In the Miso Soup

In the Miso Soup by Murakami, Ryu. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9784770029577.

It is just before New Years. Frank, an overweight American tourist, has hired Kenji to take him on a guided tour of Tokyos sleazy nightlife on three successive evenings. But Franks behavior is so strange that Kenji begins to entertain a horrible suspicion: that his new client is in fact the serial killer currently terrorizing the city. It isnt until the second night, however, in a scene that will shock you and make you laugh and make you hate yourself for laughing, that Kenji learns exactly how much he has to fear and how irrevocably his encounter with this great white whale of an American will change his life. Kenjis intimate knowledge of Tokyos sex industry, his thoughtful observations and wisecracks about the emptiness and hypocrisy of contemporary Japan, and his insights into the shockingly widespread phenomena of "compensated dating" and "selling it" among Japanese schoolgirls, give us plenty to think about on every page. Kenji is our likable, if far from innocent, guide to the inferno of violence and evil into which he unwillingly descends-and from which only Jun, his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, can possibly save him...