69 Sixty-Nine by Ryu Murakami translated by Ralph M. McCarthy (Kodansha)

Long before Haruki Murakami came on to Japan’s literacy scene and gained international recognition, there was Ryu Murakami. He was born in Sasebo, Nagasaki on Japan’s southernmost main island of Kyushu. His best known works which have been translated into English include his first novel Almost Transparent Blue, Audition, Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup.

69 Sixty-Nine is his semi-autobiographical coming-of-age novel and was first published in the Japanese language in 1987. The English version was first published in 1993 and translated by Ralph M. McCarthy. McCarthy has also translated the works of another famous Japanese novelist, Osamu Dazai, namely Self Portraits and Blue Bamboo, both of which are collections of short stories. 

The story is narrated by thirty-two-year-old Kensuke Yazaki, currently a writer living in Tokyo. He is reliving his third and final year of high school when he was seventeen years old. The year was 1969. It was the year “student uprisings shut down Tokyo University. The Beatles put out The White Album, Yellow Submarine, and Abbey Road, The Rolling Stones released their greatest single, “Honkey Tonk Woman”, and people known as hippies wore their hair long and called for love and peace.”

Yazaki’s character was inspired by the life of Murakami himself. Murakami formed a band called Coelacanth and played drums. He and his friends barricaded the rooftop of their high school and was detained in his house for three months after the school incident. Yazaki would be the mastermind of all these exploits as well. 

Yazaki has two really good friends that share in his escapades. His closest friend is Tadashi Yamada who spoke with an ultra-dialect as he grew up in the country in a coal mining town. His nickname was Adama because he looks like a French singer named Adamo. Adama was usually the voice of reason. When Yazaki had one of his hair-brained ideas, it was usually Adama that made the ideas plausible and possible. 

Yazaki and Adama are joined by Manabu Iwase. This trio of disaffected youths are only looking to have a good time. They want to listen to rock music, talk about foreign films and protest America’s involvement in the Vietnam war. But what Yazaki and most seventeen-year-old adolescents want is to get laid!. 

They claim to be anti-establishment and want to mimic the revolutionary students of Tokyo and other big cities in their backwater town of Sasebo which houses a United States military base. Yazaki has big plans for his final year in high school. Him and his friends are organizing a school festival which they have titled “The Morning Erection Festival”. 

To put it mildly, Kensuke Yazaki is the Holden Caulfield of Japan. Murakami’s novel of growing up in the sixties, in 1969, as a seventeen-year-old high school student is reminiscent of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. However, Murakami’s Yazaki makes Holden Caulfield look like an angel. Yazaki’s antics and attitude are bigger than life, and although he has friends who will do almost anything for him, he is first and foremost, a selfish bastard who only thinks about himself and about getting into the pants of the girl of his dreams. 

You can’t help but be reminded of your own high school years as a seventeen-year-old when you think you know everything and don’t have a care in the world. It’s hard to fault Yazaki for his actions. Even I remember doing things that were stupid and dangerous (although I won’t admit to what they were). Everybody goes through growing pains and surviving high school is just one tiny aspect of that. If you made it into adulthood without any problems, then looking back on high school can be a pleasant exercise in nostalgia. ~Ernie Hoyt