Coin Locker Babies [Hardcover]

Ryu Murakami (Author), Stephen Snyder (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1995

Follow Japan's two remaining "coin locker babies"--infants abandoned by their mothers in the public lockers of train stations--through an orphanage, an adoptive home on a nearly deserted island, and ultimately to Tokyo where they set off separately to find and destroy the women who abandoned them.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The third of this prolific Japanese author's 30 novels to appear in English, this is a cyber-Bildungsroman of playful breadth and uncertain depth. Two mothers abandon their infant boys in the Yokohama train station's coin lockers. The reader is not spared the mechanics of packaging a child in a parcel, nor the grim details of any of the other episodes of discomfort and suffering which follow in incremental doses, though always with such whimsy that the reader wonders whether or not to be offended. The heroes, Kiku and Hashi, grow up together; but, beyond their bizarre beginnings, they couldn't be more different. Kiku becomes a homicidal pole-vaulter whose inner rage gives him unusual speed and strength, but which also fosters an obsession with murder and a secret drug that sets any creature into a killing frenzy. The more delicate Hashi strives to find his mother, supporting himself as a prostitute in Toxitown?a chemical disaster zone insulated from Tokyo by a wall and armed guards?until one of his johns discovers his musical talent and makes him a star. The settings seem lifted from Japanese animation epics: an abandoned mining town, an underwater tunnel and a retreat in the mountains. At times, Murakami rambles, as in the case of a taxi driver's pointless monologue or the long interviews with women who might be Hashi's mother. Such digressions, however, are less the product of careless craft than of a lush and frantic imagination overwhelming its own project. Though expansive and exciting as its scope, the novel is as unfocused as its troubled heroes.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In 69 (LJ 9/15/93) Murakami's last novel published in English, the prevailing tone was one of hip innocence. In Coin Locker Babies, any hint of innocence is decidedly absent. The coin locker babies of the title are two abandoned infants rescued from train station lockers, and the novel follows their adventures through boyhood into manhood. They wander through the sort of hellish, surreal landscape usually associated with dismal sf visions of the future, but in this book the hell is contemporary Japan. The journeys of the two are relentlessly dark and disturbing: matricide, violent sex, mutilation, vengeance, insanity, perversion, and mass destruction are all explored, usually graphically and with relish. The work of Murakami?who is also a filmmaker?begs comparison with film. Robocop comes to mind as bearing the closest resemblance to this novel, although the book lacks the satiric edge that many claimed to have found in that film. Large collections with a particular interest in contemporary fiction may find a place for this. Otherwise, it is not recommended.?Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll. Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Kodansha International (JPN); 1st edition (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 4770015909
• ISBN-13: 978-4770015907
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,681,170 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read so far this year, hands down., May 20, 2004

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Coin Locker Babies (Hardcover)

Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies (Kodansha, 1995)

For thirty years, Japan has waited for someone to step up and fill the rather sizable shoes left by Yukio Mishima when he committed suicide after a failed attempt at a coup d'etat. It seems that Ryu Murakami has finally stepped up for the job.

Mishima's work was singular in that it combined the beauty and spareness of haiku with random, seemingly meaningless (until one looked below the surface) acts of despair and violence. Murakami treaded these waters in such previous works as Sixty-Nine and Audition while adding his own touches to the mix; in Coin Locker Babies, Murakami has fully assimilated the spirit of Mishima while simultaneously strengthening his own voice into something that is both complete and stunning.

Coin Locker Babies is the story of two brothers. Well, almost brothers. Both abandoned by heir mothers in bus station coin lockers as infants, the two are discovered and sent to the same orphanage, where they become inseparable. Adopted by the same couple, they grow up together on a southern island, but eventually return to the city to find their mothers. Along the way, one grows up to become a decadent pop star; the other, a disciplined pole vaulter. Yet the differences between the two are always overshadowed by their similarities as they progress through their lives.

Kiku and Hashi are destined to become two of literature's classic antiheroes. Angry, confused, incapable of understanding how their circumstances have molded them, the two stumble through life facing misfortune after misfortune, still somehow managing to come out in front of everyone else. They juggle their conflicting emotions with aplomb, being completely irratinoal much of the time yet without ever doing anything even remotely out of character. Murakami's deftness with the depths of his characters is easily on a par with that of Stephen King of John Irving (in fact, oftentimes when reading Murakami one is reminded of the scene in Garp where the child is looking out the psychiatrists' window and counting off the number of disabled people he sees on the street below), but his ability to take a seemingly unrelated stream of events and whip them into a coherent plot within a few pages far surpasses either of them. His writing is gorgeous, if somewhat less spare than Mishima's, and infused with a constant stream of gallows humor broken only temporarily by the wordless, wailing pain that underlies every page.

The various blurbs on the back of Coin Locker Babies (half from writers, half from filmmakers) praise Murakami as a Renaissance man for the new age, half cyberpunk and half manga, a mirror in which all of society can be seen. Murakami is all of these things and more (though one wonders, idly, if the reviewers have ever been exposed to Hideshi Hino); he stands, at present, as Japan's most brilliant writer whose works have been translated into English. (Now if only someone would translate Audition.) Coin Locker Babies may not be a perfect novel; it lacks that same indefinable something that keeps Kathe Koja's newest from achieving perfection. But it's close enough that it still rates five stars. *****

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars it's a pretty messed up book, May 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Coin Locker Babies (Paperback)

Even though it's filled with violence, destruction, and [stomach turning] passages, I surprisingly enjoyed reading "Coin Locker Babies." It is the life story of 2 babies, Kiku and Hashi, who were abadoned in train staion coin lockers. They grow up together and then eventually go separate ways, both living rather messed up lives, but through it all they are searching for something to set them free. With intriguing characters like a beautiful girl with a pet crocodile and an action-packed plot depicting men's desire to destroy and men's will to live all at once, this book will keep you thinking and entertained even if you get grossed out from time to time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nihilistic fairytale, October 13, 2005

By 

Zack Davisson "japanreviewed" (Seattle, WA, USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (2008 HOLIDAY TEAM)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Coin Locker Babies (Paperback)

This is the second Murakami Ryu book that I have read. My interest in him was peaked by talk of the "Other Murakami," the dark reflection of award-winning popular novelist Murakami Haruki. My first Ryu book, "Almost Transparent Blue," was a captivating tale of bottom-feeders and gutter-life in tune with Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" and William S. Burroughs's "Junky." This dirty little tale grabbed my interest and got me hunting for the next adventure. And then "Coin Locker Baby" blew me away.

Unlike the semi-autobiographical nature of "Almost Transparent Blue," "Coin Locker Babies" is a full-fledged novel, an unsettling fantasy firmly rooted in a grim reality. Taking its title and beginning on an actual cultural phenomenon in Japan, that of unhappy mothers abandoning their new-born children in train station coin lockers, Ryu then manifests a strange Japan, an amalgamation of anime-world and modern troubles. It is a place where Tokyo harbors a corrupted and polluted abandoned city, called Toxitown, right in the middle of its most exclusive business district. A place where a fashion model keeps a full-grown crocodile in her swampy apartment, and a hero's greatest ambition is to kill everyone and bring peace.

Into this bizarro Japan Ryu introduces two boys, the only survivors of the coin-locker baby fad. A bi-sexual popstar (Hashi) who is slowly being consumed by his fame, and a jockish pole-vaulter (Kiku) who seeks to unleash poison death and silence the world. Each has an equally fitting lover: Anemone, a ethereal beauty who hunts for a Crocodile Heaven, and Neva, whose breasts having been lost to cancer makes her the perfect companion for the bi-sexual star. These four wind their intertwining lives together, never quite admirable but somehow remaining sympathetic. One does not know whether to root for their success or destruction.

It is a tribute to Ryu's writing that he keeps the reader always on his/her toes, flitting between reality and fantasy, rarely giving something solid to hold on to. Originally published in 1980, "Coin Locker Babies" is eerily prophetic of the 1995 Sarin Gas attacks on Tokyo from the Aum Shinrikyo Apocalypse cult. Kiku's desire to unleash the toxin Datura rings a little bit too true after the fact. The translation is flawless, with important cultural notes seamlessly blended, giving the Western reader much-needed clues on otherwise unfamiliar cultural practices.

While not able to fully yield to his depressing reality, I am finding myself more attracted to the dark vision of the "Other Murakami." I am eager to see what else this amazing talent has to offer, and will definitely be checking out more novels as they are translated.