'Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey'

Read the strange weird story of a monkey stealing women's names in 'Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey', an occurrence that is all normal in the world of Haruki Murakami, published in The New Yorker on 1 June, 2020. Of course it has been translated by Philip Gabriel. 

A man went traveling in the Gunma prefecture and met an elderly talking monkey at the "ramshackle inn" he was staying at. The monkey has been working at the inn for three years. They drank and talked some more. The monkey told him about his life growing up around Gotenyama in Shinagawa, Tokyo. We learnt that the monkey enjoys Bruckner's music, especially the Seventh Symphony. The monkey eventually confessed he stole the names of human women that he liked — seven names in total. 

“No. They don’t totally lose their name. I steal part of their name, a fragment. But when I take that part the name gets less substantial, lighter than before. Like when the sun clouds over and your shadow on the ground gets that much paler. And, depending on the person, they might not be aware of the loss. They just have a sense that something’s a little off.”

“But some do clearly realize it, right? That a part of their name has been stolen?”

“Yes, of course. Sometimes they find they can’t remember their name. Quite inconvenient, a real bother, as you might imagine. And they may not even recognize their name for what it is. In some cases, they suffer through something close to an identity crisis. And it’s all my fault, since I stole that person’s name. I feel very sorry about that. I often feel the weight of a guilty conscience bearing down on me. I know it’s wrong, yet I can’t stop myself. I’m not trying to excuse my actions, but my dopamine levels force me to do it. Like there’s a voice telling me, ‘Hey, go ahead, steal the name. It’s not like it’s illegal or anything.’ ”

This is a sequel to the first short story 'A Shinagawa Monkey' (published in The New Yorker on February 6, 2006) in which Mizuki Ando forgot her name because a monkey stole it. Through her therapy sessions with counselor Mrs Tetsuko Sakaki, she found the reason why, and the monkey. That monkey could talk, and told her the truth about her life and emotions. The monkey was 'arrested', but wasn't killed. He was released in the mountains in Takasakiyama. 

“I beg you, please don’t kill me,” the monkey said, bowing his head deeply. “What I’ve done is wrong. I understand that. I’ve caused a lot of trouble. I’m not trying to argue with you, but some good also comes from my actions.”

“What possible good could come from stealing people’s names?” Mr. Sakaki asked sharply.

“I do steal people’s names, no doubt about that. But, in doing so, I’m also able to remove some of the negative elements that stick to those names. I don’t mean to brag, but if I’d been able to steal Yuko Matsunaka’s nametag back then, she might very well not have taken her life.”

“Why do you say that?” Mizuki asked.

“Along with her name, I might have been able to take away some of the darkness that was inside her,” the monkey said.

In the newly published story, over beer and bar snacks, the Shinagawa Monkey told the protagonist that he hadn't stolen any woman's name recently, and tried to live a quiet life in Gotenyama. It seemed to be a pleasant enough conversation. When the man returned to Tokyo, he wondered if the Shinagawa Monkey was at all real, or was it all in his head. Life continued. Five years passed. Five years is a very long time by any standard, by a human's and also by a monkey's. Primates age the same way homo sapiens do.

The next morning, I checked out of the inn and went back to Tokyo. At the front desk, the creepy old man with no hair or eyebrows was nowhere to be seen, nor was the aged cat with the nose issues. Instead, there was a fat, surly middle-aged woman, and when I said I’d like to pay the additional charges for last night’s bottles of beer she said, emphatically, that there were no incidental charges on my bill. “All we have here is canned beer from the vending machine,” she insisted. “We never provide bottled beer.”

Once again I was confused. I felt as though bits of reality and unreality were randomly changing places. But I had definitely shared two large bottles of Sapporo beer with the monkey as I listened to his life story.

Five years later, the man decided to write about his experience with the Monkey, and arranged to meet a work acquaintance who's a travel editor to talk about it. That was when she confessed that she forgets her name rather often after a trip to Samezu in Shinagawa about half a year ago, and lost her driver's licence.

The man didn't tell the travel editor about what he knew about the Shinagawa Monkey. Neither did he want to think that the monkey went back to his old tricks because it's a condition that he couldn't control. Love was needed no matter what. After all, it had been five years since their conversation and beer. The monkey might never have had another friend or conversation. The primate has aged, and become more lonely. The human understood how "extreme love, extreme loneliness" would play tricks with the mind.

I was left rather... contemplative. Well, it's the lonely introspective Murakami Man taking centerstage again. I was screaming at him to 'Tell her! Tell her about the Monkey! Let her get her name back!' Obviously he didn't. He felt bad but he still never told her even though he had her number. He simply hoped that forgetting her name didn't "cause her any real hardship". Like seriously. 

In an interview, Haruki Murakami discussed about 'Symbols and When a Monkey is Simply a Monkey'. After all the thing about talking monkeys, education, emotions and realities of life and living, we wondered if the monkey is a symbol for something else and how we should read him and the story. The author then suggested that "it’s [might be] best to see the monkey as simply a monkey, and nothing more." Okaaaaayyyy. It's really not difficult to read this little story as just that. A story, and leave things be. But I have this thing against the Murakami Man, and his uselessness pissed me off again. *proceeds to tear hair out

Was the Shinagawa Monkey back to his old tricks? Or was another monkey using his M.O. to commit the same crime? (A copy monkey?) Or was something else, other than a monkey, doing this?

I really didn’t want to think that the Shinagawa Monkey was back to stealing names. He’d told me, quite matter-of-factly, that having seven women’s names tucked inside him was plenty, and that he was happy simply living out his remaining years quietly in that little hot-springs town. And he’d seemed to mean it. But maybe the monkey had a chronic psychological condition, one that reason alone couldn’t hold in check. And maybe his illness, and his dopamine, were urging him to just do it! And perhaps all that had brought him back to his old haunts in Shinagawa, back to his former, pernicious habits.

Maybe I’ll try it myself sometime. On sleepless nights, that random, fanciful thought sometimes comes to me. I’ll filch the I.D. or the nametag of a woman I love, focus on it like a laser, pull her name inside me, and possess a part of her, all to myself. What would that feel like?