What do you think?
Rate this book
Rip It Up
Not yet published
Expected 14 Apr 26The Akutagawa prize-winning novel by Kou Machida, Japan’s most outlandish and inventive author.
Rip It Up is the first ever English translation of Kou Machida's award-winning novel, an undertaking over five years in the making and the inaugural title of Inpatient Press's translation imprint Mercurial Editions.
Set in a kaleidoscopic hyperreal Japan circa Y2K, Rip It Up catalogues the misdeeds and misgivings of a down-and-out wannabe debonair who ekes out a meager living at the fringes of the art world, wracked by jealousy at his friend's success and despondent over his own creative (and moral) bankruptcy. In turn hilarious and also horrifying, Machida's pyrotechnic prose plumbs the discursive depths of the creative spirit, a head-spinning survey of degeneration and self-sabotage.
Rip It Up is the first ever English translation of Kou Machida's award-winning novel, an undertaking over five years in the making and the inaugural title of Inpatient Press's translation imprint Mercurial Editions.
Set in a kaleidoscopic hyperreal Japan circa Y2K, Rip It Up catalogues the misdeeds and misgivings of a down-and-out wannabe debonair who ekes out a meager living at the fringes of the art world, wracked by jealousy at his friend's success and despondent over his own creative (and moral) bankruptcy. In turn hilarious and also horrifying, Machida's pyrotechnic prose plumbs the discursive depths of the creative spirit, a head-spinning survey of degeneration and self-sabotage.
Kindle Edition
First published July 7, 2000
349 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
December 6, 2024
People really out here rating down this book because of their puddle-deep psychoanalysis of the protagonist, or because the book breaks conventions in a way they don’t like. Get your heads out of your western/euro/ethnocentric asses and appreciate this book for what it is: an incredible gaze into the japanese psyche and sociology. What an honor it is to be able to read this book in english. Thanks Daniel Joseph for your years of hard work!
August 9, 2025
A remarkable book, and here is my review here: https://open.substack.com/pub/tosh/p/...
April 16, 2022
keroucian stream of consciousness with Buddhism and just the truly unlikeable human factor of dazais no longer human. Just a truly loathsome character
March 30, 2022
There is a conspicuous and inverse relationship between the effort required of a reader fighting to follow Kou Machida’s “Rip It Up” stream of consciousness narrative and the effort its narrator takes to explain himself. In the book’s introduction by translator Daniel Joseph, we are giving a fair warning:
"Machida’s work can be baffling even to native speakers . . . structurally far out, uncompromising in its lack of respect for grammar and punctuation."
But this story of a jerk, which is very much what “Rip It Up” owns up to being, also often gives to the reader, even where its narrator is more comfortable taking from the people in its life. The vehicle of the story, Machida’s striking prose and unpredictable storytelling often does everything you don’t expect it to. And for any student of Japanese literature, this is an important read. Machida won the Akutagawa Prize for the book in 2000, and with only one other title translated to English, this is the best English inroad to an author who, Daniel Joseph explains, has Yoko Tawada, Hiroko Oyamada, Mieko Kawakami, and other notable Japanese authors of international renown among his super-fans.
The story throws us, with no thought for our comfort, into the life of a man who lets his friend die because he’s too cheap to take a van-sized cab and who then walks out on the funeral to hit up a “panty bar.” Financially secure as an heir to a family store that he disdains, he seems to care about nothing and no one but his own way in life.
You can think up most any male type of unpleasantness, and our narrator, a seeming fly trap of societal ills, probably possesses it in spades. As with any book that, like Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange,” tells the story of antisocials, this tale is a commentary on societal ills. And in this regard, the wealth of Japanese cultural references insists on looking specifically to Japanese society for any key of interpretation. But most readers of the English translation won’t have the in-depth knowledge of Japan necessary to understand his commentary. For many readers, the nuances of these criticisms may get lost and even cause further confusion in a novel that is already sometimes a chore to follow.
Machido’s craft as a writer is easy to appreciate if hard to follow. In his flouting of grammatical correctness, Machida is not reliable in what he flouts and when which frustrates an interpretation of his intent on this particular. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” comes to mind as a book that also flouted convention but still used its own grammar rules more or less consistently. Machido never lets us settle, consistently uses tough phrasing and obfuscated segues to move from one place to the next.
An important work in the Japanese library for Western readers, “Rip It Up” does not want to be sorted into a convenient or even likable box in the tradition. It tells an almost unbearable story but does so with so many questions to us about what makes a good novel and how we expect them to be written—how we expect to read them.
"Machida’s work can be baffling even to native speakers . . . structurally far out, uncompromising in its lack of respect for grammar and punctuation."
But this story of a jerk, which is very much what “Rip It Up” owns up to being, also often gives to the reader, even where its narrator is more comfortable taking from the people in its life. The vehicle of the story, Machida’s striking prose and unpredictable storytelling often does everything you don’t expect it to. And for any student of Japanese literature, this is an important read. Machida won the Akutagawa Prize for the book in 2000, and with only one other title translated to English, this is the best English inroad to an author who, Daniel Joseph explains, has Yoko Tawada, Hiroko Oyamada, Mieko Kawakami, and other notable Japanese authors of international renown among his super-fans.
The story throws us, with no thought for our comfort, into the life of a man who lets his friend die because he’s too cheap to take a van-sized cab and who then walks out on the funeral to hit up a “panty bar.” Financially secure as an heir to a family store that he disdains, he seems to care about nothing and no one but his own way in life.
You can think up most any male type of unpleasantness, and our narrator, a seeming fly trap of societal ills, probably possesses it in spades. As with any book that, like Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange,” tells the story of antisocials, this tale is a commentary on societal ills. And in this regard, the wealth of Japanese cultural references insists on looking specifically to Japanese society for any key of interpretation. But most readers of the English translation won’t have the in-depth knowledge of Japan necessary to understand his commentary. For many readers, the nuances of these criticisms may get lost and even cause further confusion in a novel that is already sometimes a chore to follow.
Machido’s craft as a writer is easy to appreciate if hard to follow. In his flouting of grammatical correctness, Machida is not reliable in what he flouts and when which frustrates an interpretation of his intent on this particular. Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” comes to mind as a book that also flouted convention but still used its own grammar rules more or less consistently. Machido never lets us settle, consistently uses tough phrasing and obfuscated segues to move from one place to the next.
An important work in the Japanese library for Western readers, “Rip It Up” does not want to be sorted into a convenient or even likable box in the tradition. It tells an almost unbearable story but does so with so many questions to us about what makes a good novel and how we expect them to be written—how we expect to read them.
January 25, 2022
An artisanal schizo surreal restless work of literature. Imagine if you got to read a Basquiat. Or if the narrator from Notes From the Underground lived in Tokyo and was tripping balls. There were moments that made me lol and moments that made me feel terribly for the scum of the earth protagonist. Apparently this author is a favorite of other Japanese authors like Mieko Kawakami and Yoko Tawada and I get why. There's a unique and refreshing creativity in Machida's prose and it comes through in this fantastic translation by Daniel Joseph - I don't think I've felt tempted to dig into a translators other works before this. I wish I could read Japanese because some of the ideas employed were so good and I can only imagine what else didn't come through in translation.
May 11, 2022
freak shit
October 21, 2025
Explosive, punk, short, hard to read with any flow but you know that going in. Felt I was probably missing a lot of the context of Japanese culture or mood or exact feeling-ness of some of the scenes, but oofie who said a tiny tiny book had to be a quick read. Stuff it in your back pocket and suffer a little, our hero is so anti-social it feels like his own drunken recklessness is what is fucking up the grammar and structure of the whole book... like he keeps knocking shit over and breaking it. Things go from high strung to nasty to in-transit and then rinse lather repeat that cycle. I like having a new reading experience, would recommend but not because its nice to read
December 28, 2023
This short pocket-sized book is a quick blast of nihilistic fervor from the Japanese punk rock singer Kou Machida, aka Machida Machizo. Told in the first person, it vaguely chronicles the descent of a wealthy scion destroying his life one bad decision at a time, but it's more surreal than that makes it sound. Irreverent and uncaring until his jealousy of a school buddy's art-world success sets him off, the narrator then descends into a series of weird happenings that might only be in his mind. Hard to tell and Machida might not care one way or the other. A fun, fast-moving read.
March 7, 2022
interesting book. explosively meandering. scenes blend into each other as if they're hallucinations, and perhaps they are. quite funny. interested to read the more popular authors who are fans of his work. in general i'm not super familiar with japanese literature, especially stuff like this on the experimental side. but it definitely is intriguing enough to continue.
March 8, 2022
Machida does an excellent job of writing sensory overload, scenes where too many sounds press at the edge of your skull. Despite Joseph's attentive translation work, I can't help but feel that I'm missing a lot by reading in English.
May 24, 2023
MC a BAN
July 4, 2024
often confusing, often entertaining
July 28, 2024
fantastic translation
June 22, 2025
So good
July 6, 2025
Surreal, mean-spirited narrative told in a linguistically playful stream-of-consciousness style. An enjoyable whirl through a narcissist’s mind. Loved it.
October 29, 2025
difficult to read and more difficult to understand but this dizzying rollercoaster shows us truth in shades of blue. disgusting and honest.
May 9, 2024
Rip It Up is what I would imagine a Japanese version of Moscow–Petushki to be and that's about as high praise as I can give. I'm sure I missed a lot reading this in translation—and without much context on Japan—but it was still an absolutely wild ride.
The narrator is an total jerk with a tenuous grasp on reality but still jumps between hilarious, imaginative and even sympathetic. The writing itself was a massive amount of fun; the last couple of Japanese works I read had, frankly, boring prose, so it's nice to find something on the opposite end of the spectrum. I knew nothing about the book or the author coming in and I'm absolutely glad I stayed along for the ride. From the cover I half-expected something like Siddhartha and, instead, I got writing where "whatsofuckever" is totally at home with Buddhist imagery.
Between this and American Tabloid, it seems like 2024 is the year to teach me how much fun books focused on wholly irredeemable characters can be!
The narrator is an total jerk with a tenuous grasp on reality but still jumps between hilarious, imaginative and even sympathetic. The writing itself was a massive amount of fun; the last couple of Japanese works I read had, frankly, boring prose, so it's nice to find something on the opposite end of the spectrum. I knew nothing about the book or the author coming in and I'm absolutely glad I stayed along for the ride. From the cover I half-expected something like Siddhartha and, instead, I got writing where "whatsofuckever" is totally at home with Buddhist imagery.
Between this and American Tabloid, it seems like 2024 is the year to teach me how much fun books focused on wholly irredeemable characters can be!
January 7, 2017
He got Akihabara award by this book, but it is the worst work of him. Everything is rubbish and there is no humor his always.
January 7, 2017
This is the book author got Akutagawa award, but to speak straight I don't like. I can't understand why such marvelous author wrote such dull story. Lack of his poetry and rhythm.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews