In the miso soup
In the miso soup ( Japanese イ ン ザ ・ ミ ソ ス ー プ , In za Miso Sūpu [= In the Miso Soup] ) is a novel by Ryū Murakami . It was first published in 1997 in Japanese and in 2006 in German translation by Ursula Gräfe by Kiepenheuer & Witsch .
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Chapter 1
The first chapter is about the first meeting of the narrator, the 20-year-old tour guide Kenji and the American tourist Frank, who books a tour of the red light district with him. The two decide to take a tour of the fourth on the first evening with the aim of finding a sexual partner for Frank. Frank's strange behavior in a lingerie bar and peep show seems strange to Kenji. He also begins to suspect Frank of having something to do with the murder of a schoolgirl. The evening ends with the two making a bet in a batting center. Here again shows Frank's strange behavior and for the first time his hatred of the homeless.
Chapter 2
The second chapter begins in Kenji's apartment. His girlfriend comes to visit and they discuss what happened last night. There's a report on the news about a homeless man who was murdered. Kenji is unsure if Frank might have something to do with it. The two meet anyway and Frank was planning to go to a pub to get a drink. In the pub, Kenji discovers that Frank's arm had scars from suicide attempts that he tried to cover up with make-up. The two sat down with Maki and Yuki. The conversation with the two women is tough. After a dispute with the manager about the prices, Frank's psychopathic side reveals itself. He causes a bloodbath in the bar, but spares Kenji. The two then leave the bar.
Chapter 3
The third chapter begins immediately afterwards. Frank explains to Kenji that something is wrong in his brain and that he both cannot coordinate his memories and that he has multiple personalities. He pays him and gives him the freedom to go to the nearby police station and report him. But, he doesn't manage to get through because he tells himself that he could only get into problems with the police himself. Frank asks Kenji to take him to a place where the New Year's bell can be heard. The two spend the night in an abandoned skyscraper and Frank tells Kenji how his life has been so far. He began murders of swans and humans as a child and spent part of his childhood in mental hospitals. During one of these visits to a clinic, he underwent a lobotomy, which explains his strange behavior. The next day, the two made their way to the bridge to hear the bells. They went to a noodle restaurant before and Frank compares Frank his situation with the fact that he was in the miso soup . When Frank saw Jun, who was supposed to be observing the two from a distance, on a park bench nearby, he said that he knew about Kenji's plan, but that he would not kill them and that he let Kenji go to his girlfriend.
Characters
Kenji: The 20-year-old tour guide leads tourists through the red light district Kabuki-cho in Tokyo. He lives in a one-room apartment. His mother works for a textile business, his father died when he was in eighth grade. He has a good relationship with his mother, but has no plans to study at a university or work in an office, as she would like him to do. He wants to save enough money with his job to be able to emigrate to America. He played baseball in his youth. The first time he met Frank, he felt scary. After the murder scene in the pub at the latest, he develops a certain affection for him, which he cannot explain. After the second conversation, in which Frank complains about a homeless person, he dissolves this affection.
Frank: He's a tourist from America who books a tour with Kenji. He says he is 35 years old and works as a businessman. Kenji describes his appearance as strange, as you can't really tell how old he really is. In addition, his skin looks artificial. In the course of the plot he gets entangled in lies that he tries to explain through an accident that he had in his childhood. He turns out to be a brutal murderer in the course of the plot. He grew up in difficult circumstances and spent a long time in nerve wracks. The accident is actually a lobotomy that was performed on him after his fourth visit to the mental hospital. Since then his life has changed a lot, he hardly slept, no longer felt the cold and his behavior was extraordinary.
Jun: She is Kenji's 16 year old friend. She lives with her mother and her younger brother and takes care of them. She is a high school student, but was never convinced of the help of so-called "fatherly friends", older men who meet with girls of high school age and promise them financial help. Before she was in a relationship with Kenji, she had met older men, but never slept with them. Jun is grateful for what her mother enables her. Kenji describes her as an average student who is not stupid. She supports Kenji as best she can to resolve the situation with Frank.
Topics in the book
Love and loneliness
The love and loneliness in "In der Miso Soup" can be transferred to the main characters. Kenji is in a relationship with Jun. The two not only experience love in their relationship, but also grew up in relatively good family relationships. Both Kenji and Jun have good relationships with their mothers. “In high school, a couple of guys hit their mothers, I never. Not once. ”(P. 10)“ Jun's mother works in the sales department of an insurance company, and I know that Jun loves her very much and is grateful for the many things her mother does for her. ”(P. 35) After all, it is this affection that saves Kenji from being brought by Frank. On the one hand because he calls Jun when Frank holds a knife to his neck. On the other hand, Frank recognizes the ability to love in both of them and decides not to kill them. “Frank didn't kill me because of Jun. I couldn't think of any other reason. I didn't think Frank's feelings for me were any different from those for other people. ”(P. 153) After the killing in the bar, Kenji finds himself in an ambivalent position. He is strongly convinced that he wants to report Frank to the police, but he keeps persuading himself not to do so. In the subsequent conversation with him he is disgusted by Frank's statements, but he feels a kind of pity for him and can no longer really distinguish between what is true and what is false. "Frank suddenly appeared to me as a man who, despite all the tortures that had been inflicted on him, had never bowed down." (P. 192) He begins to develop signs of the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, in which hostages usually begin with their kidnapper to sympathize and oppose helping organizations like the police. When Frank again complains about a homeless person and says that this is the kind of person he is killing, despite all understanding he breaks free from his violence. “Nobody has the right to decide which people were degenerate and which were not” (p. 205). His commitment to protecting life is transmitted as a "signal" and prompts Frank to spare Kenji and his girlfriend Jun. Frank is the exact opposite. Even as a child he was mainly traveling alone. He spent a lot of time with child psychiatrists and in mental institutions. After his stays in the nerve clinics, his family also distanced themselves from him. In his job, Kenji met many people who try to fight their loneliness with a tour through the red light district. But Frank exuded a special loneliness. “He looked dejected. I glanced over at him as we passed the Toyota parking lot and shivered. He radiated an overwhelming, almost palpable loneliness. There is something lonely about all Americans ”(p. 33). In general, the book is about loneliness not only in the red light district, but in society as a whole. It is about the inner emptiness of those who try to feed their families in the neon light of the sex shows on the sidelines and put themselves in the background like the prostitute from Peru who lives far away from her family, and even more loneliness, those who do them Buy services. About the emptiness and callousness of a huge metropolis which is probably also reflected in other metropolises in the world. And about the fact that it is easy for a person to buy a good or service but impossible to buy real human warmth.
Criticism of Japan
In many of his works, Murakami applies to Japanese society, including here. "In der Miso Soup" is set in 1996, at a time when the Japanese economy was badly hit and the nation was hit by an earthquake in Kobe and the poison gas attacks in the Tokyo subway. The economic crisis was followed by social stagnation and doubts about national identity. One of the themes of this novel is precisely this emptiness inside Japanese society, which after the Second World War swapped their traditional values for the “American way of life” geared towards commercialism: “There are no norms about what is important. Adults only live for money and things that have a fixed value, such as branded products ”(p. 191) In the course of the plot, Kenji becomes aware of his anger towards his fellow human beings. I increased myself into my inner anger until I Finally asked me why one needed such rabble on earth "(p. 113). He notices that the people of Tokyo are no longer real people." Such figures only felt cold towards other people. They just played a part. Just their presence upset me, and I wondered if they weren't rag dolls stuffed with sawdust or polyester. "Since Kenji is between the point of view of a Japanese and a non-Japanese, he experiences a phase of identification with Frank and recognizes the unworthy and a lot of desolation. Murakami uses Frank as a sort of settlement with society and wants to teach it a lesson. In the author's view, the country shows itself as a country without any moral dimension. Already in the entrance passage there are reports of schoolgirls who are in He also criticizes the freeter work model, which is widespread in Japan. Kenji does not have an official license and bears a high personal risk, as he has no legal protection and the uncertain order situation characterizes his situation. You could think of Murkami represents an alternative to the capitalist way to work here, but the author shows that an l Extended work in Kabuki-cho leads to burnout: “Many of my friends who have been doing this job for a long time are used up. Not in the sense of being physically run down, but in a personal conversation one has the feeling that the words simply went through them "(p. 21). He describes Kenji's stay in the red-light district as a necessary evil to find a new path alongside the precarious ones Conditions, but also alongside or even outside of Japanese capitalism.
criticism
“ The miso soup reads like a physical and moral collapse, nothing fits together and yet everything is repulsively right. It is all the more ironic and apt that Murakami has chosen a Japanese national dish for his novel. "
literature
- Ryu Murakami: In the miso soup. Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-462-03733-3
- Lisette Gebhardt: After dark: contemporary Japanese literature under the sign of the precarious . EB-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-868-93031-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ am 1975: Книги. Рю Мураками "Мисо-Суп". In: Германия. Свой среди своих. August 6, 2008, accessed August 31, 2020 .
- ↑ https://benjamin-brueckner.de/aktuelles/lesetipp-der-misosuppe-ryu-murakami-2439/
