Greetings, literature-loving Dharmenians! Last week we let ourselves be absorbed into the beautiful incomprehensibility of Job, and nearly every commenter had a different take on that crotchety Old Testament god. This week we’ll zip ahead thousands of years to a writer who’s still churning out novels today – how’s that for a flash forward?
Here’s a situation to consider: it’s the middle of the night in an abandoned temple in the middle of metropolitan Japan, and Colonel Sanders (yes, that Colonel Sanders) is telling you that the fate of the world relies on your flipping over a rock. There’s nothing underneath the rock, and nothing seems to happen when you move it, but the man from the chicken bucket seems awfully insistent. What do you do?
Welcome to the wonderful, weird, and occasionally horrifying world of Japan’s most (internationally) popular novelist.