Ryu Murakami: Soup to nuts photo: Tetsurou Sato In the Miso Soup By Ryu Murakami Translated by Ralph McCarthy Kodansha, 180 pp., $22.95 Buy this book more books most popular most commented Personal Days by Elizabeth Hand The Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York by Tom Robbins Welcome to New York Comic Con by Carol Cooper A Voice Poetry Roundup by Alan Gilbert Etgar Keret's Short-Story Overload by Michelle Orange Girls Love Gay Male Porn Pucker Up by Tristan Taormino My Boyfriend's Kink Is Getting Fat. What Do I Do? Savage Love by Dan Savage Sex and the City Spoilers: A Sneak Preview of What Really Happens to Carrie and the Girls by Lynn Yaeger Our Favorite Writers Pick Their Favorite Obscure Books Summer Guide by ALEXANDER NAZARYAN The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo by Maria Luisa Tucker NYPD Inaction Over a Missing Black Woman Found Dead Sparks a Historic Racial-Bias Lawsuit (9) Sean Gardiner Devo-Inspired Art in East Williamsburg (8) Maro The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo (5) Maria Luisa Tucker David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' (4) David Mamet Runnin' Scared: Deep South of Houston: Is a Soul-Food Restaurant Too Black for Soho? (4) Runnin' Scared: Chloe A. Hilliard

Murakami's cynical depiction of Japanese prostitution departs from his more sympathetic Tokyo Decadence (1991), the coke-fueled s&m farce that he wrote and directed. Contrary to Michel Houellebecq, whose recent novel Platform proffers Thai prostitutes as a panacea to Western societal ills, Murakami exposes the myth behind the exoticism of sex tourism. Of post-coital depression, he writes: "There's not much chance of going to a foreign country for two or three days and finding a woman you like." These digressions take a backseat on Day 2, with an episode referred to as the "Great Omiai Pub Massacre" that reads as pure Miike mania. I prefer the author in social critic mode, but perhaps Frank's lethal sashimi-knife skills will play well on the big screen one day.