From the Fatherland with Love (B-Format Paperback)

Ryu Murakami weaves a tale of informed near-future speculative fiction. Though set in 2011 after a collapse of the Japanese economy and government, considering the current situation in Japan, the scenario is nothing short of prophetic. Murakami writes with a deep understanding of his own countrymen's and culture's strengths and weaknesses. He doesn't pull punches. Though a long read, readers will not be disappointed as Murakami carefully crafts all the characters, situations and action with a clear purpose. And while it is clear who the antagonists are, it is not so clear that they are necessarily 'evil', nor is it clear who the protagonists are. This ambiguity makes for a heart-pounding page-turner.

An incredible story by Ryu Murakami. I personally was engrossed all the way. However, this book may not appeal to readers who prefer strong character driven stories. It is a story told from many points of view to bring you the whole picture. Most of the characters(maybe even all) are static characters, they don't grow or change much. Still it is a great story that can only be told thru multiple points of view and Murakami does exactly that throughout the book. And that also lends the narrative a n aura of serious believability.

Fantastic but very depressing book. Murakami goes into great detail to show HOW North Korea could walk right into Japan. That's actually the depressing part. Some compelling characters on both sides and a great climax near the end. If you like Ryu Murakami, you'll like this book.

Great political fiction

There are probably 3-4 better Ryu Murakami books.

This book originally came out in Japan in 2005, placing the story in what would have been the near future, in a time of severe economic crisis, with the yen worth next to nothing, banks closed & both food & fuel in short supply. All this combines to leave Japan in a vulnerable state with it's close neighbours vying for dominance & it's one time allies unable or unwilling to help. Into this bleak picture steps an old enemy with a plan to invade, that is both as cunning in its set up as it is shocking in the simplicity in which it unfolds. North_Korea_Training_Exercise Japan has become a nation whose time has passed, a place where camps for the unemployed and homeless are commonplace & living rough on the streets is the only reality for a growing number of the populace. Into this scenario a force of highly trained & ruthless North Korean commandos easily infiltrate and take over control of the city of Fukuoka, setting up their own government with little resistance from the local population and often with help from self interested parties. With the national government having no plans, no solutions and no idea who to blame, although that's not stopping them from trying to apportion it. With the government both local and central too scared to lift their heads out of their collective anuses, it is left to Murakami's Marauders, a disparate bunch of disaffected youth, social outcasts murderers, bombers & satanists to face the foe. This group under the leadership of Ishihara, an accomplished poet and winner of Kyushu Prefecture Cultural Award for Literary Excellence, decide that they will take on the North Koreans, they formulate a suitably diabolical plan, grab what weaponry they have stockpiled, within a short period of time slaughter and mayhem commences. This as a book should come with a warning Not Recommended by the Japanese Tourist Board. No one comes out well, or to be more accurate the characters that one would feel most for, are the same ones that should be locked away from sight as not suitable, not fitting The Traditional Japanese Image (TM), in fact any image a nation would want to project concerning itself. Earlier this year I read the other Murakami's (Haruki) books 1q84 and thought that it was an ambitious attempt to collate all of his ideas, themes & obsessions ( love, loneliness, surreal worlds, free will & religious cults) throughout his fiction and nonfiction into one grand expression, into one book. I also thought that although it was an epic effort - it was also a failure, that it didn't gel as a whole. I think that this idea also applies to Ryu Murakami, except From The Fatherland With Love succeeds, this book covers the usual areas of violence & technology, the divide between those that are excepted by and those society considers unwanted. It also shoves a great wedge between Japan's old martial/ traditional image and the reality of it's modern self, a nation that has not just lost it's way, but had no idea it had one. It also manages to chuck in another Ryu Murakami bugbear with references to Japan's reliance for protection on the USA. The difference between From The Fatherland With Love, and 1q84 I believe is that Ryu Murakami's book works as a whole where 1q84 didn't. Ryu Murakami has created in this book a wonderful cast of characters in a tale that rollicks along with all the mayhem, violence & action one expects from a Ryu Murakami book & yet he still manages to gel his vision, still manages to get his world view down on the page & into the reader.

I enjoyed reading this book as its look on Japanese society differs from other books I read about Japan. The North Koreans are pictured as opposites of the too complacent, soft Japanese. The plot of the Japanese group of outcasts that finally bring down the Korean invaders is a good storyline and well pictured. I do have another image now of Japanese (and North Korean) society, but if it is truer I have to find out. I will be visiting Fukuoka soon and stay in that hotel. Then I most certainly will think about this crazy plot again.

Patterned after a failed Third Reich espionage operation, From The Fatherland, With Love is the code name of a North Korean black ops that compels “a rebel army faction that is not a rebel army faction” to infiltrate Kyushu, a small island off the mainland of Japan, and hold it until a fleet of Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK) rust buckets completes the international annexation, delivering an irresistible force of 120,000 soldiers to the shores of the occupied Japanese island. Exhaustive in its exploration of this insanely audacious military scheme, with far too many characters to keep track of without a cheat sheet (which is included in the front section of the novel for those eggheads who are inclined to try), Murakami’s nearly 700-page novel is not exclusive to the navel-gazer or adrenalin junkie, though both types may find it impossible to stop reading once they sink their meat hooks into this example of Murakami’s all-encompassing style of ass kicking. In other words, FTFWL leavens a healthy dose of destruction and mayhem with a decent shot of philosophical inquiry. When you sympathize more with the DPRK commandos than with the 30,000 civilians they take hostage in the dome where the season opener for the local baseball team is taking place, you realize you’re in the hands of a maestro of set and frame. Both sides of the equation are products of their respective environments (frames) and have totally diametric sets of societal givens from which to work from: the North Koreans are spawned in a totalitarian hot-house cult of personality where brute force and intimidation are the people's daily bread whereas the Japanese spectators are so out of touch with the elbow-thrashing level of reality anymore, distracted by sports and entertainment and the overall decadence of their existence , that in the words of one of the DPRK commandos taking control of the dome, they’ve become “zombies who’d lost touch with their real souls.” And the Japanese politicos who must confront this incursion on their own soil dither and do nothing, showing themselves to be a true extension of the people they purportedly are there to govern and protect. It crosses no one’s (except the North Koreans') mind that had the spectators in the dome bum-rushed the nine commandos that initiated the Korean incursion the whole thing would have been squashed with minimal collateral damage. The North Koreans factored the lack of will of the people and their leaders into their plan, knowing that most if not all Japanese of this generation had no stomach for life-or-death struggle. The North Koreans are living examples of the axiom “Might Makes Right” and the futility of the concept of "right and wrong" when confronted with an unmitigated will to power and the force to back it up. The North Korean commandos had all been turned into killing machines through constant brutal training and the certainty of agonizing deaths for themselves and their families should they diverge from the DPRK party line. The Japanese civilians had all become sheep in thrall to sheep dressed in swank 3-piece suits. The counterforce is applied by a band of murderous misfits who repudiate Japanese society and likewise are shunned and reviled by said, who are in no way a sympathetic band of brothers. At first, they even see the Korean invaders as kindred spirits who they will gladly range side-by-side with through the streets of their hated Japanese cities, raping and pillaging as they go. It is only after their leader, an old poet named Ishihara, intuits the reality of the Korean’s occupation -- that, should the Koreans succeed in fully taking the island, the Ishihara Group’s members would be singled out like diseased cattle that needed to be culled immediately from the herd -- that they decide to fight. It is clear that these outcasts are woefully inferior to the Koreans in the discipline department and stand no chance in a head-on battle. But each individual in the Ishihara Group possesses some kind of aberrant skill (expertise in demolitions, boomerang chucking, poisonous insects … to name a few) that, when put together with the others’ adds up to something that just might be devised into a viable plan. The plan turns out to be the demolition of the high rise hotel the DPRK commandos have set up as their headquarters. With the help of the local equivalent of the Hell’s Angels, the Ishihara Group gains access to the unoccupied upper floors of the hotel and begin their deconstruction. Of course, things don’t go as planned. Charges are set. Challenges are met. Mayhem ensues and it all climaxes in a DPRK commando/Ishihara Group life-or-death struggle. Amid the chaos and ultra-violence an important theme that has been building the entire novel culminates in one character’s moment of clarity: Something more than just urine had exited Hino’s body when he peed himself: the thing they called ego or soul or spirit or something. He didn’t feel the cold water of the sprinklers as unpleasant, or as anything else. All he knew was he had to get back to work. And get back to work, he does... Hino’s realization of universal oneness comes from within his individual nature. Conversely, the Koreans’ concept of oneness is driven into them from the outside with the delicacy of a sledgehammer on a railroad spike. Although both methods seem to be getting at the same conclusion, it can be inferred from the book's conclusion that true destiny is achieved not by threat or coercion, but through the difficult decisions and the sacrifices urged upon us to comply with by our own freewill. And so, whatever the takeaway, this is one righteously entertaining smackdown of a novel which you will either read or you won't read since, in the final words of Ishihara-san himself, You're free to do as you please Review originally published at tqrstories.com

Much better than the most famous Murakami.

The first 100 or so pages were hard work, especially the level of detail of names and different characters but once you get to the mid-hundreds the book opens up beautifully. Thrilling, daring, avant-garde and loads of twists. Best book i have read in a year. Surreal, quirky, no prisoners!

Ich kann noch kein endgültiges Urteil abgeben, aber immerhin soviel: ich habe damit angefangen, und nach 100 Seiten erst mal beiseite gelegt; mir sind einfach zu viele Figuren, die sich in der Geschichte tummeln und keine besondere Rolle haben. Derzeit mache ich einen zweiten Anlauf, weil die Story an sich ganz interessant klingt. Weil es öfter mal kolportiert wird: Mit Haruki hat Ryu meiner Meinung nach stilistisch überhaupt nichts zu tun (eher mit Chuck Palahniuk, wenn schon).

The book has two main facets in my opinion - first of all, the concept, which is nothing short of spectacular; and then the execution, which tries to make as much use of the author's extensive research into the topic as possible, making the book something for the relatively dedicated. The main premise - namely the occupation of Fukuoka by a 'rebel' North Korean army - is truly interesting. The author had to alter reality somewhat to make it more credible but the Japan of the book is not so far fetched as to immediately meet with resistance in a moderately well informed reader. Unemployment is up to about 10%, there is talk of rearming, relationships with the US and China are more strained and the savings have partially collapsed. Into this environment the invasion is introduced. While the idea of it is excellent (like for example in Red Tide: The Chinese Invasion of Seattle (Occupied Seattle Book 1) ), the execution does not lag behind in its quality, either (very unlike Red Tide: The Chinese Invasion of Seattle (Occupied Seattle Book 1) ). The focus is much less on the military aspect than could be expected, even though the author spends long stretches covering the details of various armaments and the military organization. Instead, the author focuses much more intensively on the the mentalities of both the Japanese population under occupation, the Japanese government and the North Korean military - especially the occupying rebel army (in that sense it reminds me somewhat of the approach used in Peters' Red Army ). While some of the 'difficulties' of confronting such an insidious invasion may be particular to the Japanese, some soul searching is likely to lead the readers to questioning quite how well their society would deal with the situation. And the solution the author presents, is perhaps typical for him (and possibly more uniquely Japanese than the problem) - and the type likely to appeal to his fans. Where the book is likely to turn off certain readers (as witnessed by some reviews) is the rather arcane and detailed descriptions the author engages in. There are a great number of characters (significantly over 50), all of whom get similar levels of attention, when it comes to introducing them and their back story. After a while even a dedicated reader may raise his eyebrows in contemplation, whether the full military career background for a minor soldier of the occupying forces truly adds to the story and its enjoyment. And while a determined editor could cut out around 40% of the book's length and make it much more fast paced and action focused as a result, I believe the book would also suffer in its uniqueness, if such an approach was taken. So overall a book definitely worth reading if you are a fan of the author, or just generally enjoy contemplating slightly left field alternative histories / scenarios. But do bring lots of patience to the task - if not, you may well give up half the way through.

From The Fatherland, With Love is big. Kindle gives locations that exceed 10,000 (if that means nothing to you, it probably soon will...). The novel has multiple points of view, a cast of hundreds (well, dozens, at least), creates a dystopian Japanese society and then re-creates it under North Korean occupation. Events that happened many pages earlier get re-told to show different people's perceptions and internal logic. There is mind-boggling detail, particularly around weaponry. Characters are introduced right up until the final pages. You get the idea. And normally this is where a review would applaud a brave concept and say that it hadn't quite been brought off. But Ryu Murakami has succeeded completely with From The Fatherland. It coheres; he makes his surreal world seem plausible; he jogs the memory at just the right times. It is a masterpiece of storytelling. The plot itself is delightfully absurd. North Korea has decided to invade Japan - or at least Kyushu island - under the pretext of rebel soldiers seeking sanctuary from the tyrannical North Korean fatherland. Except, of course, they aren't actually rebels. The drama unfolds as viewed from the perspectives of various of the North Korean invaders, local Japanese journalists, local Japanese officials, and the Tokyo government. Plus, a very odd sect of homeless crazies. Although there is plenty of action, much of the entertainment derives from the culture clash. The North Koreans have to confront a society which is very different to their own, with much that they start to envy. They have to develop skills of economic planning, bargaining and politics inn rapid time; learning not to deploy the force or argument rather than the argument of force. At the same time, plenty of the Japanese population see a new order as a chance to redress past injustice or get ahead of their rivals. It's really quite complex. As with many of his other works (Coin Locker Babies comes to mind), Murakami's real forte is in creating a vivid and consistent world. It owes much to cartoons and manga, the colours are bright and the surfaces are smooth. The geography feels as though it was tailor made to fit the story. He creates dystopian worlds that are perfect. For a long novel, Fatherland never outstays its welcome. There are occasional pieces of repetition but they are not obtrusive. The length simply allows a level of complexity and expansion, a level of side plots that other novels cannot contain. This allows the novel to include an insight into North Korean life and psyche that really hooks the reader - a chance to explore the forbidden and unknown. Although originally published in Japan many years ago, Fatherland is likely to remind readers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Orphan Master's Son - another long, detailed and absurd insight into the crazy world of Kim.