I was then thirty-seven years old and in a Boeing 747 (p.9)»; “Long time ago […] I lived in a student dormitory. I was 18 years old (p.19)». This is how the first two episodes of Tokio Blues (Círculo de lectores, 2005) by Haruki Murakami begin. Both sentences express the tradition of this novel, which is told in the first person at certain times and places. However, after that first chapter is read, we are trapped until the last page with its narration precision and tremendous literature.
More than 15 years have passed since I first read it, the author is 38 years old, the same age as the main character Watanabe, almost the same time since it was published in Spain since it was written in 1987. novel and close to mine at the time. Years later, when choosing first chapters for a writing workshop, I always had a certain respect for the rereading of those moments for their personal connotations (“I thought of the eternity of the things I’ve lost. I thought of the lost time, the people who died, the abandoned, the feelings that will never come back», p. 9-10) And now that I’ve read another Murakami novel, I’ve re-read it, and yes, “Memory is a strange thing” (p.11), with it you gradually relive the same stories that seem different.
Listening to the Beatles’ Norwegian Forest song on the plane, Watanabe recalls what it was like in his twenties and his friendship with an engaged couple, Naoko and Kizuki, until the boy committed suicide and they were left, Naoko and she were forever stigmatized. They are lives that, paradoxically, must be built from the dead, a fact that will give them an outside world view. Watanabe’s love for Naoko and later his love for Midori will be revealed. These two female characters, Naoko and Midori, are perfectly built on hostilities; being two perfect women, one totally introverted and the other extroverted.
In Tokio Blues, which was centered in the late sixties and with the student revolutions in the background, there is a constant effort to classify people from outside the protagonists’ vital circle, considering that they do not fit the characteristics of social normality. to characterize the rest. This is a very traditional idea for cataloging others, but in this case there is nothing close to prosecution and it remains only descriptive. The secondary characters are excellent and always at the service of the story and the characterization of the main characters; Such is the case with Watanabe’s two friends at the Dormitory and Naoko’s partner at the sanatorium; he presents a different narrative perspective with his letters; this is always necessary for a somewhat long and concise first-person narrator in a novel. A constantly evolving plot is limited.
It’s a really emotional novel, not rosy, where talking about and practicing sex integrates with the characters in a very natural way; A world-famous metaphor for the character of Forrest Gump, in which feelings and actions are always sifted through an existential content: “Because life is like a tin of cookies” (p.328). It’s truly a novel, with a verse from the title song followed by death as the background and a catalyst for the characters’ lives: And when I woke up I was alone (And when I woke up I was alone).
And why should you read this novel? Because it’s a classic from the end of the 20th century and an extraordinary account from an author who has been consistently nominated for the Nobel Prize. But above all because it is an emotional and existential novel that does not leave you indifferent and that you always keep in your memory along with the memory of the lost. An example is that sometimes novels stop being a harmless thing in our lives and become part of it.