A middle-aged man's story about listening to Ryu Murakami's 'The World Five Minutes Later' on Audible for the first time in a while

The title image I borrowed is really great. The caricature of Ryu is well-done, and I felt an extraordinary sense of style in the font and layout used for the text 'Almost Transparent Blue'.

Now, this isn't about 'Almost Transparent Blue', but I want to say one thing before I start: isn't the title 'Almost Transparent Blue' just amazing? It might be because he's my favorite author, but I don't know of any other novel title that can even remotely compare to it. I believe it was 'almost transparent blue' in English, which is also good—or rather, since it's the same meaning, that's only natural, isn't it?

By the way, although I said he's my favorite author, I checked Ryu Murakami's list of works on Wikipedia while writing this article, and even for the works from the period when I loved reading his books, I hadn't completed them at all. That said, I love every single work I've read, and I might have written this somewhere before, but I was on leave from work due to illness in my mid-20s, and I was writing novels aiming to become an author during that time. Back then, I wanted to make Ryu Murakami's writing style my own, so I would copy his works entirely into my computer's text editor software, or read the same passages out loud over and over and over again. The work that was the subject of that effort is the one that is the theme of this piece: 'The World Five Minutes Later'.

Well, back then I also liked Mitsuki Hanamura and Amy Yamada, but for me, Ryu Murakami was in a league of his own, something completely different. First of all, his ability to create stories is on a completely different scale from other authors. Furthermore, his unique writing style, which gives those stories a strange sense of reality, is brilliant. His debut work, 'Almost Transparent Blue', won the Akutagawa Prize for that very reason, but his subsequent works and themes are completely geared toward entertainment, yet they possess a mysterious charm where they end up becoming powerful works of pure literature due to the strength of that writing style.

Also, it goes without saying, but drugs appear everywhere in his works. I feel like I've written this somewhere before, but the fact that I got into drugs—or rather, went so far that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call me a 'drug king'—was clearly thanks to (or should I say, because of?) Ramo Nakajima and Ryu Murakami. Thank you so much, really.

I listened to 'The World Five Minutes Later' on Audible

Anyway, Ryu Murakami's works have been appearing on Audible little by little recently. That said, I think it's probably only the ones published by Gentosha, and 'The World Five Minutes Later' was the first work he wrote specifically for Gentosha as a kind of celebration when Toru Kennin launched the company (this is a story I remembered from the afterword of the hardcover edition I read back then). If possible, I'd like them to make 'Coin Locker Babies', 'Superconducting Nightclub', 'Love and Fascism', 'Ibiza', and 'Ecstasy' available on Audible too, but that seems unlikely.

So, for now, I downloaded a few works, and among them, I finished listening to 'The World Five Minutes Later' and 'Showa Kayo Daizenshu' (The Complete Collection of Showa Pop Songs).

'The World Five Minutes Later'—well, since I haven't read many of his later works, you don't have to take my word for it, but I think it's probably Ryu Murakami's greatest masterpiece. No, even if Ryu Murakami himself said, 'That's not true,' I have no intention of backing down from that claim. At the very least, 'The World Five Minutes Later' stands apart from all of Ryu Murakami's previous works in terms of writing style, the protagonist's psychological depiction, and the reality of the world within the story; I got goosebumps when I first read it. Everything unnecessary was stripped away, and despite being extremely simple, it had an abnormally high amount of information. I had never read a novel like that before, and that has remained true ever since. After reading 'The World Five Minutes Later', I thought, 'I'm done with novels. Nothing more amazing than this will probably ever come out again.' And when I thought that, I also realized, 'That means there's no point in me aiming to be an author anymore,' so I gave up on my training as a writer and decided to aim to return to work.

Anyway, it's been 32 years since I said things like that, so I listened to it with a light heart, thinking I probably wouldn't find it that amazing if I read (or listened to) it now. However, because I myself have experienced and thought about so many things over the past 32 years and have grown as a result, I ended up experiencing an even more intense feeling of 'this work is amazing' than I did 32 years ago. I won't write about what exactly is amazing because I want you to actually read (or listen to) it and feel it for yourself, and even if I did write it, I don't think everyone would feel the same way I do. But if I were to state one thing, 'The World Five Minutes Later' is the work that probably influenced me, the person who read it 32 years ago, the most. It's not just the novel that influenced my life the most; it's the thing that influenced my life the most. In other words, I have never experienced an impact greater than the feeling I had after reading 'The World Five Minutes Later', before or since. My soul was tingling.

While avoiding spoilers, there is one thing related to the content that I really want to write about, and that is that the expression 'a face covered in shame' appears three times in the work. I think 'pride' is one of the themes in this work, but not the negative pride that Dr. Hawkins talks about—that is, arrogance—but pride in the sense of self-esteem. It's the kind of pride that, if you throw it away, you're finished as a human being. In short, I think 'a face covered in shame' refers to the face of a person who has abandoned this self-esteem, or has had it stolen or damaged, and I think Ryu Murakami at the time saw that face in the Japanese people of that time. I remember thinking a lot back then, after reading this, 'What exactly is a face covered in shame? Could it be that I sometimes have a face like that?' Ryu Murakami (though I don't think it's limited to him) has many phrases that drive a wedge into the reader's heart in places separate from the story itself.

Another word that bothered me when I read 'The World Five Minutes Later' and stayed in my head ever since is 'polyrhythm'. I'll leave it as a surprise for you to read (or listen to) to find out where and how this appears, but I had never seen or heard the word 'polyrhythm' before that. I was extremely curious about it, but back then (1994), Windows 95 hadn't even been released yet. I was already using the internet to open my own chat room, calling people from all over the country to gather there, and holding offline meetings with about 30 people, but there was no Wikipedia or YouTube back then, so I couldn't look up what polyrhythm was, and I was left feeling frustrated for a long time.

By the way, according to Google AI search, polyrhythm is something like this.

Then, 14 years later, in 2008, I was involved in work related to the official website of a famous music channel, and I was constantly listening to the latest music at work. I still remember the surprise I felt when the trio Perfume appeared on the large TV screen in the office and the song 'Polyrhythm' started playing.

So, well, it's a good song, and Perfume's appearance on the music scene at that time was quite a hot topic, and I listened to it a lot too, but I still don't really have a clear grasp of the essential 'what is polyrhythm?'. Still, the long-standing frustration has been cleared up to a great extent. Ryu Murakami went to Cuba around that time and got into salsa, and I was also left with the frustration of 'what is salsa?', but now you can listen to as much salsa as you want on YouTube, so I have to say YouTube is the winner.

There is a sequel to 'The World Five Minutes Later' called 'Hyuga Virus', and I have read it once, but I want to read it again. However, since the Audible version won't be out until October this year, I ordered the paperback. T-kun is from Miyazaki, so I'm thinking of giving it to him after I finish reading it, but if I do that, I'll have to buy 'The World Five Minutes Later' too. If I buy it, I might as well read it again.

By the way, 'Showa Kayo Daizenshu' was also interesting, and if anything, this is a more 'Ryu Murakami-esque' work. Both are works from 1994, so it's amazing that he could write works with such different directions in the same year. And I thought the middle-aged women were strong and scary. I wrote that the directions were different, but when I think about it, I realized there might be elements common to both. Ah, I see, I get it now, that's how it is. If you're interested, please read (or listen to) it.

Bonus

There is an addictiveness to the high level of musicality and vocals that are unique, but not just for the sake of being unique. Recently, I have been listening almost exclusively to female vocalists and their songs, which wasn't the case before, so I tried to think about why that is. I often feel that the lyrics of songs sung by male vocalists are childish. It's not that the vocalist is childish or that the person who wrote the lyrics is childish, but rather that the moment a song is sung by a man, it feels like it cannot escape the gravity of the 'immaturity that haunts the male gender'.

That said, it doesn't mean I don't want to listen to them or that I dislike them. In fact, I still listen to Ging Nang Boyz regularly, and when it comes to popular artists, I check out new songs by Vaundy or Kenshi Yonezu at least once. So, I don't view it as negatively as it might sound; it's just that there are more songs with lyrics sung by female vocalists that don't make me feel that kind of gravity, making them easier to listen to. Well, and also, generally speaking, female voices simply contain more healing properties. I read somewhere that the reason mothers, who are the primary caregivers for infants, have voices that are softer and higher-pitched than men's is because that is the easiest sound for a baby to hear, and I can only agree with that.

That is all for this time. Thank you for reading. See you in the next article.