“Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey”
by Haruki Murakami
translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
from the June 8 & 15, 2020 issue of The New Yorker
As one of three stories in the 2020 Summer Fiction issue, we have a new Haruki Murakami story. Back in 2006, The New Yorker published Murakami’s “A Shinagawa Monkey,” and this story is, as Murakami himself says, a sequel. In his interview with The New Yorker, Murakami said, “I really wondered what fate might have befallen him after he was captured, but for a long time I didn’t have the opportunity to write a sequel.” So here we are! I myself have not read “The Shinagawa Monkey,” but it is readily available and we can read it on the magazine’s website here. I think I will step back and do that before delving into the sequel.
I did skim a bit of the new story, though, and found this fun passage:
I was soaking in the bath for the third time when the monkey slid the glass door open with a clatter and came inside. “Excuse me,” he said in a low voice. It took me a while to realize that he was a monkey. All the thick hot water had left me a bit dazed, and I’d never expected to hear a monkey speak, so I couldn’t immediately make the connection between what I was seeing and the fact that this was an actual monkey. The monkey closed the door behind him, straightened out the little buckets that lay strewn about, and stuck a thermometer into the bath to check the temperature. He gazed intently at the dial on the thermometer, his eyes narrowed, for all the world like a bacteriologist isolating some new strain of pathogen.
“How is the bath?” the monkey asked me.
Should be good to settle down in this world.
In the meantime, please share your thoughts below! I look forward to reading them as they come!
I’ve just reread the original and then tried this one. It’s a nice follow-up, but the original has a lot more depth to it (this is more of a crowd-pleaser!).
I just finished the original. Quite a strange tale, and I’m not sure what to make of it at all. I liked it, but I can’t see into the depths. I’m glad the monkey who, at the end, promises to leave and do no more harm, has returned.
I finished the follow up this morning. Murakami does seem to anticipate the question I have as I walk away: what was the point? Is there a point? Does that matter?
Ultimately, I liked both stories, including the follow up, a lot. I was surprised to find myself glad to be again so soon in the company of the Shinagawa monkey, and I like these kinds of on-the-road stories where someone sits and gets told an interesting, mysterious story by a stranger in a hotel somewhere.
As with the first one, though, I struggle to find a way to access a deeper insight through these strange stories. That doesn’t necessarily bother me. I enjoyed them a lot for the story itself and for Murakami’s ability to get me involved and flipping the pages. I am curious now, though, what others have found here.
i have to agree with you, Trevor, this was pleasant enough but I’m not sure of “the point” of it. I like his stories in general but this one felt a bit twee. In general, I have little paitence with this sort of fantasy and usually Murakami’s stories don’t go down this path although there is the “prequel” which I’m not familiar with.
I enjoyed this story a lot. Such droll humor. A monkey who finds the 3rd movement of a Bruckner symphony “particularly uplifting.” And who blames his dopamine for his impulses. And who says, “Most guests would be shocked if a monkey served them tea.” And “A beer after work can’t be beat.” And who wears sweatpants and a sweatshirt that says “I Love NY” — such a cliche. And who says, “Plus, it runs counter to genetics.”
Also, the story is enhanced by the narrator’s realistically puzzled but mostly matter-of-fact interactions with the monkey. In this story Murakami’s typical emotionally buttoned-down style serves him well. As when the narrator says,”I didn’t want to hurt his [the monkey’s] feelings.”
As Trevor says, Murakami anticipates our questions about this story, saying he didn’t write up his notes initially because people would say what is the focus, or theme, or moral. Ditto: “People would say I was ‘making up stuff again’.” Perhaps he is making fun of us for not being willing to accept an entertaining tale for its own sake (no pun intended).
So what is the point? I have no idea. Certainly, there seems to be a substrate of seriousness here, as when the narrator says “extreme love, extreme loneliness”. And when he encounters a woman whose name has apparently stolen by the monkey (or a “copy monkey”) and finds that it causes her some concern. Although I can make up interpretations or “themes”, I’m willing to take the story at face value as an ambiguous entertainment. But then, I’m a Murakami fan. I just finished his novel “A Wild Sheep Chase”, in which a rogue sheep inhabits humans to try to take over the world.
If there is a “serious” point, I would say that it revolves around stealing a piece of a person’s (woman’s) soul by appropriating her name. But I don’t think it relates to anything s prosaic as identity theft. That business of a person’s name being a part of their identity strikes a resonAnt chord, but I can’t place it. The only specific reference I can think of is the Bob Seger song, “I’m Not A Number, I’m a Name”.