The Night is Short, Walk on Girl

by Tomihiko Morimi

translated by Emily Balistrieri

I don’t care that the historical record of the mythological Hydra has it originating in Lerna, a lake/marsh zone, and not the savanna, because if you’ve ever seen five giraffes all trying to eat the same tree, buddy, that’s a hydra.

And I completely believe that little kids without constant zoo access might think giraffes are unicorn-style pretend; I certainly did with regards to the tanuki, a little guy from Japan that I had no reason to believe existed outside of its magic-statue powers in Super Mario Bros. 3.

When I finally, as an adult, realized tanuki were real, I did my bipedal robot dance and vowed to find one. It is, however, a quest yet fulfilled–it gives European-tourists-photographing-squirrels vibes–and I think I may have to go to Japan to see a real one.

Imagine, though: an animal that exists, even if it seems like it doesn’t. We, as a global human culture, have conjured up so many imaginary beings but there are animals out that there people think are fictions due to naïveté, youth, inexperience, incuriousness—but are actually just walking around somewhere. Sometimes, you just have to keep believing a thing you mistakenly think, even when you know it isn’t real, just because you think it’s good. Tanuki are pretend; the male narrator in The Night is Short, Walk on Girl is actually a different person in each of the four sections.

That’s clearly not true, but it could have been true, and I like to pretend its true, even when the text–and plot–directly contradict it. Characters remembering seeing the male narrator around: “Oh, it’s you. Haven’t seen you since the used bookfair, right? Well, have some soy-milk hot pot.”

Walk On is a book in four acts, each with a bifurcated narration: the female protagonist and the male “pebble by the wayside” who is chasing her around, attempting to ask her out on a date. She’s sort of Goku-level blithely delightful, initiating her bipedal robot dance in moments of joy, collecting various trinkets on her adventures, stepping into main character roles constantly while uttering increasingly uwu portmanteaus like “funteresting”.

It was a bit of a challenge to get past the first act where she is openly groped by an old man–this type of thing is not my type of thing, and Walk On talks about physical objects of a prurient nature more than anything I’ve ever read–but outside the uncomfortably sanguine sexual assault, the book is pretty silly:

While I was embroiled in that unpleasant drunkeness, I realized that Rihaku was the one who stole my pants and that Higuchi was wearing them, but I didn’t have the energy to confront either of them about it.

In a world where giraffes and tanuki are real, why not allow that a man is actually a veritable pants-thief, or perhaps also a tengu that can fly around for a bit through magic? Perhaps the god of used books and all the rest of the pantheon truly are both real and circumstantialists, which can explain how the basic plot of Walk On is simply that two unnamed protagonists cross paths constantly until they begin to date. The plot is a Rube Goldberg machine that activates the “No coincidence, no story” prayer that I murmur to myself while reading most fiction. Namu-namu.

At the heart of Walk On sits a cross-roads: a narrative that comically indicts narrative coincidence—“Hooray for God’s plot conveniences! Namu-namu!”—while also lampooning written text as such:

“Mr. Higuchi wrapped the books up in a cloth bundle and set off walking. “You know, there are people in this world willing to pay premium to buy bundles of papers stained with ink,” he marveled. “Boy, am I thankful for books.”

The book relies deeply upon both aspects. First, the two narrators crisscross during a night of drunken revelry. Then, at a used bookfair. Next, a school festival where their interactions are further attenuated by having them be mostly through a story-within-a-story, a guerilla play (this is my favorite act of the book). Finally, it wraps up with some extreme magical realism and some happy endings. Or are they beginnings?

Drinking. Then books. Then a play. Then health—or lack thereof—which is an allegory for caprice or luck, I think. The book takes an very “this is why you read books” vibe—things like this simply don’t happen in reality, and that’s the point. If truth is ever stranger than fiction—if you ever find yourself saying, while reading about real life events, “They can’t make this stuff up,” then I posit that you are reading boring fiction. Walk On reminds the reader, again and again, the books can do say anything. They are literally just ink on paper. Go crazy.

Throughout it all, as we jump between the two narrators, we get to feel what it is like to spot our crush in increasingly unlikely scenarios. But while the male narrator’s story is one scoured completely of anything but chasing the girl—and the attendant consequences of said chase—the female narrator has a self-directed life of excitement and wonder.

Ms. Hanuki wrapped up in her egg yolk-colored futon so just her face was peeking out. She had some sake, so I put in some sugar and an egg to make egg sake.
“I take my egg sake minus the egg and the sugar,” she mumbled from her futon.
“No, that won’t do,” I objected.

The book without the boy would still be funteresting—the book without the girl would simply sputter out. It’s not a hard to stretch to realize that the phrase “The night is short, walk on” is a more endearing way to acknowledge how short our time in the world is, how any moment could be a moment where you strap a giant stuffed carp onto your back, take on a hot-pot challenge, or defeat the God of Colds.

Go see some giraffes. Just do it. Carpe diem.

Walk on, girl.