Coin Locker Babies
Ryu Murakami
 It is the surreal story of two boys, Hashi and Kiku, who were both abandoned by their mothers during infancy and locked in coin lockers at a Tokyo train station in the summer of 1972. Both boys become wards of the Cherryfield Orphanage in Yokohama, where the tough and athletic Kiku comes to the defense of the slight, and often picked on, Hashi. They are adopted by foster parents, the Kuwayamas (the wife is Zainichi Korean) who live on an island off Kyushu. At the age of 16 both find themselves in a diseased urban wasteland in Tokyo named Toxitown. Hashi, whose voice has deep effects on those who hear it, becomes a bisexual rock star, employed by an eccentric producer named D. Kiku becomes a pole vaulter and with his girlfriend Anemone, a model who has converted her condo into a swamp for her crocodile, searches for a substance named DATURA in order to take his revenge upon the city of Tokyo and destroy it. Along the way, however, in a search for Hashi's real mother, Hashi and D come upon a woman who turns out to be Kiku's... with grave consequences for them all.