The wind-up bird chronicle

Someone who has visited my blog has said that “The wind-up bird chronicle” by Haruki Murakami was an impressive book. During the trip to Thailand last week, I completed reading The wind-up bird chronicle. I had a set of time in the airplane and before falling in sleep at a hotel in Bangkok.

The novel was interesting. Tohru Okada is a main character. He is 30 years-old, and got married, but has not had kids yet. He lives in Tokyo. His life is not special at one glance. However, as the novel continues, he begins to get involved in unusual things. He often jumps between in reality and in dream. Many characters appear in the novel, and they speak and speak and speak. With the help of those characters, I sometimes thought that I could touch one of fundamental questions of our life. They are usually called as love, dream, mission of our life, enemy to our soul, or others.

I like Murakami’s novels because he sheds light on important things which exist in my mind, but do not usually appear in my daily life.

The Value of Books

I prefer Plato to Aristotle. Along the same line, I like Camus more than Sartre. Both Plato and Camus had published their books which had been written in simple terms and thus easy to read. I like reading their books. However, even though Aristotle nor Sartre had seemed to establish their permanent positions in literature and philosophy, I did not find their (Aristotle's and Sartre's) books interesting, thus I could not complete reading even one of their books.

Some people say that philosophers use difficult words. I agree with this opinion in some degrees because I cannot understand what Aristotle or Sartre wanted to express. This difficulty makes people avoid even trying to read books on literature and philosophy.

True philosophers should publish their thinking in simple statements. Thus, in the future, the fame both of Aristotle and Sartre will diminish little by little.

Uncontrollable Moment

I like comics. I went to a comic cafe last Friday night, and read the last 4 volumes of "Higanjima". Higanjima consists of about 30 volumes, and I have spent almost 1 month to finish reading each and every volume of this series.

I have deepened my confidence that Higanjima is a platitude comic. The story is similar to "Momotaro". An evil boss governs an island named as "Higanjima", and a wise man is confined to the  island. Young boys, including the younger brother of the confined man, and a young girl go to the island and fight with the evil boss in order to rescue the man.

Higanjima entices its readers into reading this childish story by using 2 measures. One is that Higanjima frequently depicts violence scenes. There are almost always fights between justice and evil. The other is the utilization of sex scenes. There are also almos always naked women, who are stripped of their clothes by evil people.

However, I was impressed with an interesting logic used in the comic. Evil is depicted by vampire and justice is depicted by human beings. Whoever gets infected with the bood of vampires becomes a vampire. The vampires always seek the blood of human beings, because the vampires become mad if they have not drunk the blood of human beings for a certain period of time.

15 to 20 minutes were required to finish reading one volume on average. I have spent 2 to 3 hours in comic cafes 4 to 5 times this October. I have been to the cafes at night without exception. After leaving the cafes at midnight, I have almost always thought that the comic was boring.

Although the comic was boring, I cannot resist my temptation to enter comic cafes. This temptation is similar to the one that I felt when I have approached men/women who were boring to me. Talking with such people was fun at the beginning, and I wanted to continue to contact them. However, soon or later I realized that something was different, and ended up being alienated from them.

I refrain from entering comic cafes, because I know my habit. Once I start to read a comic, I make myself to finish reading all the volumes of the comic. Since I do not want to spend my precious time in reading boring comics, I avoid entering comic cafes.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1)

I have been reading Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell for the past 2 weeks. The book consists of 3 chapters. I am now in the last section of the chaper 2.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a very famous novel. I came across this book when reading the Japan Times, a newspaper written in English and published in Japan. I remember that an article in the Japan Times described an unstable political phase in Zimbabwe 2 or 3 years ago. At that time, a tyrant governed the country. Members of the opposition parties to the tyrant were reported to be killed by accidents or suspicious reasons. 

The article referred to a one-party dictatorship described in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In some other article in the Japan Times, there was also a reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Almost 50 years have passed since the book was written in 1949. However, there were still references to the book, from which I sensed that something universal would had been written.

My intuition was correct. The book is well written. I cannot do any other thing except reading the book in my free time. I will post my impression on the book in a future blog.