'Almost Transparent Blue' by Ryū Murakami (Review)

While I was looking for a couple of Korean books in the University library recently, I accidentally stumbled upon something I hadn't noticed on previous visits - the rather larger Japanese section just around the corner.  With January in Japan coming up, I realised that this was a sign, so in addition to the two K-Lit books I took with me, I decided to get a couple of Japanese offerings too.  Today sees the first of these reviews, and while the source is new, the writer will be very familiar to regular readers of the blog ;)

*****
I read my first Ryū Murakami book just in time for the first January in Japan event two years ago, and since then I've tried a few more, but one I've been meaning to try for some time is his debut work, Almost Transparent Blue (translated by Nancy Andrew).  A novella running to around 120 pages, Murakami's first publication won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976, and it made waves in Japan with its shocking depiction of drug use and sexual freedom.  Even today, it can be a confronting read at times.

The book starts as it means to go on, with the first few pages not only introducing our narrator, nineteen-year-old Ryū, but also casually detailing group sex, violence, squalor and explicit drug use:

"Reiko pouted and glared at Okinawa as she took the leather thong and made a tight tourniquet around my left arm.  When I made a fist with my hand, a thick blood vessel stood out in my arm.  Okinawa rubbed the spot with alcohol two or three times before plunging the wet needle tip in toward the bulging vein.  When I opened my fist, blackish blood ran up into the cylinder.  Saying Heyheyhey, Okinawa coolly pushed the plunger, and the heroin and blood entered me all at once."
p.15 (Kodansha International, 1981)

From there, the story continues into a description of a life spiralling out of control as Ryu and his friends drift from one 'party' to another, the playthings of American soldiers, scorned by mainstream society - at times rightly so.

Ryū is an interesting character, a bisexual, crossdressing teen at the centre of a group of friends determined to make every moment of life count.  These are hedonistic times, and the friends are open to any and every experience, no matter how unsettling they might appear to the sensitive reader.  The orgy (or 'party') scenes are particularly strong at times, with some of the action verging on rape, even if the participants don't see it that way.

As the book progresses, Murakami widens the scope a little, and we see the group venturing into the outside world of 'normal' society.  This then develops into a clash of cultures, where the drugged-up youths disturb the daily routines of the mainstream citizens, vomiting on trains and scaring schoolchildren out on an excursion.  However, when police burst in on them, we see that in truth they're just a gang of overgrown kids, hiding away from the real world.

Almost Transparent Blue is written in the form of short chapters which, while chronologically in order, appear disjointed and discrete, each an experience in its own right.  While they depict people living for the moment, the reality is that there doesn't appear to be much joy involved; often, the scenes seem mechanical, numb, emotionless.  This is a look at the lost boys (and girls) of a rebellious generation, a group of young people reliant on each other, scared about what's on the other side of their crazy years.

One of the first characters Ryū encounters in the book is Lilly, a prostitute, one of the more grounded characters in the story.  The scenes in her bedroom are the calm amongst the storms, a chance for Ryū to centre himself.  In fact, he's a contemplative soul, teased by the others for his ability to withdraw when he wants to:

     "Well, you mean with Acid?  You'll experiment with stuff like that?  I don't get what you want to do."
     "Yeah, I don't get it myself, I don't really know what I should do.  But I'm not going to go to India or anything like that, nowhere I want to go, really.  These days, you know, I look out the window, all by myself.  Yeah, I look out a lot, the rain and the birds, you know, and the people just walking on the street.  If you look a long time, it's really interesting, that's what I mean by looking around.  I don't know why, but these things really look new to me."
     "Don't talk like an old man, Ryū, saying things look new is a sign of old age, you know." (pp.97/8)

Ryū is definitely a little different to some of his friends - we do wonder though whether he'll be able to come out of the whirlpool of hedonism with soul and body intact...

The intriguing title comes from a scene near the end of the book, one in which Ryū sees a broken shard of glance and marvels at the colours he can see in it.  As he walks towards his apartment at the start of a new day, there's a sense that this is his opportunity to turn things around.  By this time, though, it might already be too late for our impressionistic young friend.  Having come too close to the eye of the storm, it's going to take a major effort to make his way out again.

Almost Transparent Blue isn't for everyone, but it's an excellent (quick) read and a shock to the system - little wonder that it stood out on its publication.  Murakami's novella is a window into a world most of us will never be a part of, and in many ways the choice of the author's own name for his central character is apt.  Ryū is our ticket into the chaos of the scenes depicted in the book; while following him through the streets of Tokyo, we feel that we are being sucked into the hedonistic world of the sixties...

...like I said, this won't be to everyone's tastes ;)

'From the Fatherland, With Love' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

As you may have seen, back in May Pushkin Press laid claim to 2013 as the year of Ryu Murakami, releasing four of his novels (three reissues and one new translation) in a striking series.  I've had this hardback monster on my shelves for a while now - so it's high time I finally got to grips with Murakami's nightmare take on Japan's future...

*****
From the Fatherland, with Love (translated by Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori - review copy courtesy of the publisher) was originally released in Japan back in 2005, so its 2011 setting pushes it into the realms of speculative fiction.  In this near-future scenario, Japan is on a downward spiral, economically weak and politically right-wing, and its former allies are beginning to distance themselves from Asia's one-time powerhouse.

Meanwhile, just across the sea, North Korea is slowly beginning to improve relations with its neighbours, and the US, while sticking to its hardline beliefs.  Of course, if attention could be further deflected from the regime, perhaps by involving Japan in a domestic crisis, this might ease the tension on the 'Fatherland' even more.

The idea the 'dear leader' comes up with is a scheme which, while initially sounding unworkable, quickly becomes a reality.  A small group of elite commandos lands near the Japanese city of Fukuoka and takes hostages, pretending to be a group of dissidents fleeing North Korea.  As the disorganised Japanese government dithers, unable to make a decision to take action which may endanger Japanese lives, more Koreans set off for the Land of the Rising Sun.  With international opinion split by Japan's inaction, it appears that Fukuoka is destined to become a rebel North Korean province.  However, anyone who has read a Murakami book before will know that even in mild-mannered Japan, there are a few people who are not averse to a little ultra-violence...

From the Fatherland, with Love is a long roller-coaster of a novel, an attempt to analyse the state of the Japanese nation, take a peek behind the Iron Curtain dividing North Korea from the rest of the world, and write a scenario which would be best made into an action movie.  How to describe it?  How about Tom Clancy meets Pokémon?  There can't be many novels which switch between cabinet discussions and a teenager whose weapons of choice are metal boomerangs with serrated edges...

One of the more interesting features of the novel is its focus on the North Koreans, and Murakami (who interviewed defectors from the country) does a great job of describing them.  The invaders are lean, mean fighting machines, albeit puzzled by lacy undies, bright lights and free tissues from taxi companies.  When the first commandos are en route to Japan, they are asked to make small talk to practise their disguise of South Korean tourists - and struggle:

"And yet they had not learned how to engage in the joking banter of South Korean tourists.  Time had not allowed for that, and such instruction was unavailable in any case.  There was no shortage of instructors in the art of killing people or blowing up facilities, but no-one in the Republic could teach you how to behave like a traveler from the puppet regime."
p.94 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

Killing?  Yes.  Banter?  Not in North Korea...

The writer gradually focuses more on the individuals, rendering them a little more human.  The effect of relative freedom - and nice clothes - has an apparent softening effect on them, and there are times when they don't appear all that different from the locals.  Every so often, though, the writer reminds us (and usually not very subtly) that they are still, first and foremost, killing machines.

Murakami also turns his critical eye on Kasumigaseki, the Japanese governmental precinct in Tokyo, and he's not too happy with what he sees there.  The government is old-fashioned and moribund, totally unable to deal with new threats, concentrating on sealing off Fukuoka after the invasion instead of actually dealing with the real issue:

"Yamagiwa felt a sense of hopelessness wash over him.  On turning fifty, he had gone through a midlife crisis and had been on anti-depressants for a couple of years.  Here in the crisis-management room, watching these people frantically at work, he got the same sour taste of futility that sometimes made him feel like saying to hell with it all.  At first he thought it was because he'd been left out in the cold, but he was beginning to feel it was more than that.  Being outside the frenzy of the round table, he had become painfully aware of the Japanese government's inability to see the big picture - and if he could see it, no doubt other outsiders could see it too." (p.230)

There is a dawning realisation that Japan just can't cope with this attack, and this fiddling while Fukuoka burns shows the weakness of democracy.  In a landscape of vested interests, politicians are scared of taking risks and unwilling to make unpopular, risky sacrifices.

You'd expect the inhabitants of Fukuoka to feel upset at being abandoned, and they are, initially at least.  However, not everyone is distraught, and as time passes, many people start to think that it's time to get on with life.  Having been abandoned by Tokyo (which sees them as country hicks anyway), the locals begin to cooperate more willingly with the 'Koryos'.  It's a Stockholm Syndrome of sorts, and the daily television broadcasts by a photogenic and charismatic Korean soldier help make the occupation more palatable.  Only those locals who have closer dealings with the Koreans know that the friendliness doesn't extend much below the surface.

So, with the Japanese government neglecting its responsibilities, it's inevitably left to the outcasts, the dregs of society, to do something about it.  One of the survivors of the apocalyptic events of of Popular Hits of the Showa Era has gathered a gang of misfits around him, and unable to fit into society, they don't have same inhibitions as most Japanese people.  While they initially see the invaders as kindred spirits, eventually they decide that this is the real enemy - and set about plotting a way to bring the invaders down for good :)

As I mentioned at the start of my post, Pushkin released four of Murakami's works this year, and having read them all, the choices make perfect sense.  In a way, the three reissues prepare you for the style, location and ideas of From the Fatherland, with Love.  We have the gangs living in abandoned shopping towns of Coin Locker Babies, the joys of youth (and Kyushu!) from Sixty-Nine and, of course, the crazed losers of Popular Hits of the Showa Era.  This novel is Murakami's big (ambitious) attempt to tie it all together - and in this regard it's very similar to what namesake Haruki was trying with 1Q84...

...however, there is another, less flattering, similarity with that book - it's too long.  There are frequent info dumps, pages and pages of unnecessary information which can slow the story down.  At times, the writer gives lists of names, with plenty of unnecessary backstories - there's a Tolstoyan list of characters at the start of the book, but most of them are superfluous.  There's also a whole lot of of repetition, and you can't help feeling that the book needed some more critical editing (obviously, writers called Murakmi are immune to this sort of editorial interference...).

Still, it's a great story, and one whose ending works very well.  Without giving too much away, there aren't too many happy endings floating around - real life doesn't work like a Hollywood movie.  And Murakami?  Yes, he's synonymous with violence, sex and darkness, but these four works show a far more versatile author than you'd think. He's definitely a writer whose novels warrant a try :)

'Sixty-Nine' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

Today marks the third stop on my Ryu Murakami tour, and it's time to get away from the capital.  This time we're on the southern island of Kyushu, with a schoolkid who just wants to have fun.  Oh, and we're heading back to the sixties...

*****
Sixty-Nine (translated by Ralph McCarthy, review copy courtesy of Pushkin Press) is the story of a year in the life of writer Kensuke Yazaki.  At the ripe of old age of thirty-two, he is looking back to his final year of high school in 1969, a time of music, free love and university demonstrations.  Well, in Tokyo perhaps - things are a little different in the provincial town of Sasebo...

Stuck in a small town miles from anywhere, where the only people having fun are the sailors on the US navy base, Ken wants to rebel and comes up with a couple of crazy ideas.  His first plan, a barricade of the school, brings him a certain notoriety, and he then decides that what Sasebo really needs is an arts festival, a celebration of all things cultural (it is the sixties, after all).  He has little clue how to do it all, but he is definitely of the 'if you plan it, they will come' school of thought.  Ken is a young firebrand, a rebel with a cause - the cause just happens to be impressing the beautiful Kazuko Matsui...

Sixty-Nine is a great read.  It's hugely entertaining, very funny in parts, a reminder that our school years weren't quite as bad as we sometimes imagine them.  While the writing occasionally slips into teen fiction, there's always a little more beneath the surface (and Murakami is most definitely an adult writer...).  The story takes us back to the end of the sixties in the sticks, where the kids are desperately trying to imitate what they think is happening in major world centres.

The centre of the book is the character of Ken, and he's the best one Murakami has come up with in the three books I've read so far.  He's brilliantly selfish, completely shallow - and yet he's an irrestible, loveable kid.  Typically hormone-driven, his mad quixotic plans are fuelled by lust, and he'll run any risk (and offend any onlooker) in an attempt to impress the object of his desire.  Cast her in the lead role of his play?  No worries.  Steal a friend's LP to 'lend' to his potential girlfriend?  Done ;)

He's also fairly clever and more than a little sardonic, constantly suckering the reader into believing his tall tales before pulling the rug out from under their feet:

"The winter I turned sixteen I'd run away from home.  My reason for doing so was that I'd perceived a fundamental contradiction in the entire examination system and wanted to get away from my home and school and out on the streets in order to better think about this and to ponder the significance of the struggle that had developed that year between the student radicals and the aircraft carrier 'Enterprise'.  Sorry.  That's not exactly true.  The truth is that I didn't want to take part in a long-distance race at school.  Long-distance running had always been a weak point with me.  I'd hated it ever since junior high school.  Now that I'm thirty-two and wiser, of course, I still hate it."
p.21 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

However, he's not quite as all-knowing as he claims; he's good at talking the talk, but he doesn't always walk the walk (he knows a lot of books, but he's never read them...)

His energy gets things done though.  It's the old miracle of youth - Ken walks through fire and somehow always comes out unscathed, whether he's up against school teachers, political groups or hulking schoolboys with big wooden swords.  While his friends Adama and Iwase help sort out the logistics, it's Ken who is the big thinker, the one who always comes up with the vision (usually an impressive one).

While Sixty-Nine is essentially a humorous book, there are some serious moments.  Ken's rebellion often comes from his libido, but it has a serious side too.  He is rebelling against a stifling world order as he doesn't want to become another drone, and this leads him to question the filtering system Japan's education department uses.  In a world where adults are the enemy, any support is welcome:

"I felt tears brimming up.  Ever since the bust, we'd been under constant attack from adults.  My father was the first to offer any sort of encouragement.
     "If the revolution comes, you boys could end up being heroes, and the principal could be the one hanging from a rope.  That's the way these things go."
     He started waving the sparklers around again.  Sparklers burn themselves out in no time at all...
     But they're beautiful." (pp.106/7)

It's a touching moment, one of several which pop up unexpectedly throughout the story.

At times though, Sixty-Nine is just plain funny.  The chapter on the school barricade is a great one, even if it does descend into toilet humour at one point (and I chose those words very carefully...).  Other scenes are just, well... judge for yourself:

"Whatcha gonna do with 'em?" said the man who ran the place as we walked around inside.  He was a small, bald, middle-aged guy who looked exactly as you'd expect a chicken farmer to look.
     "We're going to use them in a play."
     "A play?  What is it, a play about a poultry farmer?"
     "No, it's by Shakespeare.  And there's just no way to stage it without chickens." (p.170)

Chickens - just priceless...

The novel is typical R. Murakami style, but much lighter than the previous two I've read.  Whether you're into heavy literature or pulp fiction, you'll love it, and you'll be hoping Ken can pull off a miracle and make the festival a success (and get the girl to boot!).

See - he can write a novel without destroying Tokyo ;)

*****

"Ryu Murakami has no connection with Haruki Murakami"

This sentence comes from a press release that came with my copy of From the Fatherland, with Love (a book I'll getting to fairly soon), and I can understand how poor Ryu must be sick of the questions and comparisons ;)  But...

...a few things struck me after finishing the book.  Let's compare Sixty-Nine with one of H. Murakami's most famous works...

Norwegian Wood was published in 1987, but was set in the late 1960s.
Sixty- Nine was published in 1987, but was set in 1969.

In Norwegian Wood, a loner reads books, avoids political events, and drifts into sex with nice girls.
In Sixty-Nine, a gregarious school-kid pretends to have read books, makes things happen, and chases impossibly gorgeous girls.

Perhaps that sums up the similarities and differences better than any essay ever could ;)
But if you want more sweeping generalisations...

This is Toru Watanabe:

This is Kensuke Yazaki:

And do you know what?  There's room for both in this world ;)

'Popular Hits of the Showa Era' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

Welcome, one and all - it's time for more Murakami madness from Pushkin Press!  After giving me a copy of Coin Locker Babies to review during January in Japan, the small publisher (with the big new web-site) recently sent me a copy of another dose of the inimitable Ryu's style.  It's a little different though: where Coin Locker Babies was bad, this one is plain mad...

*****
Ryu Murakami's Popular Hits of the Showa Era (translated by Ralph McCarthy) is a book deserving of the luridly-coloured cover you see on the left.  We begin with six young men having a 'party', a sad social gathering of inept losers.  Right away, the writer leaves us in no doubt as to his thoughts on the group:

"These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life."
p.14 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

Murakami mocks his creations mercilessly in this first chapter, and when we get to see the purpose of their gathering, a drunken, cross-dressing costume karaoke party on the beach, we're laughing along.  However, the kids are not as harmless as they first appear, and pretty soon the tone changes.  One of the six, sex-starved and brain-dead, follows a woman down the street, touches her inappropriately - then kills her.

Which, as the police have no leads, is where the matter might have rested, were it not for the victim's friends.  You see, this is another gang of six, half-a-dozen mid-thirties women of the Oba-San (auntie) variety, women verging on middle age, unattractive and unloved by society.  The six women, all called Midori, form a tight-knit group, and the loss of their friend causes the remaining five to shake off their apathy.  It's time to get some revenge...

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a black farce, a comic fight to the death between two groups of people from the less-known side of Japanese society.  J-Lit often focuses on the beautiful, the aesthetic, cherry blossoms framed against a backdrop of Fuji-san - it's a refreshing change to see one-cup sake, dubious discos and cheesy dance tunes featured so prominently.  This is a novel which focuses on the working classes, featuring two groups who are not part of the trendy, successful Japan we know.

Despite the over-the-top humour and violence though, there is a serious side to the book.  Murakami depicts two groups of people stuck in a rut with very little to live for, and the added motivation of their vendetta actually brings them back to life.  This is particularly true for the Midori society, who suddenly find themselves becoming more attractive and desirable as their concentration and focus on the feud spreads into other areas of their lives:

"What all four Midoris shared was an indelible, very serious, and very real secret - a secret that served both to bolster their self-confidence and to lend them a certain air of mystery.  And that combination of self-possession and intrigue is what makes a woman truly appealing, especially when she herself seems unaware of it." (p.156)

Sadly, they might not live to enjoy this discovery, as murder follows murder in ever more gruesome ways.  The sad truth is that revenge is a never-ending spiral, consuming those who attempt to control it.

Enough of the philosophising about Murakami's critique of Japanese society - this is a book which could also simply be enjoyed on the level of an action movie.  The two tribes are complemented by a weird supporting cast who add to the pleasure of the book.  There's a film director and bomb expert, a cheerful old man in a gun shop, and a very creepy schoolgirl, who is just... wrong.  Add to this the mental images of the cross-dressing and cavorting on beach to cheesy old-fashioned pop tunes (the Showa Era of the title finished in 1989), and you've got a pretty good idea of what awaits you :)

It's also very funny, and one of the running jokes is Japanese society's prejudice against the useless Oba-Sans, women who are no longer young enough to attract the attention of eligible men, and whose grey existence is made worse by the scorn they experience:

"Do you sell these to just, like, anybody?"
The storekeeper laughed, his wrinkles fanning out like rays of the sun.
     "Hell, no.  Only to people I feel good about.  I like your spirit.  They always say that when human beings are extinct, the only living thing left will be the cockroach, but that's bullshit.  It's the Oba-San." (p.71)

On a side note, it's surprising how easy it is to get access to some pretty serious weaponry in Japan ;)

Popular Hits of the Showa Era is a lot lighter than Coin Locker Babies, but it's still a good read with a few serious messages hidden beneath the bloodshed and karaoke.  I thought it was a great translation, the second from McCarthy that I've enjoyed recently, and I'm looking forward to more from the Pushkin-Murakami-McCarthy connection :)

A word of warning to finish today's post: from the two novels I've read so far, Ryu Murakami really seems to have it in for the good people of Tokyo.  In terms of mass destruction of the major Japanese metropolis, he's right up there with Godzilla.  Please, if you notice Murakami around, be very careful when you're in this part of Japan...

'Coin Locker Babies' by Ryu Murakami (Review)

Pushkin Press, one of my favourite publishers, is well known for its European fiction, but (alas) it hasn't had any J-Lit on its books - that is, until now.  You see, in 2013 Pushkin is going Japanese by bringing out four books from J-Lit bad boy Ryu Murakami.  As you can tell from my picture, they won't be out for a while yet, but if this first taste is anything to go by, they'll be worth the wait :)

*****
Coin Locker Babies (translated by Stephen Snyder) gets off to an explosive start.  A woman leaves an unwanted baby in a train station coin locker in Tokyo, but the boy is luckily found before he comes to too much harm.  The officials name him Kikuyuki, and he is sent off to an orphanage where he eventually becomes friends with Hashio, the only other of that summer's coin locker babies to survive.

Kiku and Hashi become inseparable, but after Hashi displays some unusual behaviour, the two boys are packed off to see a psychiatrist.  His unorthodox techniques have short-term benefits, but the two boys are destined to have trouble later in life.  Kiku takes up athletics in an attempt to control his latent anger while Hashi's way of coping with reality, one he adopts after running away to Tokyo, is slightly more glamorous...

Coin Locker Babies is a bleak look at what happens when you have a bad start in life.  Kiku and Hashi, rejected by an uncaring society, grow up to plan revenge for its negligence.  While Hashi is at times suicidal and full of self-loathing, the enigmatic Kiku is slightly more homicidal, hatching a secret plan to take revenge on the city that spawned him.  Ever heard of DATURA?  No?  Well, that's probably for the best ;)

A very unfamiliar city it is too.  While the usual bright lights of the metropolis are there, Murakami invents a new area of Tokyo.  Toxitown is an abandoned quarter, a chemical waste dump surrounded by barbed-wire fencing and government security officers with automatic weapons.  However, it's far from impossible to get in, and once you do, you find yourself in a parallel society where anything is possible.  Sex, drugs, rock and roll and casual violence - for a pair of messed up kids with a death wish, it's just like coming home.

It's hard to avoid comparisons with a certain other Japanese writer, and not just because of the name.  The two Murakamis were born just a few years apart and burst onto the literary scene around the same time.  Both write books about people who feel alienated from Japanese society - but the similarities stop there.  While Haruki writes fairytale fantasies, Ryu's tales (on the strength of this one) are decidedly more Grimm.  Haruki's characters exist on the margins of respectable life; Ryu's live deep in the alternative underground world.  Haruki's creations are trying to cope with society, but Ryu's are attempting to destroy it...

Coin Locker Babies is a great story, a 500-page novel which avoids the usual quaint J-Lit clichés and takes a good hard look at the underbelly of Japanese society.  There are no tea ceremonies or beautiful gardens here - it's urban sprawl for most of the way.  As Hashi muses:

"From outer space, Tokyo must look like a big, bright blob with no place to hide from the light.  It seemed to penetrate every barrier, the smokiest glass, the thickest membrane, to find its way into every corner of every room, every nook and cranny, every bird's nest and beehive.  There was nowhere to run, nowhere they couldn't find you by your shadow."
p.70 (Pushkin Press, 2013)

Kiku eventually ends up down in Okinawa, swapping the urban jungle for the real thing, but no matter how hard the two boys try, they can't escape their fate.  Despite all apparent progress, they are still trapped in a prison of sorts:

"Nothing had changed, not one thing - not since he'd let out that first scream in the coin locker.  The locker was bigger, maybe; the new one had a pool and gardens, with a band, people wandering about half-naked, and you could keep pets - yes, this one had all kinds of shit: museums, movie theatres, and mental hospitals - but it was still a huge coin locker, and no matter how many layers of camouflage you had to dig through if you felt like digging, in the end you still ran up against a wall." p.400

Don't expect a happy ending...

*****
To finish off, I thought I'd just let you know of Pushkin's plans for Ryu Murakami in 2013.  They will be releasing four of his novels in May (currently scheduled for 9/5/2013).  This one, 69 and Popular Hits of the Showa Era are all rereleases of previous translations, but From the Fatherland with Love is being published in an English translation for the very first time.  Whether you're a fan or not, this is great news for J-Lit lovers (and a welcome new direction for Pushkin Press)...

...you'll have to wait a few months to get your copies though ;)