Innocent World
by Ami Sakurai
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ami SakuraiTranslator: Stephen Clark
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-10-01
ISBN: 1932234144
Number of pages: 124
Publisher: Vertical
Book Reviews of Innocent World
Book Review: An author boldly chronicles a lifestyle that she read about somewhere.
Summary: 1 Stars
The back cover tells you all you need to know. "Enter a world of nihilism and self-destruction...rape, incest and trauma...violence, drugs and prostitution. Enter an innocent world." Man, that cover copy sure makes rape, incest and trauma sound like some pretty exciting stuff!
That's right, this is a book about Decadent Youth. Ostensibly written to give a voice to the alienation and nihilism of modern young people, it also appeals to bored housewives, primetime-news anchors, and well-to-do high school girls who are like totally bored with having to study for college entrance exams. Wouldn't it be cool if they could like totally disregard their parents? It also may appeal to lonely teenage boys, by depicting a seductive, promiscuous babe, then playing on their fear of women by making her cold and materialistic, while also tapping into their heroic fantasies by making her just as lonely and isolated (hence rescuable) as they are.
The first sign that something is seriously wrong comes in the form of Sakurai's uncertain, yet lecturing tone in all of her descriptions of youth culture. It's like she watched a news broadcast about raves and drugs, and now she's trying to teach the reader something about drug and music jargon. So, during a visit to a rave, her protagonist states pedantically that "the music [the DJ] spun was too incantatory to be called techno" (76), which means absolutely nothing. And then she carefully explains the difference between ecstasy and cocaine, in case you don't know. Sounds like someone has been reading some alternative newspapers.
Oh, and by the way, just like in that news broadcast, the DJ turns out to be a rapist. In the worst tradition of de Sade, he woodenly proclaims on page 85, "I'll crush all your false pride and defense mechanisms so that by the end, your humiliation will make you feel like a piece of trash." But give him some credit, at least he made an effort to come up with that statement.
The other thing is that, for such a worldly babe, the protagonist romanticizes her loss of virginity a lot. In fact, her first time was with her true love, and even though it was his first time as well, he was able to easily send her into multiple ecstasies. This does not happen in reality.
In her quest to convey just how much her protagonist hates everything, Sakurai plagiarizes Yukio Mishima. Page 24: "My little white diary. In it I kept track of the life-worthiness of the grown-ups in Takuya's life." Hey, that's just the "list of crimes" from The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea, except without all the truly odd and queasy stuff! The idea of the mentally retarded brother probably came from A Quiet Life by Kenzaburo Oe, with a lot of sex added in.
The protagonist is eventually redeemed in a very traditional way, by having a baby. This provides a respite from all the cheap nihilism, and it's even a little bit believable that she might feel that way. Unfortunately, it usually doesn't turn out that well in real life. Nor do most seventeen-year-old girls have that epiphany so easily.
But what makes this book so unintentionally hilarious is Sakurai's choice of metaphors. She sounds like nothing so much as a first- or second-year college student whose mind has been totally blown by a wide variety of fascinating technical subjects. In fact, I am inclined to conjecture that she really was a straight-A student at a top-level school, where her worst sin was an occasional drink at a party with her similarly hip and fashionable girlfriends. She had to take a couple of freshman electives, and even though she got one of the smart guys to do her homework for her, the effect on her prose was immeasurable. Drumroll, please:
Page 27: "The imaginary number i is a non-existent constant used only as a matter of convenience. Thus the value of my existence, too, is infinitely artificial and scant." (Complex analysis!)
Page 27: "The world exists to analyze chance and its contradictions and errors by induction." (Computer science!)
Page 37: "His heart and mind tended to take paths like some diagram of chaos theory that went beyond the realm of ordinary thought." (Physics!)
Page 40: "Through anonymous sex, men were slowly depleting my store of some valuable element. What remained with me was...the sadness of a space probe drifting forever in the vacuum beyond." (Okay, to be fair, this one sounds more like it was lifted from a Murakami novel. It's still awful, though!)
Page 41: "I sensed the possibility that some common circuit could form between us that opened to a special password." (Electrical engineering!)
Page 48: "A neon of phosphorescent animalcules swimming on the night sea's calm surface." (Biology!)
Page 53: "I'd finally met the man who could solve the differential equations that were Takuya and me." (Calculus!)
Page 56: "I didn't care if he was an old man on his deathbed; he had to be made to click on all the constants that I needed to solve the differential equation of my existence." (Oh man. I swear, I didn't make this up.)
Page 57: "In my imagination, my hatred was making his cancer viruses propagate at an exponential rate."
Page 88: "If you can't keep up with my biorhythm, you don't have the right."
Dear Japanese college students, please listen to me! Freshman year really isn't that bad. It'll be over eventually, I promise. If you want some cool nihilistic books to help you get through it, I recommend Yukio Mishima. And for the girls, try The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai. It also has a strong female protagonist, but unlike Innocent World, it's not completely terrible.
Summary of Innocent World
Enter a world of nihilism and self destruction. Enter a world of rape, incest, and trauma. Enter a world of violence, drugs, and prostitution. Enter an Innocent World.Ami believes in nothing, hopes for nothing, and turns tricks because it's something to do. Her journey from the pit of despair to the precarious edge of something else captures the part of being seventeen that never makes it into words.
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