity. In some sense, we’ve become more isolated as we’ve ensnared ourselves in this global network. This novel explores some of that isolation, albeit in an overly ghastly way. The shock factor is a bit much, even for me. But, the ideas are worth considering. I’m interested to look at some of his other books to see what he’s tried to do in those pages.