Popular Hits of the Showa Era
By Murakami Ryu
Translated by Ralph McCarthy
Pushkin Press (2011)
ISBN-13: 978-1908968449
Review by Tabitha Carver
Six young Japanese men, one clad in BDSM gear, belting out old Showa era (1926-1989) songs facing the open sea in a secluded cove near Tokyo. Six divorced oba-sans (middle-aged women), all named Midori, studying guerilla war tactics and reminiscing on lost loves. One nation recovering and rebuilding after the second world war… In Popular Hits of the Showa Era, Murakami Ryu presents to us a bizarre and violent conversation between generation and gender in post-war Japan.
Murakami Ryu published his first novel Almost Transparent Blue while he was still a university student in 1976 to critical acclaim. He continued his success with novels like Coin Locker Babies (1980) and In the Miso Soup (1997), winning multiple literary accolades, such as the Tanizaki Prize, the Yomiuri Prize and the Taiko Hirabayashi Prize. Notably, his novel Audition (1997), the basis for the globally beloved cult Japanese horror film after the same name, is currently being considered for an English-language adaptation.
Murakami’s writing deals primarily with darker sides of society with a surreal tilt: since his first foray into writing, he has deftly explored crime, violence, murder and drug addiction in contemporary Japan.
His provocative style and insight into a somewhat concealed part of Japan has made Murakami a successful import into the Western literary scene - a Telegraph review situates him simply as the “enfant terrible” of contemporary Japan: ‘Each time a new book by Ryu Murakami is published, the people at the Japanese Tourist Board must hang their heads in despair … Compellingly repulsive.’
It is exactly this compellingly repulsive and unflinching approach that makes Popular Hits of the Showa Era as engrossing as other work which has earned him success both domestically and overseas. In this novel, we follow a war between a group of disaffected young men and a group of divorced oba-sans: their descent into violence punctuated by odd scenarios: a high-school girl who sees ghosts, an illegal arms trade near Lake Yamanaka, an unnamed female silhouette, dancing hypnotically in a window.
The young men meet regularly to perform strange social rituals which involve karaoke and alcohol. They have ‘given up on committing positively to anything in life’ (p.14). They are aimless - stuck in a numb loop, unable to conceive of a better future.
In contrast, the women in their mid to late thirties undergo an impressive transformation throughout the course of the novel, navigating their perceived status as hapless women - after all, ‘oba-sans [...] are life-forms that have stopped evolving’ (p. 177). They come together in a strange vision of female solidarity as they work towards their common goal: retribution for their fallen comrade, senselessly slaughtered by one of the young men.
Although these two groups are bound together through a series of violent acts and counter maneuvers, their identities remain unknown to each other. They are at war - and the reader must figure out what exactly is at stake.
Although Murakami has received some criticism for his presentation of female characters in the past, one could argue that it is only through his understanding of gender relations that his own representations are so cutting and uncomfortable. It’s important to note that the women's intellectual aptitude and mutual care is directly at odds with the lack of community and common sense we see presented within the group of young men. In fact, these men would make exemplary cautionary children posters for toxic masculinity and internet era “incel” culture.
Central to the novel are Murakami’s formal and stylistic choices. In Popular Hits of the Showa Era, each chapter is named, fittingly, after a popular hit of the Showa era - find a complete playlist here.
This music blends traditional Japanese sounds (such as pentatonic scales) with Western influences (think blues, jazz and rock ‘n’ roll), creating a powerful backdrop to the uncertain shifts taking place after the second world war: despite the economic boom, Japan reckons with a post-war identity crisis and the potential social cost of rapid growth.
In Popular Hits of the Showa Era, these references to yearning songs from the past create an odd, melancholic cultural nostalgia for our characters: the young men consider a future they will never have, and the women consider a past they can never return to.
It is not only the soundtrack that constructs the important cultural texture of the novel: descriptions of food and clothing throughout the book serve as important symbolic markers of social status, lack of, or presence of, community, and the so-called ‘Americanization of Japan’ after the second world war.
Perhaps well exemplified by the ‘frontier spirit’ (p. 17) of imported beef jerky shared by the group of disaffected men or the nabeyaki udon intended to ‘warm the cockles of the heart’ (p. 167), which requires only fire and water to prepare. Later, the reader should take note of the origin of the branded attire worn by a man called Haseyama Genjiro.
The same man notably facilitates an ending the reader could hardly have envisioned when starting to read. Murakami’s skill in rendering this a believable culmination of the surreal war between two small groups feels uncomfortable - remarkable as it is concerning. Even as the reader attempts to unpick the characters' histories amidst complex layers of Japanese society post second world war, one is still left pondering their real motivations. Where did things go wrong, and would the events of this novel in fact be even more plausible in today’s world?
Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a violent, delicate and often darkly humorous conversation of opposites: male versus female, old versus new, tradition versus change, city versus countryside, and perhaps most centrally: peace versus war and what is left in between, when all is over.