A Wild Sheep Chase

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (February 2016) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,618 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:羊をめぐる冒険]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|羊をめぐる冒険}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (December 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

A Wild Sheep Chase

First edition (Japanese)
Author	Haruki Murakami
Original title	Hitsuji o meguru bōken (羊をめぐる冒険)
Translator	Alfred Birnbaum
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese
Genre	Surreal novel, magical realism
Publisher	Kodansha International
Publication date	October 15, 1982
Published in English	December 31, 1989
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	299 (US) 405 (JP)
ISBN	0-87011-905-2 (US) ISBN 4-06-200241-8 (JP)
OCLC	19670739
Dewey Decimal	895.6/35 20
LC Class	PL856.U673 H5713 1989
Preceded by	Pinball, 1973
Followed by	Dance Dance Dance

A Wild Sheep Chase (羊をめぐる冒険, Hitsuji o meguru bōken) (literally An Adventure Surrounding Sheep^[1]) is the third novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. First published in Japan in 1982, it was translated into English in 1989. It is an independent sequel to Pinball, 1973, and the third book in the so-called "Trilogy of the Rat". It won the 1982 Noma Literary Newcomer's Prize.

While the original story of A Wild Sheep Chase was set in the 1970s, translator Alfred Birnbaum and Kodansha editor Elmer Luke wanted a story that was more contemporary and also appealed to American readers.^[2] In the novel, Murakami blends elements of American and English literature with Japanese contexts, exploring post-WWII Japanese cultural identity. The book is part mystery and part magical realism with a postmodern twist.

A Wild Sheep Chase has been defined as a parody or a renewal of Yukio Mishima's Natsuko no Bōken (夏子の冒険, Natsuko's Adventure).^[3][4][5]

Plot summary[]

This quasi-detective tale follows an unnamed, chain-smoking narrator and his adventures in Tokyo and Hokkaido in 1978. The story begins when the recently divorced protagonist, an advertisement executive, publishes a photo of a pastoral scene sent to him in a confessional letter by his long-lost friend, 'Rat.' He is contacted by a mysterious man representing 'The Boss,' a central force behind Japan's political and economic elite, who is now slowly dying. The Boss' secretary tells him that a strange sheep with a star-shaped birthmark, pictured in the advertisement, was in some way the secret source of the Boss' power and that he has two months to find that sheep or his career and life will be ruined. The narrator and his girlfriend, who possesses magically seductive and supernaturally perceptive ears, travel to the north of Japan to find the sheep and his vagabond friend. As he discovers that he is chasing an unknowable power that has been exerting its influence for decades, he encounters figures from his own past, unusual characters, and individuals who have encountered the sheep before.

Reception[]

Initial[]

A Wild Sheep Chase received praise from Western literary critics, who found it bold and innovative in the context of Japanese fiction. In 1989, Herbert Mitgang of The New York Times Book Review credited the author with an "offbeat sense of humor and style", and said the book had interesting characters. He praised Murakami's ability to "strike common chords between the modern Japanese and American middle classes, especially the younger generation, and to do so in stylish, swinging language. Mr. Murakami's novel is a welcome debut by a talented writer who should be discovered by readers on this end of the Pacific."^[6]

A reviewer in Publishers Weekly argued, "With the help of a fluid, slangy translation, Murakami emerges as a wholly original talent."^[7] In a review of Murakami's following novel for the London Review of Books, Julian Loose said that A Wild Sheep Chase shows Murakami's "characteristically daft but deft mixture of inconsequence and genre-play". Loose also argued that it has "markedly more narrative drive [than the previous two novels]. Murakami’s talent for small and large-scale musings [...] is at its most effective when rubbing up against a thriller’s no-nonsense insistence on cause and effect."^[8]

Conversely, Foumiko Kometani stated in Los Angeles Times that the novel "evidences both his celebrated flair and his characteristic weaknesses". While praising him as "immensely readable", she complained that the book lacks mystery and suspense until around halfway through, and also wrote, "I am not sure anyone in Japan ever has talked the way Murakami’s characters do [...] [Murakami] seems more interested in imitation than in substance, in appearance and image than in reality."^[9]

Murakami recalls that the editors of Gunzo, a Japanese literary magazine that had previously published his works, "didn't like A Wild Sheep Chase at all" because it was unorthodox for novels of the time. Popular reception, however, was positive and he credits this as his "real starting point" as a novelist.^[10]

Retrospective[]

Today, A Wild Sheep Chase is often viewed as Murakami's first substantial work.^[11] In 2014, Matthew C. Stretcher of Publishers Weekly selected it as his favorite book by the author, writing that Hokkaido is the setting of some of the "most interesting" parts of it.^[12] English professor Lowry Pei described the novel as the one in which Murakami "found the road he has been on ever since", due to tighter structuring and a protagonist who is more comfortable with expressing himself.^[13] In 2017, Bustle's Melissa Ragsdale listed A Wild Sheep Chase as one of the five best Murakami books to start with, recommending it the most for readers who enjoy thrillers.^[14]

The following year, Jeff Somers ranked it fourth among the novelist's books, arguing that "the sheer joy Murakami seems to take in telling [the story] shines through [...] by the end it deepens into a beautiful, deeply sad story of trauma and lost things. It’s a breathtaking achievement, demonstrating the precise control Murakami has over tone and ideas".^[15] It was also ranked third among his books on Reedsy, where a writer noted that the book "is often recommended as a stepping stone for readers new to Murakami’s writing, because the story is less of a labyrinth than many of his others." The reviewer said the book manages to be both "complex and accessible".^[11]

On the other hand, novelist Francie Lin wrote in 2001 that "A Wild Sheep Chase, in spite of its deadpan charm, is to my mind the least interesting of his novels, largely because it appears to rocket along without any real feeling beneath the gyrations of wit and intellect." She stated that it had "jump-cut pacing and sketchy characterization".^[16] Keith Law wrote in 2011 that the novel was lesser than The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore, but he praised its plot. Law described the payoff as "a little underwhelming. The physical plot was resolved, but the philosophical questions and answers remained vague. [...] his best works provide more clarity without devolving into sermons."^[17] Vulture's Hillary Kelly deemed the novel one of Murakami's six "forgettable" works, writing that "this rambling detective story is mostly the splatters of a thousand zany ideas thrown against the page. Dollops of Americana in a Japanese novel that felt fresh at the time now read as a little forced."^[18]

Prequels and sequel[]

This is the third book in Murakami's '"The Rat" Trilogy', preceded by Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. All three books follow the sometimes surreal adventures of an unnamed first-person narrator and his friend, nicknamed 'The Rat'.

All three novels begin from or refer back to November 25, 1970, the day on which Japanese author, poet, playwright and right-wing activist Yukio Mishima committed seppuku following a failed coup attempt at the headquarters of Japan's Self Defense Forces. Some Japanese critics have speculated that A Wild S, heep Chase is a rewriting or parody of Mishima's The Adventure of Natsuko.

The sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance, continues the adventures of the unnamed protagonist. Locations and characters from A Wild Sheep Chase recur, most notably the Dolphin Hotel, the narrator's unnamed girlfriend, and the mysterious Sheep Man. However, its plot, tone, and the majority of the characters are sufficiently different so that Dance Dance Dance can be seen as separate from the "Trilogy of the Rat."^{[citation needed]}

Style[]

A Wild Sheep Chase has been described as "a postmodern detective novel in which dreams, hallucinations and a wild imagination are more important than actual clues."^[7] Mitgang billed it as "youthful, slangy, political and allegorical"; he also argued that despite Murakami's knowledge of American literature and popular music, the novel is ultimately rooted in modern Japan because of "its urban setting, yuppie characters and subtle feeling of mystery, even menace".^[6] The writing style has been called hardboiled,^[6][9] as well as "staccato".^[9]

Interpretation[]

Hokkaido has been interpreted alternately as the hero’s inner mind and a mythological land of the dead.^[12]

In a 2009 article for The New Yorker, Jon Michaud singled out one exchange in the 26th chapter for its multiple references to Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Michaud said that, as with Melville's novel, elements of Murakami's novel are proxies for "the reader chasing meaning among the red herrings of a novel’s text."^[19]

Awards[]

• 1982 Noma Literary Newcomer's Prize

Book information[]

A Wild Sheep Chase (English edition) by Haruki Murakami; translated by Alfred Birnbaum.

• Hardcover – ISBN 0-87011-905-2, published in October, 1989 by Kodansha International
• Paperback – ISBN 0-452-26516-9, published on November 1, 1990, by Plume Fiction
• Paperback – ISBN 0-375-71894-X, published in 2002 by Vintage International

References[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: A Wild Sheep Chase