We can also hear the soundtrack to this imaginary movie – the title itself refers one of Takahashi’s favourite songs, Curtis Fuller’s “Five Spot After Dark”, but there several other musical references, from the Japanese hip-hop playing in the 24/7 supermarket to the Scarlatti and Bach which Shirakawa works and exercises to in a deserted office block. Often Murakami consciously evokes the perspective of a video camera, zooming in and out of scene. Much of the rest of the text consists of minute descriptions of sights and sounds. There are swathes of dialogue, reported in direct speech. What struck me about this book (which I read in an Italian translation by Antonietta Pastore) is how “cinematic” it is, in the sense that it often reads like a film script. And, in a typically Murakamesque (Murakamian?) touch there’s also Mari’s sister Eri, an attractive young woman who has decided to “go to sleep”, and who lies in bed in a sort of suspended animation, a cross between a latter-day Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.

There’s also a Chinese female prostitute battered by an improbable assailant, the suave office worker Shirakawa. There’s retired female wrestler Kaoru and her fellow employees at the Alphaville “love hotel”. There’s Takahashi, a jazz trombonist who’s doing his last gig. There’s Mari Asai, a timid student who kills the early hours reading in a Denny’s. The diverse cast which peoples Murakami’s brief novel “After Dark” seems to be a cross-section of this community of outcasts, whom we accompany on the streets of Tokyo over one eventful night. While the rest sleep, those who stay awake form an ill-assorted family of sinners and saints, heroes and villains, hunters and prey. And as the mystics teach us, the night, whether real or metaphorical, can bring cleansing and growth. The night brings hedonist pleasure to some, hard work to others. The night’s shadows hide the blackest of crimes but also random acts of kindness, nascent friendships and loves.

She sheds off her daytime attire, emerging uninhibited, transformed. After dark, the city is a different woman.

After dark haruki murakami review