(2005) In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami Read Free Book Online Page B

richest countries in the world, why do you have this
karoshi
problem, people literally working themselves to death? Or: Girls from poor Asian countries I can understand, but why do high-school girls in a country as wealthy as Japan prostitute themselves? Or: Wherever you go in the world, people work in order to make their families happy, so why doesn’t anybody in Japan complain about the
tanshin-funin
system that sends businessmen off to live on their own in distant cities or countries? If I can’t answer these questions, it’s not because I’m particularly stupid. Nobody writes about these things in the newspapers or weeklies, or talks about them on TV. No one teaches us why
karoshi
has to exist in this country, or the
tanshin-funin
system that the rest of the world seems to think is so perverse.
    Frank stood riveted to one spot, gazing up at the batting center. I thought maybe he’d enjoy hitting a few. “Wanna try it?” I said, and he looked at me as if startled and bobbled his head ambiguously.
    On the ground floor was a game center. We climbed a metal staircase to the second level, a surreal open space illuminated by fluorescent lights. A sign hanging about midway up the chain-link fence said: FOR YOUR SAFETY, ONLY THOSE TAKING BATTING PRACTICE ARE ALLOWED IN THE CAGES . There were seven batting cages, all set at different pitching speeds. The one farthest to the right was the fastest, 135 kph, and the one on the far left was the slowest at 80. Two of the cages were occupied—one by a young man in training wear and the other by the male half of a drunken couple. His woman was egging him on. “Go for a home run!” she shouted before every pitch. The man was staggering drunk and missed most of the balls completely, but the woman kept at him as if their lives depended on it: “Don’t let ’em beat you! Don’t let ’em beat you!” Don’t ask me who or what was trying to beat him. She stood behind the fence on a long concrete walkway like the platforms you see at little train stations in the country, with a roof but no walls to block the wind. In a shed about the size of a highway tollbooth the batting center attendant slumped in his chair, asleep, and next to him a kettle sat on a small kerosene stove that flickered with orange flames. The little shed must have been warm, because the dozing attendant inside had nothing on over his T-shirt, and a homeless man lay with his back against the outer wall. He was sprawled out on a couple of flattened cardboard boxes, drinking some colorless liquor from a Cup Noodle container and leafing through a magazine.
    “There’s no place like this in America,” Frank said.
    I didn’t think there were many places like it in Japan, either. The pitching machines were lined up in the shadows of a sort of bunker, and small green lights blinked at the tips of the two catapult arms that were currently operating. Hit or miss, the balls rolled down to a conveyor belt that carried them back to the machines. Intermittently, between the beats of a Yuki Uchida song crackling over the primitive loudspeakers, you could hear the rumblingof the conveyor belt and the creaking of the machines as they wound the arm-springs tighter and tighter. The guy in training wear was dripping with sweat and hitting the ball pretty good. Of course, no matter how well he connected, the ball couldn’t go any farther than the netting, about twenty meters away. High up on the net was an oval cloth banner that said HOME RUN , except that the cloth was ripped and the “ M ” was missing.
    “You wanna hit some?” I asked Frank again.
    “I’m kind of tired,” he said. “I think I’ll just rest awhile. Why don’t you hit some, Kenji, and I’ll watch. Go ahead, take a few swings.”
    Frank dragged a metal lawn chair over from in front of the attendant’s shed to sit on. As he did so, the homeless guy looked at him, and Frank asked him in English: “Is anyone using this chair?” The homeless guy