A few days ago, I heard from Luisito in Cuba. The sound engineer who recorded Ryu Murakami’s sessions in Cuba is a friend of Luisito’s, and since I’d said I wanted to hear from him, that was what his message was about.
I felt I had to read “Almost Transparent Blue” properly, one more time. I think I read it once in my twenties, when I was still living in New York.
For my generation and the one a little above it, “Ryu Murakami” was a “bestselling writer.” It’s such a famous work, and I think I read it because I found the title, “Almost Transparent Blue,” beautiful.
I understood none of it. What stayed with me was a sense of revulsion.
About six months ago, I bought “Almost Transparent Blue” as an e-book. I couldn’t get very far with it.
Drugs, sex, vomiting, violence. Those descriptions were hard to take, and since I’ve never been good at reading and taking things in through text, “literature” tires my mind — the effort of understanding the words made me fall asleep again and again.
Now that thirty years have passed, I think I was able to feel a few things I couldn’t feel back then. It was painful, and aching. There are so many descriptions of drugs, sex, vomiting, and violence that I could barely move through it.
Over these past few months, I’ve been searching out and reading about “Ryu Murakami” and “Cuba.” In particular, the essays from around the time he became involved with Cuba, made the film “KYOKO,” and wrote the novel “KYOKO” (“All Men Are Expendable”) — I think they held a key to understanding, at least a little, what happened inside Ryu through his involvement with Cuba.
The obi (the paper band) on the first edition of “KYOKO” read “a story of hope and rebirth.” I felt I could understand “hope,” but the meaning of “rebirth” escaped me. But in an essay from around the time he wrote “KYOKO”:
[Around the time I finished editing the film, I wrote the novel “Kyoko.” As I wrote, I kept remembering the days when I was writing my debut work. I wrote “Kyoko” exactly as if I were writing a novel for the first time in my life. It wasn’t a matter of “a fresh feeling.” I felt myself returning to the “spirit” I’d had when I wrote “Almost Transparent Blue.” Whether that’s the reason or not I can’t say, but near the end of the novel “Kyoko,” the word “rebirth” appears again and again.] (Ryu Murakami. All Men Are Expendable. VOL.1–VOL.13: serialized August 1984 to September 2013, 30th anniversary complete edition (p.799). MurakamiRyuDenshibonSeisakusho. Kindle edition.)
Living in Cuba, I was able to “rebuild” myself. I hadn’t noticed it while I was longing for America and chasing after it, but as I became involved — through music — with the history of the Pacific War and with American veterans, I realized that “the Japanese person in me” was deeply wounded.
Japan lost the war. Japan was “given” education, sanitation, and an economy by the United States, but it lost its self-respect and its pride.
Even though two atomic bombs were dropped on us, we couldn’t even be angry about it — instead, we “reflected.”
I think “Almost Transparent Blue” has, at its foundation, the world of victor and defeated between Americans and Japanese that Ryu Murakami grew up watching as a child, born and raised in a “base town.”
[In the base town, they were absolute. Who holds the power, who has the final say — children and dogs see through it. Because the weak can’t survive if they can’t.]
Ryu Murakami. All Men Are Expendable. VOL.1–VOL.13: serialized August 1984 to September 2013, 30th anniversary complete edition (p.754). MurakamiRyuDenshibonSeisakusho. Kindle edition.
Why did the writer “Ryu Murakami” commit himself to Cuba? For that, and for “Almost Transparent Blue,” I think “defeat,” “the base town,” and “America” are all very important factors.
Two Cuban friends told me they’d like to read Ryu Murakami’s work. One was Luisito; the other was a Cuban named Iberis, living in the Netherlands, who does promotion for Los Van Van. It made me so happy.
I think “Almost Transparent Blue” is a difficult work. But if you ever have the chance, I’d love for you to read it.
In one of his essays, from when he first started going to Cuba, Ryu wrote, “That land has what the Japanese have lost.”
I feel the same. And I pray that Cuba will never lose it.