2011 Global Reading Challenge Asia #1...The Other Murakami

    I've known about this author for some time now as he shares the last name of one of my favorite writers Haruki Murakami, but have never before gotten around to reading him.  Popular Hits of the Showa Era: A Novel is Ryu Murakami's latest available English translation, and if its any indication of his other works he is one strange dude.
   The story revolves around two groups of people that have latched onto each other in hopes of staving off the harsh isolation of their Japanese society.  The first group is a collection of six socially awkward sexually frustrated loners who've each developed similar ticks of bursting into bouts of laughter who get together weekly traveling to an isolated location and sing karaoke, usually cross dressed.  The second is a group of what are called Oba-sans, 30 something single women, some divorcees, that are a sort of curmudgeonly type.
    Each one of these people evoked very real sympathy from me when not committing the horrendous (and absurd) acts that begin to unfold starting when one of the young men, hungover from one of their nights of Karaoke, ventures out from his isolation and sees one of the Oba-sans carrying grocery's home, and though he finds her all but revolting walks up behind her and begins to 'poke her' with his 'tented' pants.  Of course she is scandalized and begins to walk quickly away.  He continues and when she turns around to object he stabs her in the throat.  These two groups then begin to go tit for tat, building to the use of explosives.
    If your upset because you think I've revealed to much, you're wrong.  There is still plenty more violence and odd sexual awkwardness left, enough to fill 200 pages in fact.
    BUT, before you turn away in abject disgust, understand what Murakami is trying to say.  He is not glorifying random violence or sexual assault or even cross dressing for that matter, nor is he condemning any of these things.  What he is trying to say is that these oddities, and many more, are symptoms of a broken society, a society of crowded loneliness, deafening silences, and isolated alienated citizens.
    When taken at face value this book is at worst offensive and at best a freakshow, but once you make the attempt to understand why and how those horrible things are taking place and what sort of circumstances could grow them you (or at least I) begin to see the profound quality of Murakami's prose.