In the Miso Soup
SynopsisPlot
It's just before New Year, and Frank, an American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyo's nightlife. But, Frank's behaviour is so odd that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: his client may in fact have murderous desires. Although Kenji is far from innocent himself, he unwillingly descends with Frank into an inferno of evil, from which only his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, can possibly save him.
Story
About this book
Kenji earns his living guiding foreign visitors through Tokyo's nightlife, leading them to bars, clubs, and the districts where the sex trade operates openly. In the days before New Year, an American tourist named Frank hires him for several evenings. Almost at once something feels off. Frank's manner shifts without warning, his stories do not hold together, and Kenji starts to wonder what his client really wants.
Ryu Murakami keeps the action inside a few nights in Tokyo's entertainment quarters, told in Kenji's uneasy first-person voice. The suspicion that Frank may harbour murderous intentions grows through small details: a change of expression, an odd silence, a claim that cannot be checked. Kenji is not blameless either. He works at the edge of the law and profits from what foreign customers come looking for.
His sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Jun, stands outside that world and becomes his one steady connection as the situation with Frank turns dangerous. Around them the novel observes loneliness inside a crowded city, the routines people keep even when something disturbing sits close, and how going along quietly can matter as much as any deliberate act.
