Advanced Japanese Book Club // Reading 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ

蛇にピアス

Author: 金原ひとみ
Page count: 124 (hardcover)

Summary

Japanese

「スプリットタンって知ってる?」そう言って、男は蛇のように二つに割れた舌を出した―。その男アマと同棲しながらサディストの彫り師シバとも関係をもつルイ。彼女は自らも舌にピアスを入れ、刺青を彫り、「身体改造」にはまっていく。痛みと快楽、暴力と死、激しい愛と絶望。今を生きる者たちの生の本質を鮮烈に描き、すばる文学賞と芥川賞を受賞した、金原ひとみの衝撃のデビュー作。

English

Describing a world as amoral and fascinating as the landscapes of Less Than Zero and Trainspotting, this novel about a young woman living in the violent world of Japan’s underground youth culture is both shocking and strangely beautiful.

Enchanted by the snakelike forked tongue of a stranger called Ama, nineteen-year-old Lui takes a walk on another side of life. Following Ama home the night she meets him, Lui straightaway moves in with him and begins making plans to have her own tongue pierced. Determined to push her boundaries further, she asks Ama’s strange friend Shiba to design an exquisite dragon tattoo for her back. But when Lui and Shiba begin an affair, Ama’s jealousy is stirred and the situation becomes explosive.

Availability

Amazon
Bookwalker

Personal Opinion

This book is described as a cult classic, very controversial, but also an Akutagawa Prize winner. I’m interested in Japanese counterculture, which this book promises a lot of. Also, it’s a short read, and it’s not a mystery novel. The language also doesn’t seem too difficult from the few pages I looked at, so it seems like a quick and intriguing read to shake things up.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Quick and easy
  • Akutagawa Prize winner
  • Not a mystery
  • Famous cult classic

Cons

  • Some twisted/disturbing/S&M content?

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One



Additional Pages



Difficulty Poll

How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Moderate effort
  • Significant effort
  • So much effort my head might explode
  • I don’t know

0 voters

6 Likes

There’s one nomination from me. I have a few other books that I could nominate, but I don’t have time to paste all those page scans right now. :laughing:

2 Likes

I read this book in English before. It was a required book from my university. I don’t have any ピアス, so this book was mind-blowing for me.

1 Like

I already read this, definitely has some dark motives, and lot of 18+ scenes. But the language is not that difficult (once you checked those 18+ words in the dictionary), I think it could even be passed to the intermediate book club.

3 Likes

If it’s easy enough, it could potentially be a three week read then? 40 pages a week?

1 Like

Also, these are some other books I have on my shelf that I could nominate. If there’s any preliminary interest, I can make a proper nomination thread.

限りなく透明に近いブルー
Author: 村上龍
(Another Akutagawa Prize winner about sex and drugs, very short, 18+)
image

道草
Author: 夏目漱石
(Autobiographical tale of financial and romantic struggle from the famous author, long and probably difficult)
image

珍名ばかりが狙われる連続殺人鬼ヤマダの息子
Author: 黒川慈雨
(Long title, goofy premise, possibly a fun summer mystery?)
image

5 Likes

Well I’m not very experienced in the usual pacing of the book club, but I read it in 4 days (next to work, etc.), and in the first post I see that 40 is within the aim, so I think 3 weeks is totally doable.

2 Likes

This book is certainly something! If anyone’s interested, I can give some more details about the cw. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Just a quick heads up that I will start the poll probably around 2022-04-14T16:00:00Z so if anybody wants to get another nomination in :upside_down_face:

@Jfredel78 I‘d definitely be up for reading the first book (have it sitting on my shelf actually ^^). Not sure about the second one as I‘m still struggling with older texts (but that shouldn’t keep you from nominating it!) and the third one indeed sounds like a silly funny mystery :smiley:

4 Likes

I couldn’t manage to set up the poll yesterday evening (I’m just sooo busy holidaying right now :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:) but here it is:

It’s a Poll!!

Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. Every book has a difficulty associated with it (based on the book club members’ votes, thus subjective) out of 5, where 1 means “no effort at all” and 5 means “so much effort my head might explode”. The difficulty is annotated in the poll in square brackets after the book’s name.

Do not rely solely on difficulty when making a choice. Please have a look at the nomination posts and text samples if you haven’t already.

Expected reading pace: The proposals fall into two categories, Fast and Hard. We aim to read fast books at 30-50 pages per week and hard books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). For manga, depending on difficulty and chapter length, we will probably read one to several chapters per week. The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.

Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on May 28th (after a one-week break).

Poll duration: The poll will be closed within a week (and most likely before that), whenever it looks like voting has dried up. You can choose up to 5 options.

  • Fast: 86―エイティシックス― [2.67]
  • Fast: クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ [3.29]
  • Fast: 狼と香辛料 [2.67]
  • Fast: マスカレード・ホテル [1.89]
  • Fast: 風の谷のナウシカ [3.13]
  • Fast: 海辺のカフカ (上) [2.36]
  • Fast: 化物語(上) [2.8]
  • Fast: 虐殺器官 - Genocidal Organ [3]
  • Fast: ユージニア [2.25]
  • Fast: 蛇にピアス [2.33]
  • Hard: 檸檬 [3.6]
  • Hard: 風立ちぬ [3]
  • Hard: 午後の曳航 [3]
  • Hard: 文字渦 [3.86]

0 voters

7 Likes

I’m a bit torn if I should remove my vote for Masquerade Hotel, since there is no e-book, and haven’t really found an affordable way to get it :melting_face:. Probably going to read it at some point, and been reading a lot of Keigo anyway lately…

2 Likes

Thanks for pointing it out, I had missed it. I removed my vote for the same reason.
The lack of an ebook version is a problem for me. :neutral_face:

2 Likes

I was actually a bit hesitant on that one just because I’m about 2/3 of the way through the movie version (I’ll finish it eventually :sweat_smile: ) and was worried about not being able to discuss as much since I might know some spoilers.

On the note of no ebook though I went to check what books he does have in ebook form and oh man - プラチナデータ was a fun movie adaptation. But honestly for how prolific of an author he is, he has so few in ebook form.

4 Likes

Yeah, that’s really annoying, sorry for that :frowning: Some authors just don’t seem to like ebooks.

Luckily Murakami made up his mind about 18 months ago or something and released all of his books as ebooks. Therefore you can find the current poll leader here:
海辺のカフカ @ Bookwalker
(I’d like to update the nomination post but unfortunately Discourse won’t let me, grrr :rage:)

7 Likes

There has not been much movement in the poll any more (and nothing that would change the result, on top of that) so I’m calling it a day.

The winner is 海辺のカフカ !

Will set up a home thread and schedule soon.

12 Likes

I’ll probably sit this one out because I’ve read it too recently in English, but it’s an excellent book and I envy anyone reading it for the first time.

8 Likes

Here’s the home thread for our newest pick:

@jhol Sad but understandable! You are of course always welcome to discuss with us anyways. (And maybe help us along with the language :sweat_smile:)

6 Likes

I read it in my native language a few years ago and it’s one of my favourite Murakami’s books (along with 1Q84), so I relate to @jhol words so much! I don’t know if I would be able to keep up with an ABC anyway (maybe in the future:), but have fun reading!

5 Likes

More of a general question - if I understand correctly people can nominate a book pretty much whenever and it will be up in the next voting so long as we have 20-or-fewer nominations in total - Is that accurate?

1 Like

Yes, that’s correct! If you absolutely want to make sure that it gets into the next voting, then you could add it to the list in the OP already - usually I do that at some point, but I’m waiting for the day where I will overlook one of the nominations :scream: and cause it to be skipped, which would be very very sad. But usually I check at least 3 times or so… :grin:

1 Like