A Wild Sheep Chase

J-Horror is not a genre with which I am going to claim any sort of familiarity. I actually hate being scared, so horror novels in general are something I tend to avoid. I've been fortunate thus far I this course in that none of the novels I've read have been anything I've found particularly frightening, but I was legitimately apprehensive this week because I know that the Japanese are very good at horror.

Luckily Murakami's “A Wild Sheep Chase” is not that frightening of a novel either, but that's not to say it isn't a good one. I went into the reading completely unaware of anything that the story might be, which is actually, to my mind, the best way to read or experience anything. With my blank slate of expectations I was able to absorb and appreciate each turn the story took for itself with no preconceived notions, and I found myself greatly enjoying the story because I didn't know where it was going.

Murakami sets up an average man, with an average life. A divorcée who works at an advertising firm living alone but for his grouchy cat. But then things start to get odd. First he begins dating a girl with apparently magical ears, then he is carted off by mysterious men in suits because of an image of sheep that an estranged friend had sent him. Thus unfolds what is essentially a supernatural mystery novel about finding out about a mysterious sheep with a star on its back that seems to have some sort of plan its been hatching, using human hosts to further its goals. What exactly that plan is we never discover, but it's clear it isn't good.

I'm not going to summarize the novel as I don't want to spoil it, and Steiling has already read it multiple times I am sure. But it does follow a very Japanese horror format sort of a thing. From the few J-Horror films I have seen I can gather that the usual plot is an average middle class person is drawn into unusual circumstances via their job or other average daily activity. Perhaps that is what makes J-Horror so particularly frightening, that idea that supernatural things could happen to anyone at any time. In most Western horror's the victims are sexy co-eds, or eccentric millionaires, not just average-joe's going about their day to day lives. Lately Western movies have been sort of adopting a bit of a J-Horror vibe, even going so far as to make American versions of classic J-Horror films like The Ring, but we never seem to quite manage to match that absolute creepiness that the Japanese have boiled down to an art.