There is a world. You can't think of it as Japan or America or anywhere really that you've been.
This book is book one of "The Beautiful World." By Keiichi Sigsawa. First published 2000, Media Works, Tokyopop. This one, English translation, published 2006. Marketed to teens, young adult fiction.
It has episodes in the life of Kino, a young woman, and Hermes, her motorcycle. Hermes has a consciousness, talks, and is an actual character throughout.
Kino travels and stays in countries, or cities, for three days tops. She didn't always travel. When she was just about grown up, an old man came to her town, and stayed with her family. His name was Kino. He questioned the customs of their country, which included having a physical operation when you were 12, making you a grown-up. He assembles the motorcycle from the scrapheap.
Kino leads Kino-to-be to question this growing up business, a serious thing there. In the process he's killed, then they're coming at her with the knife, she gets on the motorcycle and leaves home. Doesn't call, doesn't write.
From there on, the book gets going. These episodes take her to various countries, like her own country, each with some peculiar ways. There's a city that has one survivor in it, because in the process of governing, everyone else got killed. So it's a functioning city with massive graveyards. There's a country of competing cities, who have overcome war between themselves, but this is won by keeping a common enemy in the middle, and periodically going out to massacre them. The book ends up with a city (country) where you compete for citizenship in a series of personal battles, more or less to the death.
Kino and Hermes have conversations, they rest and relax, there's some humor.
Everything seems to be making some statement, about government, the choices we make, mass behavior, personal awareness, and so on. There's one episode that reads like a real parable. Some guys working for 50 years but separately. Something like this: One is polishing railroad tracks, one is dismantling the tracks, and he's followed by another putting the tracks in place.
Kino is tough. She carries two guns, one a more conventional gun which can be shot over and over. And one that has a liquid 'bullet,' which needs careful preparation, good for one shot.
The book reads in a light, breezy way. The customs are so bizarre -- but really, if we could detach ourselves from our own customs, we could see that some of them approach or reach absurdity as well.
The story continues on beyond this book, as the cover says there is an eight-volume series. A piece of the back cover blurb says, "a critique on the inherent beauty of imperfection, oscillates between philosophical and winsome, while remaining consistently and overwhelmingly imaginative."
