I really liked Popular Hits of the Showa Era. It’s short and a very quick read, and that’s exactly what I was looking for. It’s also fast-paced and seemed more like a long short-story than a book. Murakami doesn’t waste time with in-depth descriptions but still gives the reader enough information to enter the world of the book.
It’s about two groups of six. One is six guys in their late twenties who are bored and numb in a very postmodern way. The other is a group of unmarried women in their late thirties called Oba-sans. They all enjoy karaoke, and the guys have made up a party ritual of sorts in which they determine who dresses up and sings through games of rock-paper-scissors, and whoever loses drives them to a secluded part of the beach where they videotape performances. The parties get progressively weirder and creepier. One day, one of them randomly (and violently) kills one of the Oba-sans. The Oba-sans figure out who he is and kill him (also violently). Then there’s an all-out war between the two groups with increasingly sophisticated weapons. The last battle-of-sorts is really interesting, but I won’t ruin the novel for you.
Popular Hits of the Showa Era is really, really violent and gory. It’s what I’d expect from Ryu Murakami after Coin Locker Babies, the only novel of his I’ve read. And I’m not sure I even finished it. Actually, that’s not true. I read In the Miso Soup , but I don’t remember anything about it. That was my introduction to him. Popular Hits is as light a read as a book about murder can be. I think, though, that I won’t remember anything about it a year from now because it seems forgettable. Not that it’s bad: it’s just not that great, either. I gave it four stars on Goodreads because I enjoyed the process of reading it, but I don’t have much to say about it. It’s certainly not a “deep” book, and I think I might have liked it so much because that’s exactly the kind of book I needed to read.
