The book recounts the environmental and social unraveling of Tokyo from the perspective of two adolescents. Were this story told by a Western writer, it would be steeped in violent realism or intense subjectivism. Consider the Berlin saga (see the review on this site), in which a city abandoned to an epidemic becomes the stage for struggles and romance within a dystopian setting, yet rendered in distinctly naturalistic tones. Hideo, however, is a Japanese writer, and he does not escape that magical realism that makes us love the literature of the Land of the Rising Sun so dearly (see the numerous reviews of Japanese novels on this site). Surprisingly, the sprawling narrative sets out from an island where two children have been shipwrecked: little Hitsujiko and the slightly older Touta. The pair must survive in a savage environment, overrun by feral goats.

Their world was there, on the island; there was no other place to go

and, after all, what trust could they possibly place in human beings: Hitsujiko having survived by chance a mother who drowned herself, dragging the girl along to end her daughter's life as well; Touta dragged along by his father in a madly speeding motorboat to display the courage and strength of a true Japanese. It is with hatred that they receive the expedition dispatched to cull the goats, which discovers the two children in utter astonishment.

Yes, they were ready to challenge everyone, down to the very last one. From the top of the promontory, they hurled their scornful defiance at the Tokyo official, at the men with rifles, and at all the rest. And something gleamed in the right hand of one of them. A blade. There is in these two children a destructive fury that transcends a rebellious spirit: they are deeply convinced that "good and orderly Japanese society" is hostile, and that only an apocalyptic upheaval can save them, preventing them from slipping back into abandonment. This feeling will bind them forever, even when the two are separated. Hitsujiko is adopted by a couple who take her to Tokyo, to one of the city's most elegant neighborhoods, Nishi-Ogikubo; she is enrolled in an exclusive school and is able to study dance, an art in which she excels. Touta, on the other hand, now of age, goes to live in the Kagurazaka district, teeming with red-light establishments, prostitution, and an underworld interwoven with growing illegal immigration. One does not need to know Tokyo to appreciate the novel: the complex topography, with its meticulously detailed clustering of neighborhoods, the maze of highways, viaducts, subways, elevated and subterranean, aims to give us a tentacular image of the great metropolis—imaginative, mesmerizing, and terrifying. Tokyo is all the more dreadful because its tropicalization is underway: the magnificent cherry trees are vanishing, giving way to exotic plants that harbor unknown and lethal bacteria and viruses; the carp have died in the poisoned canals, wild animals roam the streets—in some cases, dogs abandoned by their owners. The stifling heat, air conditioners blasted to the maximum, torrential rains, and finally an epidemic overwhelm the tenuous coexistence of the different Tokyos: that of the "true

Japanese, like the inhabitants of Nishi-Ogikubo, who defend themselves against immigrants with private militias; the

non-Japanese

who came from outside, having settled primarily in Okubo and Kagurazaka; and the subterranean city, populated by the Korpokkur, the first inhabitants of northern Japan before the arrival of the Ainu, the modern-day Japanese. The government relocates the

purely

Japanese population to the mountains, where the water is still pure and untainted by the effects of tropicalization: did Hideo prophetically foresee the ideology of the tech oligarchs close to Trump? Specialized troops will disperse DDT and mutant insects underground, while the poor, the infected, and the immigrants are abandoned to their lethal fate. In this scenario, the author's concern is not to delve into the personal dramas of the two protagonists: they are embedded within an apocalyptic upheaval, in which ancient nightmares and new fears resurface. The two adolescents serve merely as the detonator of this upheaval: Hitsujiko with her captivating, mysterious dance, which leads the well-behaved schoolgirls into revolt; Touta with his warrior strength, cunning, and destructive will. Numerous other characters crowd the novel—a crow and a boy-girl lead us into the underground tunnels; countless episodes unfold without the reader always being able to trace the thread; unthinkable weapons are deployed, such as dance and cinema. Within this chaotic kaleidoscope, the reader catches a glimmer of hope that does not require fleeing to another, still-unspoiled planet: it is possible to rebel, to generate a chaos from which a new world might be born; yet this undertaking is entrusted to the humble and to the animals. As the author states in the afterword to the Italian edition:

"I will never stop believing that singing all together is the best way to bless this century of ours and rejoice." And in this new harmony, perhaps Hitsujiko and Touta will find each other again on the island of their childhood.

The novel develops in a traditional manner in its first part, up until the two youths are separated: the shipwreck, life on the wild island, the understandably difficult integration into the small school and community of one of the Ogasawara Islands. One seems to glimpse a coming-of-age story, albeit with distinctly Japanese idiosyncrasies. The relocation to greater Tokyo could have been the continuation of a tale of growth, and even of love. Instead, the plot veers in another direction: the political and environmental backdrop takes over, and the dark monsters of Japan, veiled beneath a shroud of cultural respectability, emerge with devastating force. The mind turns to the great novels of Kenzaburo Oe, such as The Silent Heart and The Water Forest (see the reviews on this site). Everything spirals into confusion, almost delirious, and the reader is better off simply getting lost, rather than wondering why a crow understands human speech, why diminutive beings dwell underground, or why dance and silent cinema can serve as lethal weapons, instruments of a revolution. It is fascinating, yet the lengthy digressions, the multitude of characters, and the surreal environments certainly contribute to our disorientation, making for a demanding read. Perhaps a touch of the solid nineteenth-century European novel would have brought order to a narrative that is all too often disjointed. What remains etched in memory is the prophecy of modern times—a prophecy startling in its prescience, considering the novel was written in 2003.

Why read it? It is another face of Japan.

Tokyo Soundtrack