Battle Royale

As I have been on a bit of a Japanese culture binge of late, on my last trip to the bookstore I picked up a copy of Battle Royale by Koushun Takami translated by Yuji Oniki. The novel is about a group of Japanese junior high students (age 15 or so) who are placed on an island together by their totalitarian government and told they must kill each other until a single survivor emerges. Armed with weapons ranging from Uzis, to hand grenades, to a fork or hunting knife, the students face the last hours of their lives locked in bloody combat. (and, yes, it is truly extremely bloody)

While violence and death dominate the book, with fourty-plus people dying in its 576 pages, there are also some interesting themes, some great character development, a few good laughs, and a resonating poignancy that makes sleeping afterwards a little difficult. The novel, released about ten years ago in its native Japan, was promptly made into a film, never released into American theatres. Given the times, with Columbine and similar incidents on the American psyche, its easy to see why the film would not have found much of an audience.  Yet, these connotations aside, it seems to me that this story is one that today would find a broad base of appeal.

Given the recent american taste for horror and slasher flicks, an adaptation of Battle Royale could probably do quite well. In fact, I would be more concerned that the plot, the characters, would actually get in the way for the modern american audience. Because the truth is, in Battle Royale the young students really start to come alive. (hehe) Even though you know from the very beginning that they are destined to die, you can't help but picking students to root for, and you can't help but thinking about what it would be like to die so young. The mastery behind the novel is this, Takami refrains from making his characters undersized adults, he keeps them firmly planted in the land of youth. Teenage crushes abound in the novel; boys and girls barely old enough to love searching each other out and dying for each other. Their innocence and naiveté  makes the violence around them all the more heart-wrenching. One of the main characters, Shuya Nanahara (Male Student No. 15) spends much of the novel protecting his dead best friend's crush, despite the fact that she must die, simply because this is all he can offer as tribute to their friendship.

Image from the 2000 film Batoru Rawaiaru (Battle Royale) directed by Kinji Fukasaku.

The other masterful aspect to the novel, in my opinion, is the pacing. The novel is never boring. Perhaps because so many characters die there is never a lack of action, however, as many B-list horror films can attest, even death can be boring when there exists too much of it. The reason the pace works so well, I think, is that Takami weaves the action so fluidly in with the storyline, with character arcs overlapping skillfully so that even as one character dies, another is fighting to live. Rather than being a story told from a single point of view, nearly every character serves to function as the focal point of a narration, often (spoiler alert) just before their death. Yet, somehow, all of these viewpoints don't seem too rushed or too jumpy, but rather, certain characters pop up to narrate often enough to blend all of the story together.

At the end of the 550 and change pages, the novel comes to a rousing and satisfying conclusion, with a few twists and turns you just might see coming. (even though you won't quite get right how they play out, guaranteed) Battle Royale is a very worthy read, particularly if you're looking for a well-written, bloody, poignant and enjoyable story.

P.S. Quentin Tarantino, if you ever read this, I think I have found your next screenplay.