FICTION

SIXTY-NINE by Ryu Murakami, translated from the Japanese by Ralph F. McCarthy (Kodansha: $20; 192 pp.) Peace has nothing to do with it. Revolution is just a ruse. When Kensuke Yazaki and his buddies barricade their high school in Sasebo, Japan, and spray-paint radical slogans thereon, it’s for a far nobler cause: girls. It’s 1969--hence the title--but in feel and fabric, woof and tweet, it could be America two decades earlier. Students are equally stifled, hormonally hopped-up. Virgins at 17, God love ‘em. All sorts of questions and no answers from parents and teachers who tell them to sit down and shut up.

Author Ryu Murakami--a deserved prize-winner in Japan--has got to be a disciple of J. D. Salinger; Kensuke his Holden Caulfield. “The problem with people from coal-mining towns,” says Ken, “is that they’re too serious about everything. Maybe it has to do with the explosions and cave-ins and whatnot.” Pure Holden. The Catcher in the Rice. Anyway, Ken, a thoroughly engaging semi-smartass, will do anything to impress Kazuko (Lady Jane) Matsui, anything. Listen to Simon and Garfunkel. Quote Rimbaud. Drink tomato juice (it’s cool, it’s hip, it’s American). Foment an uprising. You know the guys’ hearts aren’t in it when you read the slogans: “Reject Pre-established Harmony”; “Beneath the Pavement Lies a Desert.” One of Ken’s pals, no genius, mistakes a Japanese character; “To Arms” comes out “To Exams.”