miker wrote:
"I'm slowly sifting my way through Amazon looking for more
hardboiled/noir candidates from Japan. Looks like a lot of
Japanese mysteries are not hardboiled (not a surprise,
really) and others tread a post-modern trail, which I am
usually clueless to figure out."
Then Haruki Murakami, who you mentioned was on your short
list, may not be the one for you. I read, and enjoyed, his
Wild Sheep Chase, the first of his books to get major US
attention. While it is written in a hardboiled style, the
story becomes increasingly fantastical after the protagonist
leaves the city, ending up somewhere between magical realism
and postmodernism (probably more the former). As I said, I
enjoyed it, but never ended up reading another of his.
Thanks for the recommendation of Ryo Murakami's Almost
Transparent Blue. I've had that book on my shelf for a long
time, picked up a remaindered copy for $1 over a decade ago.
I should pull it out.
Like you, I've been looking for Japanese hardboiled (I'm
about a third of the way through Out), but am having trouble
finding it. I really liked Peter Tasker's Silent Thunder and
intend to read the other two books featuring his Japanese PI,
Mori, but even though Tasker has lived in Japan for a long
time, he's still a gaijin, and I would like to read some
homegrown hardboiled. Thanks to various sources, including
Etienne's site, I know it exists, but little seems to have
been translated. Maybe Out will be the first in a trend. I'd
really like to read her earlier PI books. I figure they've
got to be interesting if they were inspired by Crumley.
I've been having much more luck finding hardboiled Japanese
films. Home Vision and Criterion, in particular, have lately
been reissuing a number of yakuza films, especially those by
Kinji Fukasaku and Seijin Suzuki. Samurai films can be pretty
damned hardboiled and/or noir, too. Check out the Lone Wolf
and Cub series, both in manga and on DVD, supposedly an
inspiration for Road to Perdition.
Mark
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