Audition
By Ryu Murakami

Those who watched Takashi Miike’s hair- raising, nightmare inducing film adaptation (1999) would have had the experience seared into their brains.
The book is less showily creepy. Instead, it creates a sense of niggling unease, slowly letting the tension tighten and grow taut until it snaps in the horrific ending.
Since the death of his wife seven years ago, documentary film-maker Aoyama has not dated. A remark by his teenage son gets him thinking about remarriage.
His best friend Yoshikawa hits upon the idea of holding fake film auditions as the best way to meet prospective brides. He has reservations about taking advantage of a system where “the commodity an actor or model offered for sale was nothing less than her own being” but goes along with the idea.
When he meets the beautiful ballet- trained Yamasaki Asami, he falls head over heels in love. There are hints that there is more to her than meets the eye but he is too obsessed to see or care.
Without giving anything away, let’s just say that things end badly.
Early on, Murakami makes a point about modern malaise: “People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety, people turn to extreme sex, violence and even murder.”
One could also read Audition as a feminist fantasy about wreaking vengeance on men who abuse their power. But Aoyama, while flawed, does not strike one as a bad or evil person. Does he deserve to be punished? Or was he culpable the moment he agreed to the auditions?
Whichever way you slice it, Audition has been executed with bone-chilling flair.


If you like this, read: Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami. His debut novel about a group of young people who dive headlong into sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll won the country’s top literary accolade, the Akutagawa Prize, and established his reputation as the bad boy of Japanese fiction.
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