This story contains themes of an adult and/or sensitive nature, including cults, sex, murder, and sexual abuse of children, both mentioned, and graphic (though not until Book 2, in the latter case).
第９章： 青豆：風景が変わり、ルールが変わった
Title translation: The scenery and the rules have changed.
Our character's journey so far. 青豆
To be written.
Now, poll time:
I’m reading along
I’m still reading this book, but I haven’t reached this part yet
It’s truly amazing with how much detail Murakami goes about the world-building, creating a bunch of events that did not exist in the real world and having Aomame read about them in the newspaper. Also the level of detail with which he reports on the actual things that happened and that she takes in as she reads the newspaper, and also when she watched TV in the hotel room the other day.
The interesting thing about this is that he fills his world with so many details that it might come across as him trying to dismantle the “Chekov’s gun” theory, but maybe he just produces so much stuff because he wants to hide the real “Chekov’s guns” and does not want to expose them in bright daylight? Because in many books the readers are like “oh it got mentioned so it has to mean something”, and in this story of course many of the details mean something and will be picked up again later, but not everything iirc…
Interesting stuff:
Such a funny (and to-the-point) description of Prince Charles: チャールズは外見からいえば、皇太子というよりは、胃腸に問題を抱えた物理の教師みたいに見えた。
It will never cease to amaze me how Japanese is perfectly capable of using the most obscure abbreviations which totally make sense in context. I did not even think twice when I encountered 米ソ - it was immediately obvious from the context that it referred to America and Soviet Union. Can you imagine any other language doing that?
And then, the coincidences. We just learned that Tengo’s father was an NHK fee collector, and now we read in the newspaper that one such person attacked a student. It can’t be the same person, though, but I had to wonder about that nonetheless.
Also, the student who got attacked is called 芥川真之介, almost like the famous author we already heard about in this book…
Another set expression that made me wonder for a bit is 胸を撫で下ろす - Jisho.org, to feel relieved.
Technically, it could be - at least, there’s no reason to exclude this possibility. The age of this man (a little over fifty, if I remember correctly) allows him to be 天吾’s father, if he was born when this man was in his twenties or if 天吾’s father is actually someone else/the man in the memory of his mother (as he says he believed in later chapters). At any rate, by the time this attack happened the two would have long ago cut ties with each other, so 天吾 wouldn’t have any way of directly triggering it or even finding out about it (regardless of the impact it had in the media, since he doesn’t even read the newspaper or watch TV ).
).