Field of Dreams

Oleh : Banana Yoshimoto

Bila mengharapkan Kitchen seperti novel-novel Jepang yang lain, siap-siap saja bakal kecewa berat. Karena kalau biasanya kita menikmati novel Jepang yang njelimet, alur dan plot yang berliku, gelap, tidak masuk akal, vulgar, kejam, dan segala bentuk kenekatan yang tumplek blek jadi satu, maka hal itu satu pun tidak akan dapat ditemukan dalam novel ini.
Kitchen, adalah sebuah novel yang sangat 'manis', romantis, dan indah. Membaca Kitchen berasa membaca manga jenis shoujo deh. Atau malah kalau di filmkan akan jadi dorama yang mengharu biru menusuk kalbu (halah!!!)
Kitchen bercerita tentang Mikage Sakurai, yang setelah kematian neneknya, hidup kesepian. Mikage baru bisa tidur bila berada di dapur, di samping kulkas yang berdengung.
Suatu ketika Mikage terdampar dalam ehidupan keluarga Tanabe. Dapur keluarga yang hanya terdiri 2 orang tersebut membuatnya nyaman. Ryuchi Tanabe sang anak adalah seorang mahasiswa yang bekerja di toko bunga, langganan nenek Mikage semasa hidup. Ryuchi pemuda yang tampan dan baik, tetapi sangat dingin. Dia hidup bersama Eriko, ibunya, seorang transeksual yang sejatinya adalah ayah Ryuchi.
Dalam harmonisasi kehidupan mereka bertiga yang seperti biasa, kehidupan Mikage berpusat di dapur keluarga Tanabe, baik Ryuchi maupun Mikage saling jatuh cinta.
Cerita yang begitu sederhana untuk ukuran novel Jepang. Malah waktu membacanya berasa baca Harlequin deh...hehehe...
Tapi lumayan kok, layak buat dibaca.

Written by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood (Noruwei no Mori?) is a 1987, another novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The novel is a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. The story's protagonist and narrator is Toru Watanabe, who looks back on his days as a freshman university student living in Tokyo. Through Toru's reminiscences we see him develop relationships with two very different women — the beautiful yet emotionally troubled Naoko, and the outgoing, lively Midori.
The novel is set in Tokyo during the late 1960s, a time when Japanese students, like those of many other nations, were protesting against the established order. While it serves as the backdrop against which the events of the novel unfold, Murakami (through the eyes of Toru and Midori) portrays the student movement as largely weak-willed and hypocritical.
Part of the novel was originally published in the collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman under the title Firefly.
Norwegian Wood was hugely popular with Japanese youth and made Murakami somewhat of a superstar in his native country (apparently much to his dismay at the time).
Despite its mainstream popularity in Japan, Murakami's contemporary readership saw Norwegian Wood as an unwelcome departure from his by-then established style of energetic prose flavoured with the unexpected and supernatural (as exemplified by Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, released two years earlier); as translator Jay Rubin observes in the translator's note to the 2000 English edition, Norwegian Wood retains much of the complexity and symbolism characteristic of Murakami's work and is thus "by no means just a love story."
Plot Synopsis
A 37-year-old Toru Watanabe has just arrived in Hamburg, Germany. When he hears an orchestral cover of the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood," he is suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of loss and nostalgia. He thinks back to the 1960s, when so much happened that touched his life.
Toru, his classmate Kizuki, and Kizuki's girlfriend Naoko are the best of friends. Kizuki and Naoko are particularly close and feel as if they are soulmates, and Toru seems more than happy to be their enforcer. This idyllic existence is interrupted by the unexpected suicide of Kizuki on his 17th birthday. Kizuki's death deeply touches both surviving friends; Toru feels the influence of death everywhere, while Naoko feels as if some integral part of her has been permanently lost. The two of them spend more and more time together, trying to console one another, and they eventually fall in love. On the night of Naoko's 20th birthday, she feels especially vulnerable, and they consummate their love. Afterwards, Naoko leaves Toru a letter saying that she needs some time apart and that she is quitting college to go to a sanatorium.
The blossoming of their love is set against a backdrop of civil unrest. The students at Toru's college go on strike and call for a revolution. Inexplicably, the students end their strike and act as if nothing had happened, which enrages Toru as a sign of hypocrisy.
Toru befriends a fellow drama classmate, Midori Kobayashi. She is everything that Naoko is not — outgoing, vivacious, supremely self-confident. Despite his love for Naoko, Toru finds himself attracted to Midori as well. Midori is attracted to him also, and their friendship grows during Naoko's absence.
Toru visits Naoko at her secluded mountain sanatorium near Kyoto. There he meets Reiko Ishida, another patient there who has become Naoko's confidante. During this and subsequent visits, Reiko and Naoko reveal more about their past: Reiko talks about her search for sexual identity, and Naoko talks about the unexpected suicide of her older sister several years ago.
Now back in Tokyo, Toru unintentionally alienates Midori through both his lack of consideration of her wants and needs, and his continuing thoughts about Naoko. He writes a letter to Reiko, asking for her advice about his conflicted affections for both Naoko and Midori. He doesn't want to hurt Naoko, but he doesn't want to lose Midori either. Reiko counsels him to seize this chance for happiness and see how his relationship with Midori turns out.
A later letter informs Toru that Naoko has taken her own life. Toru, grieving and in a daze, wanders aimlessly around Japan, while Midori — whom he hasn't kept in touch with — wonders what has happened to him. After about a month of fugue, he returns to the Tokyo area, where Reiko is visiting. The middle-aged Reiko stays with Toru, and they have sexual intercourse. It is through this experience, and the intimate conversation that Toru and Reiko share than night, that he comes to realise that Midori is the most important person in his life. Toru calls Midori out of the blue to declare his love for her. What happens following this is never revealed — Midori's response is characteristically (by this point) cold, yet the fact that she does not explicitly cut Toru off at that point (as she did before) leaves things open.
English translations
Norwegian Wood has been translated into English twice. The first was by Alfred Birnbaum (who translated many of Murakami's earlier novels) and was published in 1989 in Japan by Kodansha as part of the Kodansha English Library series. Like other books in this pocket-sized series, the English text was intended for Japanese students of English, and even featured an appendix listing the Japanese text for key English phrases encountered in the novel. Notably, this edition kept the two-volume division of the original Japanese version and its color scheme — the first volume having a red cover, the second green (the first UK edition in 2000 would also keep this division and appearance). This earlier translation has been discontinued in Japan.
The second translation, by Jay Rubin, is the authorized version for publication outside Japan and was first published in 2000 by Harvill Press in the UK, and Vintage International in the USA.[1]
The two translations differ somewhat. Of note, there are some differences in nicknames: Toru's roommate, for example, is called "Kamikaze" in the Birnbaum translation, and "Storm Trooper" in the Rubin translation.
Film, TV or theatrical adaptations
It was announced in July 2008 that Tran Anh Hung would direct an adaptation of the novel. The film stars Kenichi Matsuyamaas Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchias Naoko and Kiko Mizuhara as Midori, and is expected to be released in autumn 2010.

Written by Haruki Murakami
Through the books, Murakami appearing himself as the one of the best author of Japanese Contemporary World. Comprising two distinct but interrelated plots, the narrative runs back and forth between the two, taking up each plotline in alternating chapters.
The odd chapters tell the 15 year old Kafka's story as he runs away from his father's house to escape an Oedipal curse and to embark upon a quest to find his mother and sister. After a series of adventures, he finds shelter in a quiet, private library in Takamatsu, run by the distant and aloof Miss Saeki and the androgynous Oshima. There he spends his days reading the unabridged Richard Francis Burton translation of A Thousand and One Nights and the collected works of Natsume Sōseki until the police begin inquiring after him in connection with a brutal murder.
The even chapters tell Nakata's story. Due to his uncanny abilities, he has found part-time work in his old age as a finder of lost cats (a clear reference to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). The case of one particular lost cat puts him on a path that ultimately takes him far away from his home, ending up on the road for the first time in his life. He befriends a truck-driver named Hoshino. Hoshino takes him on as a passenger in his truck and soon becomes very attached to the old man.
Nakata and Kafka are on a collision course throughout the novel, but their convergence takes place as much on a metaphysical plane as it does in reality and, in fact, that can be said of the novel itself. Due to the Oedipal theme running through much of the novel, Kafka on the Shore has been called a modern Greek tragedy.
Kafka on the Shore demonstrates Murakami's typical blend of popular culture, quotidian detail, magical realism, suspense, humor, an involved and at times confusing plot, and potent sexuality. It also features an increased emphasis on Japanese religious traditions, particularly Shintoism. The main characters are significant departures from the typical protagonist of a Murakami novel, such as Toru Watanabe of Norwegian Wood and Toru Okada of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, who are typically 30-ish and rather humdrum personalities. However, many of the same themes re-occur in Kafka on the Shore as were first developed in these and other previous novels.
The power and beauty of music as a communicative medium is a central theme of the novel—the very title comes from a pop song Kafka is given on a record in the library. The music of Beethoven, specifically the Archduke Trio is also used as a redemptive metaphor. Among other prominent themes are: the virtues of self-sufficiency and efficiency, the relation of dreams and reality, the specter of the heritage of World War II, the threat of fate, the uncertain grip of prophecy, and the power of nature.