A blog on Japanese books, mostly untranslated, that deserve a wider audience outside of Japan

Tag: 村田沙耶香

Earthlings

地球星人, 村田沙耶香, 新潮社, 2018

Earthlings, by Sayaka Murata, Shinchosha, 2018

*Since this post was written, the English translation has been published as Earthlings, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

This was a hard book to read, dealing as it does with emotional abuse, incest, pedophilia, sexual abuse, and even cannibalism (would you care for some chunks of human meat in your miso soup? or perhaps simmered with daikon leaves?).

The first half of the book tells the story of Natsuki’s childhood. She believes that she is a witch with powers given her by her stuffed animal, Pyuto. Sensing that the earth is in danger, he came from the star Pohapipinpobopia (that never got any easier to read smoothly) to train Natsuki as a witch so that she can protect the earth.

Her cousin Yu believes he is an alien come from another planet—his mother certainly tells him often enough that she doesn’t know where he could have come from. They meet every summer for the Obon holiday in Akishina, where their large extended family gathers. Natsuki’s grandparents live in a farmhouse where the family had raised silkworms for several generations. The silkworms lived on the upper floors of the farmhouse, and when they became moths, they were allowed to fly around the house. During these summer visits, Natsuki’s uncles pile up rocks to dam a small river and make a swimming hole for the cousins, they play in the rice paddies, eat watermelon, and welcome the ancestors back at the start of Obon with fire (mukae-bi) and send them off again at the end of Obon (okuri-bi). These scenes were warm and really effective in creating a sense of nostalgia, even if it is just borrowed. The warmth of her grandparents and aunts and uncles makes it that much harder to read about the emotional abuse and neglect Natsuki experiences at home.

It is perhaps this abuse and constant denigration that explains why Natsuki sees the world as a factory. In her eyes, the neighborhood she lives in is a warren of burrows for humans. The children will one day be shipped from the factory, where they will be trained so that they can bring food back to their own nests and produce children. Natsuki also sees herself as the family garbage can—when her parents’ and sister’s pent-up anger explodes, Natsuki takes the brunt of it.

Part 2 ends with a bang, when Natsuki is still a child, and quietly takes up the story again when she is 34. Instead of fantasizing about Pyuto and earthling factories, we get a string of quotidian details about the mineral water she has bought, her husband watering their house plants, and the unseasonably warm weather for November. But Murata dispelled my concern that Natsuki had just become another cog in the factory a few pages later. Both Natsuki and her husband have refused to be brainwashed, but they know they will only be allowed to stay in the factory if they pretend they are properly functioning parts. They had found each other on a site out of the public eye for people looking for partners and help with marriage, debt, and suicide. To escape their parents, they married in name only but live separate lives. Natsuki’s husband loves to hear stories about Akishina. It’s when they go together to visit and meet up with Yu again that the story really turns grotesque. Frankly, it felt like a betrayal when Murata tore down the almost idyllic picture of Natsuki’s family home by turning it into the setting for a horror show.

Due to the dark nature of this book and the difficulty in keeping my gag reflex in check, especially in the last 40 pages of this book, I had to read lighter books in tandem for relief. One of these was 偽姉妹 (Fake Sisters), the latest novel by Nao-cola Yamazaki (山崎ナオコーラ). Like Murata, Yamazaki is looking at social problems (in this case, an aging society and smaller families) and trying to find a solution to them, but she does so with a light touch. Three sisters live in a house that is essentially all roof, with impractical touches such as a spiral staircase and few doors. Masako, the middle sister, built it with lottery winnings, but when her marriage (amicably) dissolved and she had a baby, her sisters moved in.

The novel is really an exploration of what happens when Masako decides that she’d rather live with her two friends and make them her sisters. She realized, once her sisters had moved out and her friends had moved in, that she had felt pressure to like her blood relatives and be liked in turn. She wanted to live with a family she had chosen herself. She had named her son after Yukio Mishima, but she hopes that he will feel so free in his life that he will be able to toss off his origins and choose a new meaning for his name. In the epilogue set about 40 years later, people are able to enter into family contracts with other people to share assets, help each other through sickness and grow old together.

The main characters in Earthlings seemed to descend into mental illness, in contrast to Murata’s novel, Convenience Store Woman, in which Keiko has a way of looking at the world that reflects back to us a clear, undistorted look at the social norms that most of us take for granted. The sisters in Pretend Sisters, both real and chosen, were also a welcome contrast with their frank and honest relationships and eagerness to change the parts of society they don’t like. By the end of Earthlings, there was no one for me to sympathize with, which dulled whatever message Murata was trying to get across.

To get a full idea of Sayaka Murata’s range, read this blog post on Brain on Books about her collection of short stories, 殺人出産 (Satsujin Shussan).

 

 

 

Japanese Booksellers Award 2017

The 10 books nominated for the 2017 Booksellers Award were announced on January 18, and I have to admit I was repeatedly refreshing the website around the time the official announcement was due. I was not disappointed by their selections (and the gorgeous book covers of many selections are also impressive). The winner will be announced on April 11. (If you are curious, I wrote about last year’s nominees and the winner here and here.)

『i』、西加奈子(著)、ポプラ社

i, by Kanako Nishi, published by Poplar Publishing, 2016

Kanako Nishi was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1977 and was raised in Osaka and Cairo, earning a law degree at Kansai University, a background that she uses in her novels. i is her first novel since “Saraba!” (Farewell), which won the 152nd Naoki prize in 2015. It follows the life of Ai from her birth in Syria in 1988 until she is 26 years old. She is adopted by a couple in America, and lives in New York until elementary school, when she moves to Japan. The novel begins with an assertion by the professor of her theoretical math class that “i does not exist in this world.” He is speaking of the imaginary number “i,” but of course it is also the protagonist’s name, refers to the “I” denoting our personal identity, and means “love” in Japanese. This neatly sums up the running theme in this book of Ai’s search for the value of her own existence. She tracks the number of deaths in disasters like the Tohoku earthquake, terrorist attacks like the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the outbreak of the Ebola virus and wars in the Middle East, and searches for reasons that can explain why she has escaped such disasters.

『暗幕のゲルニカ』、原田マハ(著)、新潮社

Guernica Undercover, by Maha Harada, Shinchosha Publishing, 2016

Maha Harada studied art at university and made this her first career, even working at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She published her first novel in 2006, and often weaves art history into her novels. In Guernica Undercover, the tapestry copy of Picasso’s Guernica, displayed on the wall of the United Nations Building in New York City, disappears one day in 2003. The story moves between Paris before the war, current-day New York, and Spain in a thrilling art novel, a genre that Harada seems to have created singlehandedly.

『桜風堂ものがたり』、村山早紀(著)、PHP研究所

The Story of Ofudo, by Saki Murayama, PHP Institute, Inc., 2016

Issei Tsukihara worked in a bookshop located in a department store and gained a reputation for finding treasures among the stacks of books. However, he takes responsibility for a shoplifting incident and has to quit his job. Hurt and at a loss, Issei travels to meet an elderly man he had met on the Internet, who is struggling to run a bookstore in a rundown village. I can easily understand why booksellers would nominate this book for the Booksellers Prize!

『コーヒーが冷めないうちに』、川口俊和(著)、サンマーク出版

Before the Coffee Cools, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Sunmark Publishing, 2016

This book is about a seat in a coffee shop called Funiculi Funicula that can bring you back to the past. You would think this would attract a steady stream of customers to the coffee shop, but it is usually almost empty because several annoying rules ruin its appeal, including the limitation that you can only go back and visit people who have been to the coffee shop before; you can’t change the present, no matter what; and your time in the past starts when your coffee is poured and ends once the coffee has gone cold. The book cover promises “heart-warming miracles” in this story, which would normally have made me lose all interest in reading this book. However, since it has been nominated I’m giving it a chance, and halfway into the book, I think Kawaguchi’s punchy sense of humor redeems it from the status of Hallmark greeting card sentiment. [Edited to add that I have now finished this book and am sad to report that, while I initially enjoyed it as something light to read while I brushed my teeth, it quickly descended into bathos, with obvious attempts to manipulate readers’ emotions and make us cry.]

『コンビニ人間』、村田沙耶香(著)、文藝春秋

Convenience Store People, by Sayaka Murata, Bungeishunju, 2016

I wrote about this book, which won the 155th Akutagawa Prize, in detail here. This short novel is about Keiko, a young woman who has worked at a convenient store for 18 years and finds comfort in the routine this job offers. She has never understood how to act like everyone else, but the manuals spelling out every movement in a convenient store are a lifesaver for her. The turning point comes when Shiraha, an abhorrent misogynist, begins working at the convenient store. Keiko’s unusual perspective allows us to feel sympathy even for him, and highlights the strange ways in which identity is constructed and we become constricted within them.

『ツバキ文具店』、小川糸(著)、幻冬舎

Tsubaki Stationery Store, by Ito Ogawa, Gentosha, 2016

The main character, Hatoko (named after the hato, or doves, that flock to the famous Shinto shrine Tsurugaoka Hachimangu), is only in her 20s but has now succeeded her grandmother to become the 11th in a long line of scribes. She lives in the old family house that does double-duty as a stationery store, where she writes new year’s cards, love letters, letters breaking off relationships, and anything else her customers request. This is a quiet book that clearly conveys Ogawa’s love for Kamakura, where she lives. The book starts with a description of how Hatoko spends her mornings, sweeping in front of the store and carefully polishing the house’s floors while the water for her tea comes to a boil. After taking a break with a cup of bancha, she puts fresh water by the stone marking the grave in which old letters are buried. This slow pace continues throughout the book, which is broken up into a section for each season. (I have reviewed it in more detail here.)

『罪の声』、塩田武士(著)、講談社

The Voice of the Crime, by Takeshi Shiota, Kodansha, 2016

This novel is a fictional attempt to solve the Glico Morinaga case, an extortion case targeting the major candy companies Glico and Morinaga that was never solved. In 1984, Katsuhisa Ezaki, the president of Glico, was kidnapped, and a ransom demand was made. Ezaki managed to escape, but company property was set on fire and someone calling himself “The Monster with 21 Faces” began sending letters claiming that Glico candy had been poisoned. The extortion efforts subsequently targeted Morinaga and Fujiya, and only ended with the suicide of the Shiga Prefecture police superintendent, apparently worn down by harassing letters from the Monster with 21 Faces and shame at his failure to find the culprit.

This novel begins 31 years after the incident as a newspaper reporter tries to find the criminal. At the same time, a man realizes that the voice of the person demanding the ransom was his own voice as a child and also tries to solve the crime. The police ended up conjecturing that yakuza groups were involved, so I’m curious to see how Takeshi Shiota solves this puzzle, which  would be familiar to an entire generation growing up at the end of the Showa era.

『みかづき』、森絵都(著)、集英社

Crescent Moon, by Eto Mori, Shueisha, 2016

This novel starts in 1963 and covers the evolution of juku, a private school offering tutoring after regular school hours, through the story of Goro and Chiaki and their children. Although he does not have a teaching certificate, Goro offers supplementary education in an elementary school. Chiaki recognizes his talent for teaching and convinces him to start a juku with her in a rented house in Chiba. During WWII, Chiaki saw how public education was harnessed to the ends of the state in teaching children patriotism, and this sends her searching for alternatives. With the baby boom and Japan’s economic growth in the background, Chiaki and Goro look for the “ideal” form of education while their children question whether such a thing even exists.

『蜜蜂と遠雷』、恩田陸(著)、幻冬舎

Honeybees and Distant Thunder, by Riku Onda, Gentosha, 2016

This book won the 156th Naoki Prize this month, so it has already become a bestseller in Japan. The story follows four musicians as they compete in an international piano competition, but also brings in the voices of the judges, piano tuners and reporters. The publisher even has a playlist of all the pieces mentioned and planned in the book.

『夜行』、森見登美彦(著)、小学館

Night Travels, by Tomihiko Morimi, Shogakukan, 2016

This fantasy novel incorporates elements of science fiction and horror in a linked series of five stories. The narrator and his five friends met during school days in college. Ten years earlier, when they had all gone to the Kuruma Fire Festival, Hasegawa had suddenly disappeared from amongst them, and now the remaining five have gathered again in Kuruma in the hopes that they will meet her again. As the night deepens, they talk about the strange experiences they had had as they travelled to Kuruma. Morimi said that he chose to set this story in Kyoto because it has so many side streets that would not draw a second glance during the day but become strange and mysterious in the dark of night, which stimulates the imagination.

 

Convenience Store People

コンビニ人間

村田沙耶香

文藝春秋、2016

Convenience Store People

Sayaka Murata

Bungeishunju, 2016 [English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori was published by Grove Atlantic in 2018]

コンビニ人間 (Convenience Store People) won the 155th Akutagawa Prize in July. I usually pass over the Akutagawa Prize winners as they tend to be “serious literary works” that leave me depressed. However, many of the comments on bookmeter about コンビニ人間 ran along the lines of “This book may have won the Akutagawa Prize, but it was interesting,” so I thought it was worth a try.

I was also drawn in by the Japan Time’s description of Sayaka Murata as a “convenience store worker who moonlights as an author.” Murata plans to continue her part-time work at a convenience store because the job provides her with both book ideas and a routine.

(If you’re imagining the typical American convenience stores with their grungy floors, stale food and oversized drinks, think again. You can read about what convenience stores in Japan are all about here.)

The novel starts when Keiko is in her late 30s or, more importantly in her mind, 19 years after she was “born as a convenience store worker.” Although her memories of the period before this rebirth are vague, Keiko does know that she was born into an “ordinary home and raised lovingly in the ordinary way.” Nevertheless, she has always been strange and felt out of place.

When she was in kindergarten, she found a dead bird in the park. The other children cried over the bird, but Keiko grabbed it up and took it to her mother, suggesting that they grill it for her father since he likes grilled chicken. Her mother tries to redirect her by acting out a burial with the other children, but Keiko can only think of how wasteful this is, and how hypocritical it is to cry over a dead bird and then “murder” flowers to put on the grave.

In first grade, Keiko intervenes in a fight between two boys by grabbing a shovel and hitting one of the boys over the head until he couldn’t move anymore. She explains to her shocked teachers that the other children were yelling for someone to stop the fight, and her approach was the fastest way. After several similar episodes, she realizes that she is just worrying her parents and always ends up having to apologize for things she is not sorry for, so she decides to talk as little as possible outside of her home and either imitate others or wait for instructions. This seems to relieve everyone concerned.

Working in the convenience store, where everything has its proper place and a manual standardizes every movement, gives her a kind of contentment. Keiko learns how to greet customers and make the right facial expressions by studying a store poster showing smiling faces. She models her behavior, her clothes and her mannerisms on her co-workers, looking in their lockers to check the tags on their coats and labels on their shoes and then buying the same. This strategy lets her pass in “normal” society, but doesn’t allay the concerns of her high-school friends and sister over her unmarried state.

A poster for convenience store employees telling them how to dress for their job. Nail polish and fake nails are out, and nails must be cut short enough so that they are not visible when holding your hand out palm up. I particularly like the instruction to smile “with your whole face,” including your eyes. (Source: Wikipedia)

Rows of onigiri (rice balls) at a convenience store in Japan (Source: Wikipedia)

When Shiraha, a sullen and awkward young man, joins the convenience store staff, he upsets the store’s equilibrium. Keiko tries her best to train him, but when she teaches him how to neatly arrange products on the shelves, he protests that men are not suited to this kind of work: “Ever since the Jomon period [14,000 – 300 BCE], men have gone out to hunt and women have protected the home and gone out to collect berries and wild grass. Women’s brain structure makes them suited for this kind of work.” Keiko doesn’t take this personally and, true to form, just tells him that “Convenience store employees are not men or women, but just store employees.”

Needless to say, Shiraha does not last long in this line of work, but Keiko decides that a paper marriage with Shiraha would satisfy social norms, reassure her family and friends, and give Shiraha a refuge at the same time. We know from the beginning that there is no way this will end well. Keiko and Shiraha respond to their sense of isolation in opposing ways: Keiko by mirroring those around her and Shiraha by ostracizing everyone around him with his inflated sense of self-importance so that, when he is inevitably isolated, he can blame others for it.

He is an unabashed misogynist, and yet even when he calls Keiko a dried-up, middle-aged virgin, his insults just bounce off of her. This is exactly what makes the book so interesting. Murata’s use of a first person narrative together with a narrator who has little self-awareness creates a sense of dislocation—we watch Keiko from a distance rather than with the sense of intimacy that a first-person narrator usually creates. We cannot quite relate to her, and yet the “normal” people in the story seem like horrific caricatures as they push her to conform to standards that seem arbitrary as seen from Keiko’s perspective. I was aghast at Shiraha’s views of the world, but gradually found that my disgust was tempered by an inability to relate to Keiko’s co-workers and friends, the supposed exemplars of normal society.

One of Shiraha’s pet theories is that the modern world is still stuck in the Jomon period:

I read history books to try and figure out when the world went wrong. You look back at the Meiji period, Edo period, Heian period, no matter how far you go back, the world is just on the wrong track—even if you go all the way back to the Jomon period! … And then I realized: the world is no different than it was during the Jomon period! People who are no use to the village are eliminated, both men who don’t go out hunting and women who don’t have babies. We keep talking about modern society and individualism but all along, people who don’t try to fit in are interfered with, forced into shape and ultimately pushed out of the village.

Keiko claims that “Unlike Shiraha, I just don’t care about most things. I don’t really have my own will, so I don’t mind just following along with village principles.” Even this modest ambition seemed to be beyond her reach, and in the end I couldn’t help but sympathize with Shiraha’s assertion that “This world does not recognize foreign objects. I’ve been forced to suffer from this for my whole life.” This novel serves as a condemnation of a society in which there is no place for people like Keiko and Shiraha.

So as not to end on too somber of a note (and there’s plenty of humor in this book), have a listen to the Konbini Store song!

© 2024 Tsundoku Reader

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑