HYPERTEXT WONDERLAND

If you’re unfamiliar with Kiyoshi Kurosawa then I have nothing to offer except the advice that you should get familiar with him. He makes extremely strange films like  Bright Future  - an oneiric tale about two disconnected youths that eventually morphs into a father-son ghost story. I especially love MUBI’s description of the film. 'Enigmatic Mamoru lives alone with his poisonous, hauntingly luminous jellyfish.' I give up if that doesn't make you want to watch it. //

Did you know that the ensure Tokyo subway network comprises of 300 stations? In this there are thirteen lines covering a total length of 300km. For comparison, a blue whale - the biggest animal in the world - comes in at just over 25m. It means that the Tokyo subway covers the same length as 12,000 of these ocean traversing mammals! This factoid is relevant because the protagonist of Haruki Murakami’s thirteenth novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki  and His Years of Pilgrimage   is fascinated by Japanese railway stations. His occupation is to design them; to create seamless internal systems that allow for the free flow of 8.7 million Japanese commuters. Unfortunately it's not a control he maintains in his own life - an incident early in his life causes his childhood friends to inexplicably abandon him and he spends the next twenty years trying, and failing, to come to terms with it. As a long-time Murakami reader, it's easy to pick on the main themes of the novel - the atte...