Customer Reviews

Piercing

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Kawashima Masayuki seems like a decent enough fellow. He has a steady job, an advertisement illustrator, and he has a lovely wife named Yoko who has recently given birth to his daughter Rie. In fact, Masayuki is financially stable enough to set up a small baking school in his home for his wife who worked as a professional baker before giving birth. However, Masayuki suffers from one small problem. Every night for at least ten days or so Masayuki has hovered over his daughter's crib holding an ice pick near his newborn's body, even lightly scratching her cheek with its tip accidentally when his wife startled him one night. With his head filled with aromas that smell of burning yarn or burning finger nails, Masayuki somehow manages each night not to stab and kill his young daughter.

As the novel unfolds, we learn that Masayuki's mother was highly abusive when he was young especially after his father died. He had a younger brother also, but he was the only one abused because he resembled his father. During his numerous beatings, Masayuki learned how to separate his mind from his body in order not to feel the pain. Because he didn't cry out, his mother would become even more enraged and beat him more. Masayuki was eventually put in a home for abused children where he would remain for years. He would not meet his mother again until his high school graduation and at that moment in time he was able to do something that he had yearned to do for years: he hit his mother as hard as he possibly could. Troubles continued until he was nineteen-years-old. At that time he was in an abusive relationship with a thirty-eight year old prostitute and spent much of his time high on paint thinner. Their relationship ended one night when he stabbed her in the stomach with an ice pick. As one of the voices in his head tells him, he needs to stab another woman, this time killing her, to take away the desire to kill his daughter. Masayuki decides that is what he is going to do, and he begins a methodical plan to kill an S&M prostitute. However, he gets a little bit more than what he bargains for.

Often referred to as the "other" Murakami in some literary circles because he shares the same family name as Murakami Haruki, Murakami Ryu burst into the Japanese world of letters when he wrote his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue back in 1976 which eventually garnered him the coveted Akutagawa prize and since then he has written several novels, including the magnificent Coin Locker Babies and Audition the basis for the Miike Takashi film of the same name, short story collections, directed a number of films, and even hosted a television show. Murakami's novels tend to be quite graphic in sex and violence, but it is not completely gratuitous. His books attempt to unmask the true brutality that remains dormant in humans and shows what might happen once these limits are broken. He is also quite good at building suspense. Several times while I was reading the novel, especially close to the end, I had to put the novel down because the tension became too much to bear. An interesting book for those who are interested in reading some of the darker works that modern Japanese literature has to offer, Piercing makes for a quick, albeit nearly horrifying read.

I'm not going to recapitulate what happens in the book. I've been a death investigator for 35 years now, especially the pathology of homicide, and have talked to a number of serial killers...this book still managed to terrify me. Murikami's ability to get into the amoral mind of a potential killer is amazing and the novel reaches such intense levels at times that I had to put it down and rest.
Murikami's prose is always delicious but this is a true tour de force.

Ryu Murakami was born in Nagasaki in 1952. His first book, "Almost Transparent Blue" was first published in 1976 and won that year's Akutagawa Prize. "Piercing" - his ninth book - was first published in 1994, with the English translation following in 2007.

To his neighbours, Kawashima Masayuki seems to be living a perfectly happy, quite normal life : a successful graphic artist, he's married to Yoko and the pair have a 4-month old daughter called Rie. However, life isn't entirely perfect - both have had difficult pasts. Yoko had once attempted suicide, after a previosu relationship collapsed. Kawashima's parents broke up when he was young, and he was regularly beaten by his mother - something he still hasn't really forgiven her for. He has long suffered from insomnia and, occasionally, still suffers from the night terrors. On the whole, however, married life had been going well for Kawashima. However, some of the old fears have recently returned and, for the last ten nights, Kawashima has been standing over Rie with an ice-pick in his hand. Having vowed never to harm his daughter, Kawashima is terrified that he might. He finally decides that there's only one way to ease the building pressure : he'll have to use his ice-pick on someone else. So, Kawashima comes up with a cover story, takes a little time off work and books himself into a hotel in town. He then carefully plans his crime, and settles on an S&M prostitute as his victim...unfortunately, Sanada Chiaki isn't quite something he could have really planned for.

Only the second book by this Murakami I've read - after "In the Miso Soup" - and I found it a good deal better. It's a little more believable somehow and I found it easier to empathise with the characters...not that I'd want to be locked in a room with either one of them, admittedly. Despite being a little gruesome, it's a book I was able to get through quickly and - of thrillers are your thing - it's well worth a read.

This is a quick read, and not as gory or shocking as your typical Ryu Murakami. Amazon's price is a little high for this book--it should be around $6, as it can be read in one setting.

Piercing is about a man, a woman, and a sharp object. It reads fast. It jabs fast. And the writer doesn't care how you feel about it. I'm not going to bother tracing out the plot, because accepting or rejecting Ryu Murakami's work depends more on how perverse you find the world.

In Japan, a shame-based society preoccupied with public image, Murakami's serial-murder of literary normality has been a relief to people exhausted by the old culture of tip-toeing around the truth. If you're like me and have lost the ability to digest the mind-f--k propaganda of our own sugar-and-caffeine culture, Piercing is a welcomed breath of raw air. Murakami hides nothing, he fakes nothing, he lies about nothing. His morality is grounded only in exposure. His treatment forces you to pay attention ... or run away.

Many readers, both Japanese and American, will undoubtedly continue to misunderstand Murakami's work -- or will simply be repulsed by it. But he isn't writing for these readers. He writes for those of us trying to get beyond too much Hollywood fluff, too little coffee in our Starbucks cream shakes, and an over abundance of commercially-conditioned, puritanically-correct, life-affirming values, none of which comfort the tortured souls in Piercing.

Having read several of Ryu Murakami's novels, Piercing is one of my favorites.

Originally published in Japan in 1994, this latest translation of "the other" Murakami's works suffers somewhat from its relative age. This is the fifth of his ten or so novels to appear in English, and by now, his paired themes of alienation and ultraviolence are well past their sell-by date. The perspective he offers on Japanese society may have been shocking thirteen years ago, but with the proliferation of J-horror films, media coverage of Japanese suicide rates, and other such indicators of a society in social distress, his latest serving ends up tasting like stale leftovers.

The story opens with Masayuki, a successful young graphic designer whom we meet as he hovers over his new baby with an ice pick, stifling the urge to pierce the newbor'ns smooth, perfect skin. It seems that Masayuki was abused as a child and has carried all kinds of psychological trauma with him into adulthood, even as he has managed to arrange a very normal domestic life. However, the new baby has brought forth his hidden turmoil, and an inner voice convinces him that the only way to purge his awful yearnings is to actually stab someone, preferably a prostitute no one will miss. Masayuki's meticulous plan brings him into contact with Chiaki, a young S&M prostitute with her own hidden history of abuse (incest) and mental instability (she likes to cut herself).

When the two meet in his hotel room, nothing goes as planned, and after a gruesome battle, the two wounded souls actually manage at least a moment of connection. Murakami appears to be trying to use this vivid tableau to comment on Japanese society, notably how the modern emphasis on the individual can result to complete breaks with reality. However, its a rather flimsy and dated indictment, and the direct line he paints from childhood abuse to psycho adult behavior is far too pat. The interior thoughts of the two damaged souls are well rendered, but on the whole, there's not a whole lot here to engage with.

This book about two damaged people who have nothing in common and are not willing to share their pain either is really beautiful. I couldn't stop reading.
I was only hoping for a real ending but I wouldn't want a sad ending, while stories like this never really have a happy one.

If there's a category of Japanese fiction that can be labelled "Japanese noir", "Piercing" and other books like this should be placed here. That said, this was a fair commuter book, somewhat engaging, somewhat dark, somewhat twisty, somewhat heavy-handed, somewhat predictable. You get the picture. No spoilers here, the book's too short for that. Usually, I like this genre of fiction but I was glad when I got to the last page. Wait until it's in paperback.