Gold Rush

by Yū Miri, Stephen Snyder (Translator)

A startling work composed of eerily vivd scenes that possess an animation-like hyper-reality, Gold Rush, a phenomenal best-seller in Japan, is a graphic, violent, controversial novel of the corruption of modern Japan and its youth.

Genres: Japan, Fiction, Japanese Literature, Asian Literature, Contemporary, Asia, Novels

288 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1998

About the author

Associated Names:
* Yū Miri (English)
* 柳美里 (Japanese, Chinese)
* 유미리 (Korean)

is a Zainichi Korean playwright, novelist, and essayist. Yu writes in Japanese, her native language, but is a citizen of South Korea.

Yū was born in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, to Korean parents. After dropping out of the Kanagawa Kyoritsu Gakuen high school, she joined the Tokyo Kid Brothers (東京キッドブラザース) theater troupe and worked as an actress and assistant director. In 1986, she formed a troupe called Seishun Gogetsutō (青春五月党), and the first of several plays written by her was published in 1991.

In the early 1990s, Yū switched to writing prose. Her novels include Furu Hausu (フルハウス, "Full House", 1996), which won the Noma literary prize for best work by a new author; Kazoku Shinema (家族シネマ, "Family Cinema," 1997), which won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize; Gōrudo Rasshu (ゴールドラッシュ, "Gold Rush" 1998), which was translated into English as Gold Rush (2002); and Hachi-gatsu no Hate (8月の果て, "The End of August," 2004). She has published a dozen books of essays and memoirs, and she was an editor of and contributor to the literary quarterly "en-taxi ". Her best-selling memoir Inochi (命, "Life") was made into a movie, also titled Inochi.

Yū's first novel, a semi-autobiographical work titled Ishi ni Oyogu Sakana (石に泳ぐ魚, "The Fish Swimming in the Stone") published in the September 1994 issue of the literary journal Shinchō, became the focus of a legal and ethical controversy. The model for one of the novel's main characters—and the person referred to indirectly by the title—objected to her depiction in the story. The publication of the novel in book form was blocked by court order, and some libraries restricted access to the magazine version. After a prolonged legal fight and widespread debate over the rights of authors, readers, and publishers versus individuals' rights to privacy, a revised version of the novel was published in 2002.

Yū has experienced racist backlash to her work because of her ethnic background, with some events at bookstores being canceled due to bomb threats. After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Yū began to travel to the affected areas often, and from March 16, 2012, she hosted a weekly radio show called "Yū Miri no Futari to Hitori" (柳美里の二人と一人, "Yū Miri's Two People and One Person") on a temporary emergency broadcasting station called Minamisōma Hibari FM, based in Minamisōma, Fukushima.

Her book "Tokyo Ueno Station" reflects her engagement with historical memory and margins by incorporating themes of a migrant laborer from northeastern Japan and his work on Olympic construction sites in Tokyo, as well as the March 11, 2011 disaster.

Since April 2015, Yū has lived in Minamisōma, Fukushima. In 2018, she opened a bookstore called Full House and a theatre space called LaMaMa ODAKA at her home in Odaka District

Reviews

[Ernst · Rating 2 out of 5]

War irgendwie unterhaltsamer als Tōkyō Ueno Station, obwohl ich hier einen Stern weniger gebe, aber literarisch war das über weite Strecken einfach zu sehr Rohentwurf und geschwätzig noch dazu. Irgendwann hab ich das akzeptiert und fand es dann sehr eindringlich geschrieben, man ist immer in den Köpfen der Protagonisten unterwegs.

Yu wollte verstehen, wie aus Kindern und Jugendlichen mordende Monster werden können, sie hatte selbst eine schwierige Kindheit und verhehlt im Nachwort nicht, dass sie selbst mal zu einer Waffe gegriffen hätte, wäre eine verfügbar gewesen.
Aber gelingt es ihr zu verstehen? Nein, keinesfalls, zu viel klischeehafte Hobbypsychologie (Trauma, weil Mutter die Familie verlässt und der Vater ein Arsch ist), zu viel interpretiert sie in die Figuren rein, teilweise ist es unerträglich infantil, was sie ihre Figuren denken lässt. Andererseits sind ihre Figuren auch ziemlich infantil in ihren Verhaltensweisen. Der ganze Roman wird von lauter psychisch labilen Personen bevölkert. Angefangen beim Pachinko-Inhaber, dem Vater der 14jährigen Hauptfigur, der seine Tochter derart verprügelt, dass sie im Krankenhaus landet. Der 14jährige „Junge“ (so wird er auch meistens genannt) vereint gleich mehrere Krankheitsbilder in einer Person (Neurotiker, Narzisst, Soziopath, …). Kaum eine der Figuren zeigt deutliche Anzeichen, dass sie gelernt hätte auf erwachsene Art mit Konflikten umzugehen.

Mich haben weder die Figuren überzeugt, noch das Setting interessiert, aber trotzdem steckt eine rohe Kraft in ihrer Schreibweise, die mich gerade mal so ausreichend bei der Stange gehalten hat, um es fertigzulesen.
Empfehlen kann ich das niemandem, aber wenn jemand das in die Finger bekommt, empfehle ich das Nachwort zuerst zu lesen. So kann man es zumindest als Versuch der Autorin lesen, eigene Verletzungen literarisch aufzugreifen.

Es ist nun schon der zweite Roman der Autorin, bei dem mich letztlich das Nachwort motiviert hat, überhaupt fertig zu lesen.
Das halte ich aber der Autorin durchaus sehr zugute, sie scheint wirklich nur über Themen zu schreiben, die ihr extrem nahe gehen und wirklich wichtig sind. Der Reiz liegt hier in der Dringlichkeit die sie in ihre Romane legt, weniger in den bescheidenen literarischen Mitteln, die ihr zur Verfügung stehen.

Ich würde von der Autorin in Zukunft nur unter einer Bedingung noch etwas lesen: wenn mich das Thema 100% interessiert.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic, brutal work. Kazuki is a homicidal Holden Caulfield (note: I HATED Catcher in the Rye but Yū actually pulls it off) in a depressing wasteland of a city, trying to wrest some control of his life out of the amoral chaos around him. Unfortunately, he's had no adult guidance beyond the prostitutes and gangsters he visits on his wanderings into the slums, which, along with his wealthy background, gives Kazuki a pathologically inflated sense of his own competence and authority. The result is a story of abuse, neglect, greed, and teen hubris rendered in haunting prose (expertly translated by Stephen Snyder) that includes some of the best evocations of deranged mental states I've ever encountered.

Trigger warning for a graphic gang rape scene within the first ten pages.

[Paul Ataua · Rating 2 out of 5]

At 14, rich and troubled Kazuki spends his days and nights wandering the darker side of his city with friends, taking drugs, and getting up to no good. Bad turns to worse and it finally leads to him killing his own father and trying to take over his illegal empire. ‘ Gold Rush’ promised much but didn’t deliver for me. There just wasn’t enough character development and the story dragged. Half way through I found myself skimming paragraphs and, by the end, I was floating over whole pages. That is never a good sign.

[leti lo yeti · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stelline ☆
Malatissimo. Come uno di quei sogni da cui ti risvegli tutta sudata. Davvero non saprei come altro descriverlo.

[Brad Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of the reason I was so eager to read this book was its sheer difficulty to track down. Originally published in the '90s and long out of print, the only copies I could find were listed on Amazon for around $350—a high price that made me wonder why. Eventually, I stumbled upon a copy for about $30 on eBay and decided to take the plunge. Whether the anticipation affected my perception or I genuinely enjoyed the book is hard to say, but its unique, that I’ll give it.

The book is wonderful, but dark. We're used to a certain style in Japanese literature that typically stays within safe boundaries—nothing too sinister, off-colour, or gruesome. This book breaks that mould in the way shows like The Killing redefined the detective genre. By making the sinister components more bleak, more understandable, it takes dark stories away from fantasy and brings them into the world of possibility—thats why they’re so scary to read.

At times, the novel is hard to stomach. The events are bleak, but what truly cuts to the bone is how real the story begins to feel. It paints a haunting portrait of contemporary Japanese life, showing what happens when much of the moral scaffolding is stripped away. As the sinister acts pile up, you begin to wonder if they, too, are just part of everyday life. That’s where the real darkness starts to settle in. You begin to go along with the moral concessions, and before you know it, you’re comfortable with things you weren’t before.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book fails on many levels. the characters are unrealistic and impossible to identify with. the events are scattered and unimportant. the settings are badly displayed and the overall tone of the book lacks depth, quality, and wit. the book is slip-shod at best. it could be that the translation is poor, but i don't think so. then again, i haven't yet read anything else by this translator, so i'm not 100% sure.

anyway, don't bother.

[Jennifer Nelson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it impossible to identity with or care about any of the characters in this book. It just seemed kind of pointless, and not in an enjoyable way, just blah. It sort of brought to mind a bad Tarantino film in book form, where it's supposed merit lies in how shocking it can be.

[Ikkychann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Discussing child homicide is never easy. It’s a subject so heavy it resists clean analysis, forcing us into a moral and psychological fog where certainty collapses. Any attempt to understand it requires navigating an uncomfortable intersection of law, childhood development, trauma, and ethics. While such acts are statistically rare, they demand our attention precisely because they rupture one of our most deeply held assumptions: that childhood is synonymous with innocence. When a child kills, we are left asking questions that have no safe answers—about responsibility, about failure, and about what happens when a conscience is never allowed to form.

In Gold Rush , Yu Miri uses the figure of a child perpetrator not to shock, but to probe where responsibility actually lives. The novel is not interested in pathology for its own sake. Instead, it dismantles the idea that there is ever a single cause or a fixed psychological “type.” What emerges instead is a picture of catastrophic convergence: a slow accumulation of environmental pressures that eventually make violence feel not just possible, but inevitable. Yu Miri’s focus is never on excusing the act, but on tracing the pathways that lead to it—and she does so with a clarity that is both unsparing and deeply unsettling.

One useful way to approach Kazuki Yuminaga’s psychological collapse is through what can be called a Developmental Failures model. In a functional environment, empathy, moral reasoning, and selfhood develop gradually through attachment, safety, and consistent care. Children learn limits because those limits are held by adults who are predictable and humane. In Gold Rush, every one of those conditions is systematically denied. Chronic abuse, neglect, and exposure to normalized violence do not merely delay Kazuki’s development—they distort it. Violence becomes not an aberration, but the grammar of everyday life. Harm is no longer clearly “wrong”; it is simply how problems are solved.

Yu Miri’s achievement lies in how meticulously she shows this distortion taking place. Kazuki is not written as a “born monster.” He is written as a child whose inner world is dismantled piece by piece. The novel insists that empathy and conscience are not guaranteed traits, but fragile constructions that require protection. Kazuki’s home is the opposite of such a protective space. His father, Hidetomo Yuminaga, is not simply abusive; he is instructional. From him, Kazuki learns a single, brutal rule: “When words lost their meaning, violence was the only thing you could count on.” This is not a passing observation—it is the foundation of Kazuki’s reality.

Hidetomo’s abuse operates as a pedagogy of power. Violence is relational, transactional, and absolute. The grotesque scene in which Hidetomo negotiates for Hayashi’s daughter, Yoko, reducing her to an obscene exchange value, delivers the clearest lesson of all: human worth is measurable, transferable, and disposable. Kazuki’s response—killing the dog—does not emerge from innate cruelty. It erupts from cognitive rupture. The compassion he still carries for figures like Grandpa Sada, Miho (his older sister), and Kōki (his older brother) crashes violently into the moral void his father enforces. His scream—“You’re disgusting!”—is aimed outward and inward at once: at Hidetomo, at the system he represents, and at the part of Kazuki himself that has been forced to internalize this logic.

What makes this collapse especially tragic is that Kazuki’s capacity for care never disappears. It is punished. His attentiveness toward Grandma Shige, his protectiveness of Miho, his gentleness with Kōki—all of these are treated as liabilities. In the drug-induced hallucination where his friends mock his nurturing instincts, their laughter functions as a social execution. They ridicule the last trace of an uncorrupted self. In Kazuki’s world, compassion is weakness, and weakness marks you as prey. His violent retaliation is not just anger; it is a frantic attempt to defend an identity that is being erased. The paradox is unbearable: the part of him most worth saving is precisely what endangers him.

To survive this contradiction, Kazuki constructs what the novel presents as a layered self. Both Yoko and his mother, Miki, observe this transformation with unease. What they see is not a person, but a performance—“anger superimposed over a smile.” This mask is not deception for its own sake; it is the outcome of developmental failure. Having learned that fear and sadness invite annihilation, Kazuki buries his interior life “in some faraway spot.” Dissociation becomes his refuge. He watches himself from a distance, a spectator to his own emotions. This distance is what later makes violence possible: the act is carried out not by an integrated self, but by a hollowed shell trained to react.

The final trigger—Hidetomo’s threat to send Kazuki to violent confinement—compresses this entire psychological history into a single moment. Within Kazuki’s lived logic, the threat is airtight. His father has always used violence. The coach is known to brutalize children. There is no escape route. When Kazuki thinks, “If I get rid of this person, all my problems will be solved,” the conclusion is horrifying—but it is not irrational. It is the logical extension of everything he has been taught. The calm and “strange willpower” he feels is not madness, but the grim clarity of a trapped animal executing the only survival strategy it knows.

Even the title Gold Rush operates as a psychological metaphor. What is being mined is not just money, but human value—emotional, moral, spiritual. Kazuki is what remains after that extraction: a stripped landscape, emptied of resources. His developmental failures are not accidents. They are the predictable byproducts of a system that consumes people until nothing viable is left.

This brings us to a second framework: the Trauma-Response pathway. Where the first model explains what failed to develop, this one explains what replaced it. Kazuki’s psyche is not merely stunted; it is actively reshaped by trauma into something adaptive and dangerous. His behaviors are not expressions of evil, but learned responses to terror.

Hidetomo’s grooming of Kazuki as his successor is central here. The dog tag, the hidden gold, the promise—“Someday this will be yours”—form a trauma-bonding ritual. Kazuki is invited into the very system that terrorizes him. This is identification with the aggressor in its purest form. To survive, he must stop being prey and become a predator. By adopting his father’s worldview—people as livestock, relationships as transactions—Kazuki gains a sense of control. His contempt for the pachinko customers functions as psychic armor. The “ecstatic smile” he wears is the face of someone who has traded vulnerability for dominance. His attempt to give Kyoko money later confirms the damage: even care has been translated into currency.

This adaptation fractures him further. Dissociation deepens into a full survival mechanism. Miho notices it: “You always seem to be hiding.” During beatings, Kazuki’s mind leaves his body, floating elsewhere, watching from outside the frame. This splitting explains his eerie calm and his sense of unreality. Violence, when it occurs, feels almost automatic—executed by the trauma-self, not the feeling child beneath it.

The attack on Hidetomo is the culmination of this process. It is not ambition or revenge. It is panic. The threat of being handed over to another sanctioned abuser seals every exit. The text captures the shift precisely: fear mutates into a dissociative calm. The “irresistible power” he feels is the illusion of agency trauma provides. In that moment, killing is not hatred—it is escape.

From this lens, Kazuki’s monstrosity is symptomatic. Trauma, left unaddressed, does not merely injure—it reorganizes. The “heir” persona is a coping structure built to contain terror. Dissociation anesthetizes pain but severs empathy. Violence becomes the final malfunction when all other adaptations fail.

The novel’s most crucial pivot arrives with intervention. Yu Miri contrasts two modes of response: Kanamoto’s logic and Kyoko’s compassion. Together, they represent what was missing—and what might still save something.

Kanamoto offers structure. He provides boundaries, consequences, and a vision of adulthood grounded in labor rather than dominance. He sees through the heir persona and challenges Kazuki’s claim that he “became an adult at nine.” The question of “child or adult” is not semantic—it forces Kazuki to confront his fragmentation. Cleaning toilets becomes a radical idea: dignity earned, not extracted.

But logic has limits. When Kazuki begs, “Please be my father,” Kanamoto cannot meet the depth of that need. Structure alone cannot hold terror.

Kyoko can. Where Kanamoto works through language and future-oriented logic, Kyoko intervenes at the level of the body. She becomes a sanctuary before she becomes a guide. Her response to the corpse is the novel’s moral core, and Yu Miri stages it with an almost unbearable intimacy.
Kyoko recoils. She vomits. The text does not sanitize this moment or turn compassion into something graceful. Her body rejects what it sees, just as any human body would. But after that involuntary refusal, she stays. That choice is everything.

She cleans him. She bathes him. This is not symbolic mercy or abstract forgiveness—it is physical, invasive, and profoundly parental. For a child who has learned that his true self is disgusting and punishable, this act rewrites the terms of existence. Kyoko touches what the world has taught him must not be touched. She bears witness not only to the crime, but to the ruined child beneath it, and she does not withdraw her presence.

What matters just as much is that her compassion is not limitless or indulgent. Her ultimatum—turn yourself in, or I leave—is not cruelty. It is boundaried love. Kyoko understands that secrecy is devouring him, that dissociation will continue to hollow him out unless he is forced back into shared reality. She offers him connection, but ties it to responsibility. For the first time in his life, care and consequence arrive together.

When Kazuki finally cries, it is not release. It is collapse. The dissociative shell he has relied on since childhood fractures under the pressure of being seen and held. Fear, grief, and guilt—long sealed away—flood back in. Kyoko’s compassion does not redeem the act, but it makes Kazuki capable of feeling its weight. That capacity, the novel suggests, is the first fragile step toward remaining human.

The final zoo sequence distills everything the novel has been circling toward, shifting from psychological explanation into existential reckoning. The zoo—a place of cages disguised as leisure—becomes the perfect mirror of Kazuki’s inner landscape after the murder.

His earthquake fantasy is not escapism so much as erasure. It imagines an external catastrophe powerful enough to flatten all meaning, to make guilt irrelevant in the face of total destruction. If everything collapses, then nothing has to be answered for. In that imagined chaos, cages break and Kazuki is “pardoned.” An act of God replaces judgment.

But the fantasy immediately curdles. The animals are not liberated; they are seized by panic, bleeding into the city as wounded, dangerous bodies. Freedom without structure becomes madness. Yu Miri makes the implication unmistakable: without containment, Kazuki would not become innocent—he would become feral. The tiger that attacks him is his own violence given form, turning inward. Being shot by the sharpshooters is society’s unavoidable response, the consequence he cannot wish away.

The most devastating moment arrives with the sound of a crying baby. Kazuki’s frantic digging is not about escape, but recovery. He is searching for proof that something untouched still exists inside him—something that would justify survival. What he finds instead is a cricket. The sound that mimicked innocence was never a child at all. Yu Miri refuses sentimentality here. The pre-trauma Kazuki is not buried and waiting to be saved; he is gone. Innocence, once destroyed, cannot be excavated.

When the fantasy collapses and Kazuki realizes “it was the cage,” the metaphor seals shut. The cage is no longer singular. It is physical—the prison he is about to enter. It is psychological—the self permanently reshaped by violence. And it is moral—the inescapable weight of consequence. The sorrow that tears through him, the feeling that his lungs are being ripped out, marks the first moment he fully inhabits reality without dissociation. Awareness returns as pain.

The request to take a new photograph is the novel’s quietest devastation. It is not denial, but mourning. Kyoko and Kōki stand in for the family that never cohered. His attempt to smile is fragile, almost desperate—a performance staged not for others, but for himself. The photograph becomes a relic of a life that almost existed, evidence of what he wanted but was never given.

Gold Rush ends without absolution. What it offers instead is recognition. Kazuki was not driven by greed or ambition, but by deprivation—by the ordinary human hunger for safety, care, and belonging. His crime is the catastrophic misfire of a self that was never allowed to stabilize. Yu Miri’s compassion is unsparing here. She does not excuse him, but she insists we look directly at the cost—not only to victims, but to the child who became capable of such harm. The novel leaves us with its most unbearable question intact: when love and structure arrive too late, what, if anything, can still be saved?

P.S.: For all its psychological precision and moral courage, Gold Rush is not without its fractures. These do not undo the novel’s achievement, but they complicate it in ways that are worth addressing rather than smoothing over.

One recurring issue lies in moments of conceptual incongruence, particularly in how Kazuki’s wealth is framed. Early on, Yoko reflects on the contradiction between Kazuki’s immense financial power and his outward appearance: he looks and dresses like any other ordinary middle schooler. This observation is meant to underscore the strangeness of his position—how wealth does not translate into visible difference or emotional security. Yet elsewhere, the text emphasizes highly conspicuous markers of affluence: the Rolex, the gold tag, the inherited symbols of Hidetomo’s empire. These details pull in the opposite direction, rendering Kazuki simultaneously invisible and ostentatious. The tension is never fully resolved, leaving the reader uncertain whether this contradiction is intentional—meant to signal Kazuki’s fractured identity—or simply uneven characterization. As it stands, the effect is more distracting than productive.

A more substantial weakness emerges in how several secondary characters gradually lose narrative weight and collapse into backdrops. Kazuki’s vagrant friends—Reiji, Takuya, and Kiyoshi—are introduced with clear thematic purpose. In the first half of the novel, they function effectively to show how Kazuki understands relationships as transactional and instrumental, even seeking proximity to people he despises. Through them, Yu Miri sharpens her critique of a social world where connection is stripped of mutual recognition. Yet once this point has been made, these characters vanish almost entirely. They leave no residue. They exert no lasting pressure on Kazuki’s development, no consequences, no memory. Their disappearance makes their earlier presence feel illustrative rather than organic, as if they existed to serve a thesis rather than a lived social reality.

A similar flattening occurs with Kōki, whose narrative potential is far greater—and whose absence is far more troubling. Kōki is one of the people Kazuki loves most deeply. He is also present in the house at the time of Hidetomo’s death and is repeatedly described as having an unusually keen sense of hearing. The novel establishes, almost deliberately, the conditions for recognition. And yet, there is no scene in which Kōki acknowledges what he knows, no moment of confrontation, silence, or even wordless understanding between the brothers. This omission is especially striking given Kōki’s earlier fixation on the “monster” inside Kazuki. The lack of any reckoning between Kazuki and Kōki feels less like restraint and more like a missed moral and emotional encounter—one that could have deepened the novel’s exploration of guilt, love, and recognition.

The most ethically fraught problem, however, lies in the way the novel stages Kazuki’s final movement toward realization at Kyoko’s expense. Before Kazuki confesses his crime to her, he assaults Kyoko in the basement room—an act that forcibly reactivates her own buried trauma from the orphanage, where she was subjected to similar violence by boys. This is not a minor narrative detail; it is a profound violation with its own psychological gravity. And yet, the aftermath centers almost exclusively on Kazuki. Kyoko’s pain, fear, and retraumatization are acknowledged only in passing, if at all. She absorbs the violence, contains it, and then redirects her energy toward caring for Kazuki, prioritizing his collapse, his guilt, his salvation.

In doing so, the novel risks reproducing the very dynamic it otherwise critiques: the expectation that women’s bodies and psyches will serve as sites of endurance and repair for male damage. Kyoko’s compassion is undeniably powerful, but it is also costly—and the cost is largely unspoken. There is no sustained space in which Kazuki is made to confront what his assault does to her, no moment where her suffering interrupts or complicates his arc. Her trauma becomes another silent resource expended so that his humanity can be restored.

This does not invalidate Yu Miri’s vision, but it does leave a bruise on the text. Gold Rush is relentless in tracing how violence reproduces itself across generations, yet in this final exchange, it hesitates to fully reckon with how that reproduction can occur even within acts of care. Kyoko survives, but her survival is folded into Kazuki’s story rather than allowed to stand as its own moral demand. The result is a deeply unsettling imbalance—one that lingers long after the novel ends, and one that readers are right to question rather than accept as collateral damage.

[Anna Prejanò · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ritratto appassionato e allucinato di un ingenuo assassino quattordicenne. Un bellissimo libro, al quale non do il massimo solo per il finale, che avrei voluto più crudele. Bellissimo anche per la descrizione di ambienti e situazioni: memorabili la scena del funerale e quella del negozio di arredi funebri. Colpisce lo stile, originale mix di realismo e lirismo immaginifico.

[Daan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Een voor mij te heftige seksueel overschrijdende scène aan het begin met karakters waar je je verder nog niet in hebt kunnen verdiepen, zorgde ervoor dat ik ben afgehaakt. Niet uitgelezen.

[Carlo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bellissimo libro che ho individuato come sempre grazie a un po’ di passaparola e consigli letti in rete. La storia parla di Kazuki, un quattordicenne che da sempre ha una certa dimestichezza con persone poco raccomandabili e amicizie sbagliate. Il padre gestisce una serie di pachinko, ha uno stile di vita borderline fra l’uomo d’affari e il poco di buono, tratta male i dipendenti, la famiglia, ha amanti, compra i figli con il denaro e gli lascia tante libertà.
Kazuki ha anche un fratello e una sorella, oltre a una madre che ha lasciato la famiglia decidendo di vivere in povertà.
Insomma, il clima è particolare e in tutto ciò assistiamo alla crescita del protagonista che in un lasso di tempo molto breve sviluppa la sua voglia di indipendenza, di rapportarsi con i grandi come se fosse uno di loro.
I tanti personaggi della storia non lo prenderanno sul serio e lui vivrà queste contraddizioni.
Personalmente mi è sembrato un protagonista superbo, montato, che crede di poter fare cose non alla sua portata, e che puntualmente cade in fallo rivelando la fragilità del suo essere giovane e non realmente capace di fare ciò che immagina.
La storia non mi è risultata del tutto credibile, troppi passaggi mi sono sembrati decisamente assurdi per un protagonista quattordicenne.
Non riuscivo davvero a immaginare nel concreto quegli atteggiamenti da uomo maturo e navigato, quasi da padre di famiglia.
La scrittura però mi è piaciuta molto, scorrevole, in alcuni passaggi magnetica.

[Angelo Maria Perongini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il giovane Kazuki si muove come un flâneur maledetto in un Paese pieno di ombre. Il romanzo è un viaggio emozionale tra scene crepuscolari di un Giappone marcio e irredimibile, ma anche romantico in un certo senso. La scrittura di Yu Miri sa essere limpida e febbrile allo stesso tempo - ho letto una breve review qui su Goodreads che definisce il libro "un sogno da cui ti svegli sudato" e non saprei trovare una definizione più azzeccata.
Altrove leggevo che un grande nemico del Giappone è la calda stagione, che definiva anche i criteri con cui venivano costruite le case tradizionali (prima cioè dell'aria condizionata): in Oro rapace questo nemico è onnipresente, nascosto in mezzo alle crepe dei muri delle case e delle strade, e tra le pieghe delle pagine.
Tolgo una stella solo perché sono stato tentato più volte di abbandonare la lettura, prima della metà del libro, perché mi sembrava che mi sfuggissero i rapporti di causa-effetto delle azioni e dei pensieri dei personaggi.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for the first time when I was in middle school and it left a lasting impression. Certainly was not appropriate at that age, in retrospect! 25 years later I could not remember the name or author of the book, only plot details. ChatGPT, Google, nothing could turn it up for me. A kind stranger on Library Thing connected me back to it, and I ordered a copy on eBay as it is now out of print.

Just a striking as the first time I read it. Upon finishing it, I felt there were still many details I missed, so I will need to read it again someday. Not going to let my current copy of this book go this time. Holding on to this one.

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to read this before reading her Tokyo Ueno Station and I just hope that the latter isn’t as hard a read as this one. I read a lot of dark work and this one, coming right on the heels of Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings for me, was darker than anything I’ve read in a long time - think Shuggie Bain - it was just really hard to keep reading. Depicting extreme disassociation from society, extreme graphic violence (trigger warnings for Goldrush!), and a damning indictment of Japanese society, this book and Earthlings actually paired perfectly - but now I feel like my heart is covered in soot.

[Debora Miglionico · Rating 5 out of 5]

Libro purtroppo difficile da reperire, ma se riuscite a trovarlo acquistatelo. Viene raccontato un Giappone diverso, un po’ di periferia, meno bello, meno maestoso.
Kazuki è il protagonista della storia, un ragazzo di quattordici anni che si sente stretto tra gli adulti, che ha urgenza di crescere, di farsi valere. Un ragazzo abbandonato a se stesso, circondato da persone che agognano solo il denaro. La storia è cruda, a pezzi rivoltante, ma sicuramente coinvolgente. Sarà difficile comprendere le azioni del protagonista o immedesimarsi, ma rimane una lettura che consiglio ampiamente.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Прочитала в русском переводе И.Мельниковой. Читается легко. Но чтиво непростое, вообще многое из современной японской литературы довольно сложно читать. Говорят, что авторы пытаются разбудить спокойное общество, вызвать на поступки, но неужели для этого лучше всего подходит описание приходов, секса и убийств... Не знаю, не знаю, возможно, просто не вижу той глубины, которую видит японский читатель.

[sparky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kazuki suffers from a sort of violent Chūnibyō (8th grader syndrome). Although this term was coined a year after the publication date, Kazuki fits the mold decrying all adults as stupid and greedy.

Overall, it is a dismal and dysfunctional portrait of modern Japan that gets glossed over in most of the imported media to the West.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am disappointed by the ending. The idea is brilliant, but the story itself lacks development, and so do the one-dimensional characters. There were a lot of non-important scenes, which I wanted to skip. Although the writing kept me entertained to the end.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Buch, dem manche Zustimmen können.
Sein Leben ähnelte meinem, nur ohne Freunde 🤓☝️ und meinem Vater hab ich auch nicht getoetet, aber jedem seins… Empfehlenswert wenn man Cracky lebt und keinen Lebenssinn mehr sieht

[Patty]

Going to remind myself of the philosophy that life is too short to read books you don’t like, or in this case that really disturb you straight off the bat.

[Simon Puglisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

A disturbingly different Japan.

[Anthony Gerace · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s kind of, “budget Mishima” or maybe I just don’t really love Yu Miri? I don’t know. This one… didn’t do much for me and it was a lot of misery without a lot of payoff.

[Lara Facchi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Troppo violento, troppo esplicito, troppo disperato: la discesa negli abissi di nichilismo del protagonista è respingente, rendendo la lettura difficile e faticosa.

[Susanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bret Easton Ellis ma cento volte più interessante e molto meno egoriferito.

[inside_the_hard-boiled_wonderland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing, messy, scary, yet I think this could happen and maybe it already happened and is still happening in the underbelly of our society; hidden well within the dark corners of the world so no one can see/know except those already inside.

And here we have Yu Miri, maybe, letting us see a small glimpse of what it's like there.

I would not try to understand everything that went wrong with Kazuki's character but living and growing up in a very unhealthy, inappropriate, dark, dysfunctional environment is never a good influence on a child's mind especially if there's no escape in sight and no responsible adult around. Reading about the things that happened in this novel is just too much even for an "adult" like me and more so if experienced by the mere 14-year old mc of the story (and the worst part is that the traumatizing events happened way earlier). I just couldn't and wouldn't want to imagine more than what's already narrated here. This is just too heartbreaking. Part of me wanted someone to get him out of there — yet part of me thinks he's into deep already.

Tread lightly. This novel is a tough, heavy read. I almost dropped/DNF this one.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took a while in the beginning to really get into the gist of the book. Overall, the twisted scenarios is what glued me to finish till the end. The description of each scene has given me an in-depth feel to the main character, Kazuki. To be 14 years old and have the world at your leisure seems to be the life for most teenagers. To gain so much by eliminating your "threat" but its the consequences you have to face for that elimination. It was an interesting read and I am looking forward to finding more translations of the authors' books.

[Miki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Goodreads' rating system doesn't capture how I feel about this book. I wouldn't necessarily say that I "liked" or "really liked" Miri Yu's "Good Rush." This book is heavy with disturbing scenes and imagery and I would not recommend for those faint of heart. For me personally, after finishing I wanted to watch funny YouTube videos to lift up my spirits...

I would; however, recommend "Gold Rush" as a good introduction to Japan--not a charming Miyazaki-esque or a glamorized Japan--but a dark, decaying contemporary Japan and its lost youth.

[Alessandro Margheriti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mi ha colpito molto, questo libro.
Molto pulp e visionario, ma nello stesso tempo molto legato alla realtà.
Ed è una realtà drammatica, fatta di stupri, violenze, denaro e potere, e che manca di stabilità, protezione e legami affettivi.
E come il protagonista imparerà a sue spese, tutto questo non è un videogame, un role-play, perché non ci sono regole per vincere, trucchi o manuali sulle strategie da adottare.

[Zutsuu · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book when I was in my 1st year of university. More than 6 years passed and tbh, I felt that I would have enjoyed this book when I read it back then as soon as when I purchased it. There were just so many thoughts and happenings in this book which I believe I would have related too if I were much much younger.

[Sae-chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contrary to the title, there was nothing golden, nothing rushing. The story oozed like gooey slick black oil. Slowly, quietly, staining everything it came in contact with.

But indeed, it was gold rush. Funny how gold seems to demand the very core of human being in exchange of its glory.