|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!