Blue lines on transparent skin
Blue lines on transparent skin ( Japanese 限 り な く 透明 に 近 い ブ ル ー , Kagirinaku Tōmei ni Chikai Burū [= Blue] ) is a novel by Ryū Murakami . It was first published in Japanese in 1976, and in 1987 in a German translation by Rowohlt Verlag .
content
First-person narrator Ryu and his girlfriend Lilly are students in Japan in the early 1970s. Together with their friends Okinawa, Moko Reiko, Yoshiyama and the GIs Oscar and Jackson, they regularly celebrate wild sex orgies, where hard drugs and contemporary rock music are consumed. They try out all kinds of sexual positions, and on their trips they come up with ideas for avant-garde films. Even a visit to the police and a subsequent interrogation fail because the police do not notice the marijuana in the apartment and Yoshiyama gets along remarkably well with a younger police officer who is himself a Led Zeppelin fan.
Ryu and his friends also illegally gain access to a rock concert, where he remembers Meg, whose skirt caught fire on the gas stove and burned her. Ryu later slaughtered Meg's rabbit, which she acquired from swapping her wristwatch. When they are about to leave the concert, Yoshiyama injures a folder.
The next day, Yoshiyama comes into conflict with Okinawa because Okinawa was not at the party, but stayed in a cheap hotel. Yoshiyama considers doing odd jobs to finance herself drugs and a trip to India. Intoxicated, he kicks his girlfriend Kei in the stomach so hard that she has to be admitted to a hospital.
In the meantime, one notices the lack of perspective in the other characters; they boredly consume drugs while a film about Van Gogh is shown on television in which he cuts off his ear.
When Ryu tries to kill an imaginary bird, he injures himself on a shard. Four years later, Ryu Lilly writes a letter in which he identifies himself as the author of the story. He has not heard from Lilly since then and suspects that she is now married. Finally, he claims that he has not changed in the past four years.
Movie
Murakami also adapted his novel as a feature film for which he wrote the script and directed. This was produced by Kitty Film and released in Japanese cinemas by Tōhō on March 3, 1979. Ryu was played by Kunihiko Mitamura , whose acting debut the film was playing, and Lilly was played by Mari Nakayama .
criticism
“However, Murakami manages to give this panorama of destructiveness a unique beauty. There are only a few sections, interspersed here and there between hyper-plastic descriptions of brutal sex orgies between the young people and American soldiers or nightmarish scenes in a concert toilet, where the group - completely drunk with pills - beats a security guard almost to death . But with these insertions, the author manages to give his characters a dimension and depth that goes beyond their described actions. "
literature
- Ryū Murakami: Blue lines on transparent skin. Tokyo bottom line. rororo panther, Reinbek near Hamburg 1987, ISBN 3-499-12125-5
