is a novel by Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese author Ryū Murakami

Ryu Murakami

is a Japanese novelist and filmmaker. He is colloquially referred to as the "Maradona of Japanese literature".-Biography:Born as Ryūnosuke Murakami in Sasebo, Nagasaki on February 19, 1952...

, published in 1976. Murakami directed a film adaptation in 1979. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080357/

Plot

Narrated by the main character Ryū (possibly Ryū Murakami himself) the novel focuses on his small group of young friends in the mid-seventies

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

. Living in a Japanese town with an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 air force base, their lives revolve around sex

Sex

In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...

, drugs

Recreational drug use

Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...

 and rock 'n roll

Rock and roll

Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

. The near-plotless story weaves a vividly raw image intensive journey through the daily monotony of drug-induced hallucination

Hallucination

A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...

s, vicious acts of violence

Violence

Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...

, overdoses

Drug overdose

The term drug overdose describes the ingestion or application of a drug or other substance in quantities greater than are recommended or generally practiced...

, suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

, and group sex

Group sex

Group sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Group sex can occur amongst people of all sexual orientations and genders...

.

Characters

• Ryū – Narrator. 19-year-old bisexual substance abuser.
• Lilly – Ryū's prostitute friend and casual sex partner.
• Reiko – From Okinawa, friend of Ryū and girlfriend of Okinawa.
• Okinawa – From Okinawa, drug addicted friend of Ryū and boyfriend of Reiko.
• Yoshiyama – Unemployed junkie
  Substance dependence
  The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...
  
   friend of Ryū and abusive boyfriend of Kei.
• Kei – Friend of Ryū and girlfriend of Yoshiyama.
• Kazuo – Male friend of Ryū.
• Moko – Substance abuser friend of Ryū.
• Jackson – African American
  African American
  African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
  
   Airman at the local AFB, he arranges for group sex escapades with his base comrades and Ryū's group.

Awards and nominations

Murakami submitted the novel to the literary magazine Gunzo's debutant contest, in which it won the first prize. It also won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize

Akutagawa Prize

The is a Japanese literary award presented semi-annually. It was established in 1935 by Kan Kikuchi, then-editor of Bungeishunjū magazine, in memory of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa...

 the same year.

English-language editions

• Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue (Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū), translated by Nancy Andrew
  Nancy Andrew
  Linda Nancy Andrew was the English-language translator of Japanese author Ryū Murakami's highly-acclaimed novel, Almost Transparent Blue, which had won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976....
  
  , 1st hardback ed., Tokyo ; New York : Kodansha International : Distributed by Kodansha International/USA through Harper & Row, 1977, 126 pages. Tokyo ; New York : Kodansha International : Distributed by Kodansha International/USA through Harper & Row, 1977, 126 p. ISBN 0-87011-305-4
• Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue, translated by Nancy Andrew, 1st paperback ed., Tokyo; New York : Kodansha International, 1981 (reissue, 1992), 126 p. ISBN 0-87011-469-7
• Ryū Murakami, Almost Transparent Blue, translated by Nancy Andrew, 1st trade paperback ed., New York : Kodansha America, 2003, 128 p. ISBN 4-7700-2904-7

External links

• Extensive review by author Tao Lin
  Tao Lin
  Tao Lin is an American writer. He was born of Taiwanese parents and grew up on the East Coast of the USA.He is the author of two novels, Eeeee Eee Eeee and Richard Yates ; a novella, Shoplifting from American Apparel ; a short story collection, Bed ; and two poetry collections, you are a little...
  
   at Thought Catalog
• Short J-pop.com review