‘junkies, winos, whores; the nation's moral suicide’

There was one line of questioning which charted my experience through Almost Transparent Blue: why was Ryu Murakami telling this story? Why in this fashion? Why in public? Why to me? The trail eventually left me at my terminus: why did this novel win so many awards? Or in another sense, why is this book so important to Japan? Aficionados of Japanese literature will no doubt know of ‘the other Murakami’ (although I’ve been told sourcing an English copy is more difficult than you’d think), but I cannot stress just how omnipresent the man and his book are in his native land.

I’m not particularly sheepish with my choice of art. I like everything—from the untouchable classics and the hidden gems scattered 'cross this globe, to the hoe-scaring avant-trash and even the friend-scaring plain ol’ trash. Great art gets a great response, nothing more. I don’t care how it gets that response as long as it delivers—PTSD notwithstanding (Possession is a film we do not return to). But the rules of my game fare poorly with the masses, who are bound (more significantly) by social mores and external appearances. No matter how amoral you find postpostpostmodern life under the algorithm to be, remember that plenty of things are still beyond the pale, no matter where you live. It’s 2025, yet Warner Brothers still refuses a re-release of The Devils; meanwhile Mishima (a Japanese language film about a Japanese author’s Japanese life starring Japanese actors) has yet to hit Japanese shores—a taste of the Atlasian burden required in shielding the helpless masses from moral annihilation. Over fifty years without incident!

If I, defiant of my native surroundings, took Naked Lunch on a coffee date…I would expect nothing, for the 21st century Oklahoman is not the literary type. But if I took a copy of Lolita, or The Satanic Verses, or even the fucking Golden Compass around town, I would expect to get some eyes (at best), some verbal confrontation (on average), or some explicit threats (drive friendly: The Texas Way). I’m ready for that flak. But, much like Houdini’s abdomen, I must prepare myself for the blow. I had done so when picking up a copy of Almost Transparent Blue—sitting at the local Book Off alongside other illustrious Ryu Murakami classics such as 69 and Cocksucker Blues.

So Imagine my surprise when spare glances at the book’s formless cover inspire anonymous nods of approval and occasional interactions of nostalgic bliss amongst the silver-haired “still watches NHK” demographic of Japan—forever young, apparently. My shrink (who in my years of faithful attendance has never given me a shred of personality) noticed the book as I pulled out my planner. He lit up like a child at Christmas, or perhaps like a Ryu Murakami fan at another edition of Takashi Miike Presents: Rape & Gore. Instead of admonishing my mental health failings, he was giddy to ask for my literary thoughts—awarding a sense of approval I figured he didn’t have in him. I’ll soon be returning to that Book Off, by the way—I have it on good authority that 69 is, in fact, ‘a good one.’

The positive interactions I was receiving outside of Ryu’s world weren't aligning with the nightmares I was having within it. My doctor gave a tender smile five minutes after I read a less-than-tender sex scene with content ranging between "well, it was the 70s..." to "Gaspar Noé would never!" I thought it odd at first—Weird Japan, as the uncreative term it—but one sex scene featuring a decapitated pig’s head later, and I’m not so convinced of simple conclusions.

To paint Japan as a nation of timid integers isn’t just reductive, it’s lame. The universal feelings underlining the human condition resonate louder than Schumann's racket. Still, facade is often the only impression gained of polite strangers on the corner, so allow me to be simple for a minute.

The events portrayed in Almost Transparent Blue are a total fantasy for most, regardless of locale. Young Americans might have a greater affinity for explosive indulgence, but the average Joe travels only as far as the local watering hole, occasionally questing a wee bit further to sample grass’s greener side. The rarer Action Johnny (a dying breed in the Computer Age) ventures deeper—rushing headfirst into the mosh pit and k-hole. Japan meanwhile might be the most advanced society of functioning alcoholics in history, but train schedules and zoning laws guarantee clean bar crawl resolutions before the clock strikes twelve (or twenty four, I suppose). You’ll rarely see someone chow down on the train at eleven, let alone fuck a pig corpse senseless at one. I can’t even burn the midnight oil in Virtua Fighter 3 without the damn gamecenter shutters crashing down on me.

My instincts assumed the novel to be a sort of voyeuristic fantasy for the (repressed) everyman—a simple enough square for a strange, sexy circle. I grabbed hold of that feeling (without conscious thought) and made guesswork of the book’s ending: an admission of guilt for crimes against society and self, followed by a plea (or perhaps a prayer) for positive inner growth. I was pretty on the money, although it’s not a very impressive guess. All books end in one of two ways—pretty or ugly—but books adorned with golden laurels almost certainly conclude the former, especially in a society as hell-bent on conformity as Japan. In that sense, it’s easy to view Ryu as a sort of sell-out: cultural or literary—you choose.

I don’t want to put the guy (or his book) down though. Nobody can attest to the validity of his hand-spun yarn, but I think it’s safe to say that he’s seen some shit regardless of the specifics. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m not given pause when he describes the more violent sexual escapades with women, especially when one considers his (and her) responses to it all. I would give him the benefit of the doubt—it is his first novel after all—but I’ve had encounters with later-era Murakami (primarily through Audition) that left me with similar feelings.

Many fans I’ve spoken to loathe to hear him compared to the other Murakami—you know the one—but I think in this sense they’re closer than people are willing to accept. How the two consider women, how they write women, how they create women…it’s not too far off—at least to my queer eye. Of course we all write only what we know, but the Fantabulous Murakami Twins always manage this surreal sense of alien other when they pilot their female characters. Combined with scenes of abstract hyperviolence and sexual dysphoria, it creates a strikingly similar effect which resonates deeply within me: part-brilliant, part-awful, yet always engrossing.

Murakami’s framing of the situation also deserves mention. The more I think about it, the less surprising it is that the salaryman masses like this novel so much—it’s almost framed like a haunted house. You’ve got gory sights and unsettling frights in store if you’re brave enough to venture into Murakami’s dilapidated heroin shack, but you can rest easy knowing the voyeuristic play-nightmare will end just as soon as it begins. You’ll turn the last page with a sense of fulfilling relief, a false-notion of lived experience, and maybe even a tinge of excitement for another stroll through the home. Like I said: wish fulfillment.

Murakami’s treatment of his characters isn’t doing him any favors either. I sense a general air of contempt and fatherly pity for the people who occupy his world. There are constant reminders that everything is awful—junkies waxing poetic on their inevitable ends—mixed with the foreboding stories of characters like Mayle (Mell? メイル in the original Japanese), whose tales serve to warn Ryu of his own approaching ides of March. Everyone is pretty one dimensional, showing streaks of redemption only when wearing the mask of “confused child," locked somewhere deep inside the addict’s body. In Ryu’s world there is correct answer to the problems at hand—either you find it, or OD trying.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not here to sing the praises of heroin or defend the gutter lives of our fucked-up cast of players. I am, however, willing to acknowledge the inherent complication of a life lived outside of the grace of everyday light. I grew up in similar conditions—babysitting chaotic acid trips and watching friends down dangerous levels of oxy just to see if they could make their heart rate drop below 40 BPM. I was friends with the drug dealers, the high school dropouts, the school shooting daydreamers, the halfway-to-the-halfway-house types—you get the picture. Hell, I still am friends with plenty of those people. Why shouldn’t I be? Some of them have changed course, but plenty of them haven’t. That’s what a life of extreme neurodivergence will do to you—especially under the endless oppression of social ostracization. It’s trauma. It’s chemistry. It’s psychosis. It’s life—as valid as anyone else’s.

But in Ryu’s world? Let’s just say the perspective is more akin to something an Akutagawa judge would want to hear—a viewpoint they’d want to see the world through. It’s the novel-of-the-era that they wish they wrote: a soft-jeremiad, re-fired in Japanese clay, exoticizing the modern-day other for great, page-turning excitement. I feel the same is true for the old people who chat me up on the train. Perhaps Ryu’s misadventures provide a pleasant dose of false nostalgia for the crazier times of their youth, chased by the assurance that they did actually leave Neverland, where many of Ryu’s characters still lurk. “Trading cocaine for Rogaine,” as an elderly Carlin once put it.

The final words of the novel reinforce my view. In a strange addendum, Murakami makes a desperate, personal plea to the real-world Lilly, wherever she is out there. He begs her to get in touch so they can reconnect one last time, wondering if she ended up with "that mixed race artist." He assures her it doesn't matter—he just wants to sing Que Sera Sera together one more time. He begs her to not think he's changed, even if the book makes it seem otherwise. He swears to her, in front me, you, Gunzo judges, grandma…of all of us, that he hasn't changed at all.

I'm not so sure of that.
Maybe Lilly wasn't either.

Perhaps I’m being unfair. But still, I think it’s safe to say Murakami here lacks some of the stuff elevating similar works. Burroughs found a greater sense of truth in his obscenely hyperabsurd Naked Lunch. Richey Edwards produced an all-encompassing Holy Bible of gutter life in stereo, as deeply empathetic as it is horrifically visceral. Cassavetes left the camera rolling painfully long in films like A Woman Under the Influence and Love Streams to reveal the unending struggles and indescribable joys of life colored by mental illness. These works refuse classification, balk at acceptance, and deny a sense of resolution—for, at least many, there is no end to this story.

Still, Burroughs murdered his (second!) wife in the name of a good time, Richey’s (unproven yet very clear) suicide was practically written in the liner notes, and Cassavetes managed to drink himself to death long before he could see his son sweep the 2005 Teen Choice Awards (Gena managed to hold on until last year!). All of that is to say…don’t idolize weird guys because they write weird shit, even if you like it. Especially if you like it. At this rate, I’m starting to get the sense Ryu will outlive me. Cheers to him.

‘someday, i’ll be like the man on the screen’

Risa Wataya wrote that Ryu functions like those television sets littering apartment corners throughout his world. He sits silently as if the furniture and gives the expectation of communication. But, much like those TVs (often switched off), he does more passive reflecting than active displaying. In a sense, Ryu becomes a part of the scenery—inactive window dressing that ties the room together. He reflects the energy and attitudes of the moment without meaningful contribution. It’s no wonder everyone’s favorite line is “Hey, Ryu”—what better way to seek comfort than to look at yourself for validation?

It’s easy to square Ryu’s attitude as a youthful apathy distilled with passive personality, but I think his condition reflects something greater. It’s not until the tail end of the novel that Murakami reveals one of his greatest tricks—our protagonist, freewheeling through a spiral of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll is a mere nineteen years of age. The fact might not register for those experienced in the ways of The Ditch, or for those younger than even he is, but the reveal's last-minute nature is no doubt intentional. It’s a nice cold-water shock for Ryu’s elders, who were no doubt feeling more contempt than sympathy for our players. The specific age works quite nicely too, as nineteen happens to be one year off of Japan’s traditional age of majority—twenty, an age so special it sports its own rule-breaking vocab word 二十歳 (hatachi, an archaic remnant of an old counting style) instead of the expected 二十歳 (ni-jyu-sai, literally two-ten-year) And yes: those are the exact same characters for both words. Go fuck yourself, the textbook says to the torment of freshman students all around the globe. All that is to say, Ryu is still a child in the eyes of Lawman Taro, and absolutely one in the eyes of Akutagawa judges. You can’t say the man doesn’t know how to work the crowd.

Wataya observes that Ryu’s age is key to explaining his behavior—he’s too old to look away in fear, yet too young to look away in disgust. His status as an unyielding observer represents a critical stage of young adulthood. Like many young adults he’s impassioned to escape childhood (no matter how apathetic he appears), yet ultimately is confused and inexperienced. He doesn’t know where to put his energy or his thoughts—his life. Quandaries of identity surround him, but he never engages directly. He absorbs all, as if with the eyes of a child—a fact not lost upon Ryu’s half-love Lilly, who comments as much after one crazy night.

It’s a adolescent scene as paradoxical as it is common: a young man desperate to prove his maturity (by virtue of radical lifestyle) emanating the energy of a small child, no matter how much heroin flows into his veins. Of course, we all know that one first requires a core to forge hardcore, but Ryu's condition means more. He is, as perhaps all (post)modern men are, overwhelmed with the burden of mere being.

I want to give myself a get-out-of-jail card before I go any further: Postmodernity is nothing special, nothing admirable, nothing intelligent, and (most importantly) nothing of inherit value. It, in its own smug and self-aware way, merely is. All art created in the Japanese heyday was postmodern. Every dogshit novel by that contemporary author that everyone online loves but you hate—you know the one—is postmodern. Even you, I regret to inform, are a product of that sludge. Art is a reflection—an understanding—of life. And buddy, I'm afraid you're living this in nightmare right alongside me. You could argue we actually live in some new age beyond postmodernity's dark reach—some meta or ultra or super or hyper or turbo or third strike form of modernity—but that's exactly what postmodernism wants us to argue about. Don't fall for its tricks!

The subject matter and scene don’t matter. The dizzying structure of DFW’s (no, not that one, the other one!) labyrinths or Pynchon's WWII encyclopedias might have captured the popular American imagination at one point, but the world is far more vast than what some white New Yorkers could express in overstuffed paperback. Orhan Pamuk ventured to 1591 so that we could all mediate on the endless incoherence of Istanbul, forever straddling the paradoxical boundaries we term ‘east’ and ‘west.’ Borges revealed—in ways equally comedic and grave—that Babylon was a game of ‘infinite chance.’ Kojima made a gay vampire do backflips in Iraq—you get the picture. Don't ascribe a motive or award me any (additional) degrees because I decided to wield the same accursed term that guys who look (and smell) like David Foster Wallace love to break out to impress ‘the females.’ Anyways...

Ryu struggles because he is unaware (or unwilling to accept) his own agency as a human being. He falls into the background because it’s easy. It’s automatic. It is, in a sense, natural. He is—like any good kid born after The War to End All Wars—a soldier without a battle, a worker without a job, a rebel without a cause, a child without a parent, a dreamer without a dream, &c. &c. And who could blame him? After the end of history…what’s left?

The correct answer is “Jim Morrison, acid, and pussy,” in case you were wondering.

The past struggles and accomplishments which changed history and evolved society are merely that—past struggles and accomplishments. They are the page fodder for the dull and lifeless textbooks we read as we return to college for our second or third degree, knowing this time we’ll finally get the job of our dreams (a lower-management position rewarding just enough to permit a 2016 Civic and weekly visits to Starbucks). We look at the halftone faces which stare daggers back into our glazed eyes: Akakusa Shiro led a Christian uprising against the Shogunate and was executed at seventeen; Andrew Jackson served in the American Revolution when he was twelve, losing his entire family and gaining a massive forehead scar (alongside a life-long hatred for the British) in the process; Orson Welles directed, wrote, produced, and starred in Citizen Kane before turning twenty-seven, and that was years after putting the fear of an alien God into an unsuspecting American public; Alexander the Great conquered much of the world before thirty and perished before a single gray hair tarnished his beautiful Macedonian head; I wrote this shit that you’re reading (right now!) on my computer at twenty-six. Still, we pay no mind to their righteous and judgmental expressions, for they belong only to those characters on the page.

Ryu’s problem begins when he realizes what we knew all along—that he too was the character on the page…he too was the man on the screen. He was, suddenly and without warning, larger and more alive than he had ever been. Nothing would ever be the same again.

life in the glass

Staring into the abyss of a blank television, Ryu has his revelation because he is allowed to see himself. His own image haunts precisely because it is unlike those other reflections which he delivered throughout the novel—animated and filled with life, no matter how vile it might have been. His own view is far darker, colder, and more controlled. Nothing will happen unless he makes it happen.

It's easy to see this as some of the banal sludge taught in lifeless literature classes infecting postmodern (the word means they can charge 3000% more tuition!) universities—that Ryu is really the specter of a life made from TV dreams. But, much like the best readings of Ray Bradbury (in his own words), that's fucking stupid. You know as well as I do that Teach hasn't read the book in twenty years and stopped caring back in ‘89, so we shall pay them no mind here. The mechanical nature of the TV is notable though—it is the most contemporary piece of cultural tech which also happens to be a Japanese mass-product (ultimately of American provenance).

Ryu may see himself through that TV, but the fact that it is turned off is the most important element. Inactivity is characteristic of 70s television—when station sign-offs and 50s reruns were the norm. There wasn't much to watch outside of the news (a non-stop marathon of assassinations, war-footage, and suicides live on air) or the single simpleminded hour of primetime variety TV sandwiched between. Video games were yet to escape their carnival roots, meaning it was still far easier to have fun in the sun than in the living room. But that doesn't stop Ryu's friends from indulging in what little boob tube there was—perhaps a further indictment of their character. It would make sense then that even the real mirrors scattered throughout the text reflect only what these characters want to see, not what they need to.

The television image interests me for a few reasons. For one, it’s very specific to Ryu’s here-and-now (what 19 year old is watching honest-to-god Television these days?). We already know TV’s ultimate fate: pigeonholed to a few decades as a cultural curio in history’s grander scheme. Most Sunday Funnies will outlive the damn thing after all. But despite its dated qualities, the screen’s image reveals a greater truth: that meaningful self-discovery comes when silence drowns noise.

The noise of Ryu’s life is very charming to a young and curious onlooker of the 2020s. And I’m not just talking about me—Almost Transparent Blue is still a seminal text amongst alt-youth indebted to East Asia. The fact that I was dead-last to read the thing in my own circles came as no surprise (I am often late to all parties—literal, metaphorical, or otherwise). The once-controversial chaos riddled throughout the page is quaint. Characters are forced to move about their cramped apartment sex-drug-parties just to change vinyl records. The Doors are cool. Big-tent stoner rock shows are happening with complete sincerity. LSD and heroin are a thing. Being queer is novel. Tokyo trains are vile dens riddled with random enemy encounters. You get what I mean.

I think Ryu’s epiphany came easy enough because of his environment—the still-analogue 1970s. The fine folks awarding the Akutagawa prize might have found Rock-N-Roll to be the harbinger of the end times, and considering Japan’s genetic propensity for absurd longevity, I’m willing to bet that at least one of those judges even laid eyes on Emperor Meiji before he croaked too. Some of the judges were born (and spent most of their life) in Tokyo City, Tokyo Prefecture, Empire of Japan—three places that ceased to exist nearly a decade before Murakami was even born. Their heads would practically explode if I logged them into X (The Everything App) today, so I can only imagine what must have been going through heads when first laying eyes upon Murakami’s nightmare.

We’ve come a long way since then too. The nicotine-stained wood-paneled antenna-box of Ryu’s time has been replaced by the crisp retina display of the pro-model smartphone lining our pockets, the clear 240Hz 4K ultra-wide computer monitors browsing Twitch on our desks, the clean 65-inch 8K OLED flat screens eternally streaming Netflix on our walls, the classy mini-led smartwatches strapped to our flesh screaming out the instant our vitals deviate from “normal levels”, and even the clownish smart fridges in our kitchens that I’m using to write this manifesto right now. In our new era—always already bored and dated, with no end but The End in sight—how can any one ever see true reflection? How is someone ever supposed to see truly themselves, as Ryu does?

Our present condition lacks the empty screen of self-reflection. Our screen is always on, yet that does not stop us from seeing ourselves. The post-millennial, post-internet, post-gamergate, post-pizzagate, post-whateverthefuck vehicle of self-reflection is whatever appears on that always-on display. We see ourselves not through our own image, but through the constructed images of our unendingly digital life. Those images may be our own, distorted by cheap phone lenses and gaudily editorialized by opinionated camera sensors, or those of others, fed to us by the infinite doomscroll of the social media algorithms killing us faster than the plastics. The images could even be of things not quite human—3D, animated, furry, whatever consumable thing suits your fancy. These images of art, violence, porno, gore, streams, games, AI, politics, tweets, memes…they consume us. They become us. There is no plug to yank out. No switch to flip off.

We endlessly fall further down through this apathetic terrified traumatized powerless hysterical youth—left with no future and no past. No means of genuine loving warm expression. No means of a pure natural healing or catharsis. No concept of a permanent soul or its joyous and beautiful growth. There is nothing. There is nothing but you and me. We stare forever at the screen that allows us to see it all—always too old to look away in fear, always too young to look away in disgust.

Perhaps it leaves us no longer human.

life in the grass

We few who are lucky and aware manage something of an agreement with this late-stage-post-meta-hyper-ultra-techo-third-strike capitalist machine, yet we are never fully outside of its reach. Anyone reading this sentence lives within the endless belly of this leviathan, but through our struggles we may at least gain a deeper understanding of our condition. We can grow an awareness of what exactly is making us, us. In that sense, we can become like Ryu in our own way—a perilous journey laced with the similar traps and nightmares.

Ryu’s epiphany of genuine, actualized existence is, at first, a burden upon his fragile mind. Who could blame the poor guy? It’s a tough pill to swallow—especially in his situation. His crisis serves as the climax of the novel, in a strange sense.

Ryu begins to fixate on a black bird that’s supposedly coming to get him while hanging out with Lilly. He pleads, begging her to acknowledge the bird’s existence, and to join him in killing it before it kills them. He beckons her to open the window and look outward to the city. He screams that the city is not the city—it is the bird. The people who live there? They don’t live there. No one lives there—they are the bird. He collapses to floor as Lilly runs out of the apartment. He takes glass to wrist. Things go dark. Scene.

Most Japanese people (the everyman type) I queried returned shrugs and assurances that Murakami’s masterwork “doesn’t make sense to them either.” I found that interesting. It seems the frantic nature of Ryu’s crisis throws many off-trail. But then again, perhaps the entire book is to blame.

One key element of the postmodern response—when Ryu becomes fully self-aware—is a sense of absolute terror and dread. If I’m a genuine human being…then that must mean everyone else is too… Or so it goes. Ryu is suddenly put face to face with the hardest fact of life: that everyone—their hopes, dreams, opinions, politics, faiths, hatreds, opinions on The Sopranos, &c.—is always coexisting and always of equal importance. Any truth or maxim or axiom: that fundamental shred of ground truth we use to center ourselves…it is always already countered by an equally real and diametrically opposed truth. It’s a endless world of genuine chaos, at least at first glance. Seems like a real return to animal kingdom for those just peeking through the door.

That’s stage one. Ryu passes it quickly and moves to the second phase, which relates to a small and seemingly inconsequential act that has been clawing the back of his mind for ages now—the killing of a small moth (and other insects). He says to Lilly:

In such a contradictory world of raw chaos, how can one feel like anything but The Animal—the one they always, on some fundamental level, knew themselves to be? We all still signal an awareness of humanity’s status as apex predator, forced to participate in the Animal Olympics. Biology exams taught us at least that much (that, and the Krebs Cycle, of course). But once you ascend to that level of awareness (or perhaps return to that well of ur-consciousness) how can you stop at merely recognizing the validity of human life? How can you do anything but relate to the life-long struggles of every living thing which surrounds us? The physical toils of the workhorse, the emotional struggles of the mother bear, the existential nightmare of the common insect—they paint a picture just as detailed and vidid as our own.

Ryu has, throughout the novel, emphasized his nature as the passive and naïve observer. So far I’ve framed those observations at the human level, but it goes further than that. Consider the opening line of the novel:

The appearance of the insect motif is obvious, but there’s something more interesting at play here—the defamiliarization of it all.

Portraying normal life is easy enough. Keep a diary if you don’t believe me—maybe it’ll be a best seller one day. Portraying unlived, but otherwise believable situations is also mere paperwork. Mix around a few names, alter some social variables, maybe switch the time period out, and you could adapt most of your own life into successful stories. Plenty of your favorite writers have done just that. And besides, we both know that quality prose and thematic cohesion has no bearing on a work’s personal effectiveness. The human mind is not so conniving, and the human condition is not so narrow.

A great author, in my mind, is capable of taking the everyday and making it feel special. They terraform our safe and comfortable earth into something truly alien—in ways both good and bad. The act is harder than it sounds. After all, it’s quite easy to fall into the banal loop of ordinary chores, no matter how insane our lifestyles might really be. That is (hopefully) obvious to you, but that vicious trap holds true for our lives on the page as well. We are what we eat, and an unhealthy diet of genre fiction will shit out nothing but uninspired junk which clogs the margins. Hell, an unhealthy fixation on art as a vehicle for consumption will only empty bowels with the same foul stench trademarked and registered by the State Fair.

Great work shines because it escapes the jail cell we imprison ourselves in. It reminds us of the impossibility of life. It conveys the raw emotions that predicate existence. It reminds us of the potential of art as a means of mediation, as a means of communication—not as your daily texts to friends, born out of that misplaced sense of tired obligation, but as the special letters you write to your grandmother every season out of a deeply held sense of warm love. You are doing that…right?

Proust made that cookie into a life story. Kamo no Chōmei gazed into the river and saw all of existence. Borges stared through the crack of a household stairwell in Buenos Aires and pretended like he didn’t see infinity (and beyond!) just to fuck with a guy. Goethe said Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis and Murakami (no, not that one. The other one!) decided to mistranslate it just to fuck with us. And Murakami (No, no, no! Not that one! The other one!!) rebuilt The City in his own fucked up image just so that we may all see what he sees.

Murakami makes brilliant use of defamiliarization from opening lines to final curtains. Before even setting the first scene he’s made a concrete refutation: it was not the sound of an airplane. The who, what, when, where, and how of the thing doesn't matter. All we know, all that we need to know, is that it was not the sound of an airplane. He continues keeping us on our feet as dozens of vague characters phase in-and-out of existence during his abstract drugfests, or when barely-coherent acid-tripping visions of murder get mixed with the (very real) down-and-out nature of the Fussa Ditch.

Ryu’s observations are so unbelievably passive as to pick up the life and times of insects, buzzing around him as if they were jet engines blowing past his face. The scale of the event has no bearing on its importance—its mere existence is noteworthy enough. He is, in a way, the God of this world—thinking of the ants as (we all pray) God thinks of man. Well, he obviously is the God of this world—he wrote that damn world after all—but…look, we can’t get too deep into the postmodern sludge today. You get what I mean.

That hyper-awareness comes back to bite him in the ass then, as he waits for the black crow to take him to his end. Faced with his own mortality and capability for destruction, what else could he do but believe that some greater creature would do to him as he did to the poor moth beneath his feet? How can any of us insects assume anything else?

He reaches for the glass.

You reach for the glass.

life through the glass

Heroin isn’t my thing, no matter how much I enjoy The Velvet Underground. But to be fair, it’s not really anyone’s style these days. I’ve spent my time in The Ditch, and I don’t recall meeting anyone (under 40) who was familiar with the ol’ white light / white heat. Opioids, e-pens, meth, shitty dancehall uppers, and (Lord forgive me for my) Zyns are one thing…but I find Genshin Impact to be more of Gen’s Z timid tempo.

I’m joking, but really only half-joking. Think about it: who hasn’t had at least one friend fall into that trap of painful co-dependency? The one where the player (read: sucker) gets a means of dulling escape through false sensual bliss, and the game developers (read: pushers) get $80 a month for their troubles—a win-win! The addiction even grows in scope (and damage) over time too!

Sure, it’s not as cool as heroin—if I saw Lou Reed playing Arknights I’d push him into a locker and enjoy free lunches for the rest of the week—but, like all postpostpostmodern inventions, it manages the same harms in a convenient, plastic, and always-online form. I’ve seen many-a-friend throw away their lives for much the same—gifted high school dropouts still queuing for Dota matches, national merit burnouts eternally seeking the next big hit of Hearthstone, and way-later-than-they-ought-to-be twenty-somethings using the fictional worlds of Genshin Impact or Honkai Star Rail as a vehicle to drive the ever-living fuck away from the very real problems forever gaining on their tail.

It’s easy enough to read about (and even easier to write about!), but the reality of it is much more complicated. These people often know the trouble they’re in, despite it all. The stray moments of clarity where they acknowledge as much evokes the collective image of dementia-riddled grandparents “having a good day.” That clarity always seems to vanish quick into the aether. But unlike Dementia Grandma, we know their awareness is still there. They know it is still there. They know that what they’re doing is merely a means of desperate escape—a cheap and easy way to dull the pain via shallow pleasure which keeps The Thoughts at bay. They know, on some deep level, that they must reconcile with themselves. They even know how to reconcile. They see it for a millionth-billionth of a second as their NVMe SSD fires at speeds beyond human comprehension, all to load the next slopbucket of Daily Content: the phantom image of a blank face, staring daggers into their soul, trapped in the abstract hell we once termed ‘loading screen.’ Their subconscious mind sees that face every day and screams upwards, endlessly, at the mind gazing through the screen—the problem is reflection.

That is, of course, unlike me (who is very based and cool). I write all my shit on Underwood typewriters and play Game & Watch: Ball when I want to feel alive. At least, I sure wish I was living that lifestyle. I’m here instead—ass firmly planted on my cheap IKEA chair, eyes glued to screen, typing out my masterpiece. You’re here too, processing this painful blue light alongside me. That is, unless future-me managed to sucker you into paying for a print copy of an essay (hah!). We’re all digital addicts in a way, but that’s a pedestrian thought.

"Yeah, so what? who cares?” says you, says me, says we.

I put us under the microscope to reflect on the book’s final moments, and on its namesake. Ryu, lying a hospital courtyard after his breakdown, holds a shard of his still-bloodstained instrument of mutilation and witnesses an impossible transformation in the atmospheric glow of morning dawn. The glass had become almost transparent—almost transparent blue. He rises from the grass and begins his journey home. He resolves to become the same thing: almost transparent blue. He wants to reflect the same gentle imperfections—the tiny ridges and valleys—he sees in that glass to everyone around him too.

The metaphor is no doubt fascinating, at least to anyone willing to buy into page 157 of this book. It shouldn’t surprise to hear that the titular description comes across better in native tones: 限りなく透明に近いブルー Which awkwardly translates more directly to something like Nearly Infinitely Transparent Blue. I don’t fault the choice to drop the opening 限りなく ( ‘without limit’, or ‘the absolute most of something’) from the English title. Although I personally would have punched up the title something cool instead like The Absolute Limit of Transparency as it Approaches Blue or maybe even Just Kinda Sorta Blue. Feel free to hire me for your next localization gig. I’m certain I couldn’t do worse than whoever you’re already eyeing.

That emphasis on the infinite is important. It carries a certain radial beauty that’s nigh impossible to convey elegantly in the English language. Calling it “almost transparent” doesn’t do Ryu’s newfound ambition justice. It doesn’t sell the significance of it. He’s done the impossible: find a solution for his self-as-real-human-as-book-character-as-real-human-as-self crisis. Have you?

A lazier novel would have fixed Ryu’s passive nature—just make bro touch grass. But Murakami presents something far more genuine and satisfying. He is a blank television set, a book protagonist, a real human being…that’s not going to change. He is the glass. He is who he is. But knowing what you are, and knowing what you can do with yourself…those are two different things. He may be the glass, but he doesn’t have to live as a piece of furniture. He can continue letting the world pass through him, that doesn’t have to change, but it also doesn’t mean he can’t pass it through without a change. He can change the world through his own agency, ever-so-slightly shifting its color by adding his own—a shade ever-so-slightly blue.

I feel the same about us all. Each and every one of us is trapped here in this machine, but that doesn’t mean we have to resign ourselves to the absolute worst it has planned for us. We don’t need to live like ants forever trapped in the grass, waiting for that big black bird to come. We may see ourselves through the glass made eternally opaque by techno-feudal ultralords and our worst habits, but we too can find ways to make it a touch more transparent—shaded in the color of you.

There is an infinite beauty in the nature of technology, in the nature of the internet. Throughout all the laughs and screams, the cat pics and snuff films, the chads and the virgins, the discord-lovers and the twitter-enemies, the dubs (trips!!! quads!!!) and the subs, the based and the cringe…the highs and the lows…there is always something beautiful there—infinitely beautiful. All of it reflects us. Human us. Through it we see every aspect forever weaving our condition—all of our greatest prides and darkest shames. We form ourselves through that fine mesh, earnestly cobbling together fragmented identities through the random glass shards which catch our eye in chance light.

May we shine as Ryu does, coloring the world for all those we reach.