the book

[ summary taken from the book ]

a surreal coming-of-age tale that establishes Ryu Murakami as one of the most inventive young writers in the world today.

abandoned at birth in adjacent train station lockers, two troubled boys spend their youth in an orphanage and with foster parents on a semi-deserted island before finally setting off for the city to find and destroy the women who first rejected them. both are drawn to an area of freaks and hustlers called toxitown. One becomes a bisexual rock singer, star of exotic demimonde, while the other, a pole vaulter, seeks his revenge in the company of his girlfriend, anemone, a model who has converted her condominium into a tropical swamp for her pet crocodile.

together and apart, their journey from a hot metal box to a stunning, savage climax is a brutal funhouse ride through the eerie landscape of twentieth-century japan.

[ information and summary taken from wikipedia ]

coin locker babies [ koinrokkaa beibiizu, 1980 ], a novel by ryu murakami, is the surreal story of two boys, Hashi and Kiku, who were both abandoned by their mothers during infancy, both locked in coin lockers at a tokyo train station in the summer of 1972. both boys become wards of the cherryfield orphanage in yokohama, where the tough and athletic kiku comes to the defense of the slight, and often picked on, hashi. the summer before they are to begin school, an adoption is finally arranged for the boys. together they head south to their new home on the westcoast of kyushu, with their adoptive parents shuichi and kazuyo kuwayama.

at sixteen, hashi journeys to tokyo to find his birth mother. kiku and kazuyo eventually head north in search of hashi. the adopted brothers reunite in a quarrantined area of the city called toxitown, where the eccentric cast of characters continues to grow, and bizarre events continue to occur.

the first english translation was published in 1995 by kodansha international ltd.

the japanese musician miyavi released a song called "coin locker's baby".

a film version of the book is currently in production, starring val kilmer, tadanobu asano, asia argento, and liv tyler.

"coinlocker babies" was the original name of the famous japanese rock band the pillows.

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