In the Miso Soup

I remember when this book got translated into my language, more than a decade ago. It was pretty rare back then to see modern Japanese literature get translated, so naturally, me being a young weeb, I wanted to read it. As it turned out though, I never did, until I bought this book for almost nothing at the book fair this year. I had absolutely 0 idea what was waiting for me so I wanted to search for a quick summary before I got into it. Turns out it's about a Japanese dude who works as an illgeal sex tourist guide, and he has to help a fat and awkward american tourist called Frank experience the sex industry in Japan, while also solving a murder mystery - kind of.

First I'd like to mention the translation, because I think the translator made some interesting choices. He kind of gave the main character a "I come from the capital" vocabulary, including some slang, but without one of the most important things that mark that dialect which is the way in which we say "what". He opted out for the literary version as after all this is a book, which in my opinion kills the point of the slang and the more casual and rude words he used I think. This is why I'm not a huge fan of modern books in my language, our spoken language differs a lot from written language, and it almost seems like an unspoken rule that our books have to be written in the literary, bookish language, so things end up sounding unnatural. Well, I can't actually say I read our post 21st century lit so don't quote me on that.

This book falls into one of those "all the people that surround me are the scum of the earth including me" stories which I find myself reading frequently for one reason or the other. The mc, Kenji, often goes into monologues in his head about how empty and soulless Kabukichou residents are, so towards the end of this short book I kind of got tired of it. He does try to give this more pessimistic, underground perspective on Japanese society but I also feel like he criticizes women in a more negative light than the men. While men working as pimps "lose the life in their eyes" the way in which he describes them has a sympathetic tinge to it, almost as if he feels bad for them. Prostitutes and semi-prostitutes don't get the same treatment, especially if they're Japanese, the foreign ones did. Japanese women have everything handed to them and they're only whoring themselves out because they're lonely... is the vibe I get, there's a lot of contempt. I can't really buy that. I did however enjoy the scene between the American tourist, Frank, and two Japanese club girls (not really hosts, too lazy to look up the correct english term) where upon discovering that Frank is from New York, they excitedly tell him how it's their dream to go to New York and visit Niketown. Frank is confused because what the fuck is Niketown, spoiler it's just a stupid Nike store. But the Japanese girls are so obsessed with american brands that they start scoffing at the dude not knowing what Niketown is, and even doubting if he's really from New York. Honestly after reading Ametora this whole Japanese obsession with american brands and culture makes more sense to me so it's funny to see it in a book. This book was published in 2003 and of course things have changed since then, but imagining a succesful and developed country like Japan have this provincial mentality only the dumbest people in my country have towards brands etc. is just so fascinating.

Lastly, I wasn't a fan of the "villain". Going to spoiler everything here, if you don't care about the ending, do read it. Since this book is mainly about how the Japanese treat and view foreigners I was expecting the ending, the murderer and everything to be totally different, specifically I was expecting the murderer to not be a filithy gaijin. The murderer does ends up being Frank, and he has a split personality and some crazy ability to hypnotize people. Yawn! At the beginning of the book a news anchor claims how the way in which some high school girl (killed by Frank) was murdered, chopped off, raped, and thrown in different places around Tokyo, was too gruesome for a Japanese person to have commited (el oh el), so it was most likely a foreigner. I thought something more would come from that, and we'd get some commentary on this distorted perception the Japanese have of themselves, but nah. It really was a crazy, lobotomized American to have commited the crimes. Booooring. The whole final stretch of the book after the gruesome murder scene was thus, kind of disappointing for me.