|J-Horror| - Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase" - Book Review
As an all-time
lover of anything eerie and terrifying, I have become exasperated with all of
the clichés being used constantly on horror books and films. Ever since I
started having an obsession with the subject of horror, I’ve been recommended
to find films and literary horror pieces from other parts of the world. Most
specifically, Japan. I was told to start off watching Japanese films, but since
I ended up starting with a book, I was not sure what to expect from it.
I was
surprised. But I’m still not sure if in a good way or a bad one.
When I started
reading A Wild Sheep Chase, I was so confused. The small description of the
book didn’t help at all, either. But I think that was point. It’s meant to be
strange. Our main protagonist is looking for a sheep with a star-tattoo of all things.
What does this all mean? But then I thought to myself how this a genre that I know
but it’s from another continent with different themes and customs. So I decided
to leave my questions in a corner and keep reading.
It was
definitely an experience. One of the things I do first when reading any
fictional book is to understand the protagonist and get to know about them to
see the character development throughout the entire story change. With this
book, I spent my entire reading journey without even knowing the protagonist’s
name. It made me have questions like “should I even care about this character?
Am I not supposed to?”. I learned about his miserable life and his weird affair
and obsession with a woman (I still have yet to figure out the whole ear thing.
I thought it would make sense as I kept reading. But nope, it left me
questioning and with no answers.) When the unnamed protagonist finally gets
asked to go find the sheep, he goes and by the time he gets to the location
where the sheep is, things got even more questionable. Once I found out what
the sheep’s big power is and what happened to it, I was already done with the
book and there was no real answer. Just questions. I was thunderstruck. I’ve
never experienced such lifeless, unbothered, unenthusiastic characters such as
unnamed man, and in the end, I was a little disappointed at his low drive for
life. The entire journey to find the sheep was interesting, but I’m not sure if
what I went through merits more from myself to actually analyze what could all
this mean thematically.
Japanese
horror focuses on the idea of things not being in balance and having to restore
them again, rather than your typical monster who is creating chaos in a rather unrealistic
setting. It’s not good versus evil. It’s no longer a battle to be won but to be
forced to have a balance in the character’s life and to have dynamic
relationships. Sometimes the genre and the actual theme behind the plot of the
book could be completely different. Like a romance book having a somber message
about love. Some of these stories are not meant to be solved, they are meant to
be there to let the reader think. Ambiguity is one of the best things to bring
out of me. And makes me create all of these different theories and it lets the
readers have the final say on what they think happened. It’s sort of
collaborative. There’s lots of implications, reflections and consideration.
Japanese horror is not as direct as American horror. In the US people like to
materialize their fears, for example. When Americans remake J-movies, they miss
out the point of them by adding the topic of Good V. Evil. Sometimes being too
direct can be considered rude and that is something I really appreciate from an
artistic perspective. It’s definitely farther away from people’s expectations.
I am not mad
for this book having left me with questions. Yes, it’s left me intrigued, but
it makes me want to read even more Japanese horror books and want to compare
them to one another. Are all J-horror books going to be like this? Or did I
just pick the wrong book to start off my J-Horror journey? There’s only one way
to find out… keep reading!
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