Earthlings: A Novel - Copyright © 2018 by Sayaka Murata - translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori 2020
In February of 2021 I read Sayaka Murata's International best seller The Convenience Store Woman.
Here is part of my reaction:
The Convenience Story Woman has sold over a million copies in Japan. It has a cult like following of devoted readers, myself now included, trying to unravel the meaning of the central character Keiko Furukura. Keiko starting working at a Tokyo convenience store at 18, we meet her at age 36 still working in the same convenience store. A job in a convenience store is
considered one for college students needing extra money, job hoppers, and people needing temporary work. It is not a socially acceptable permanent position in contemporary Japanese society.
Kieko was a strange child. Once other kids in her elementary school were fighting. The teacher yelled stop but they would not so Keiko hit one on the head with a shovel. When asked why she did that she said she was stopping the fight. Of course her parents were distressed.
Keiko totally submerges are identity into being a “convenience store woman”, living only to fulfill that position. Years went by, coworkers and managers came and went but Kieko stayed. Nothing ever changes in her life, no boy friends, and her only close relationship is with her sister. People ask her why she sticks in a low income dead end part time job, her sister tells her to say she has a health issue when people ask. We see the employees come and go, get a look at the work flow in the store. People do wonder why she has never married, expected of Japanese women.
Then a strange man begins to work at the store. In a remarkable series of events he quits his job and moves in with Kieko, who supports him. Her family and friends are happy she seems to have a relationship, maybe it will lead to marriage. But no, it is a weird sexless relationship. The man repeatedly tells her she is so drab an unattractive he could not climax with her as needed to produce a child. The man is verbally abusing and is clearly taking advantage of her. Then Kieko after 18 years quits her job. Even the store manager who relies on her loyalty congratulated her, thinking she was finally moving toward a normal life.
When I received notice that her latest work, Earthlings:A Novel, was on sale as a Kindle for $1.99 I hit "purchase now" at once.
Earthlings is book in some ways similar to The Convenience Store Woman. The central character and narrator, Natsuki,who we follow from 10 to 36, resists family and social pressure to marry and procreate. After terrible sexual abuse, vividly brought to nauseating reality, at age 10 by a highly thought of male teacher, she develops a lifetime aversion to sexual contact of any sort after being caught having sex with her cousin.
She comes to believe she is an alien from another planet, waiting for a spacecraft to pick her up.
Now we flash 22 years ahead. Things get even weirder.
I don't want to reveal any more of the plot but I kept me captivated and a bit horrified. I wondered how much of her strange beliefs were caused by her cold parents and her abuse.
I eagerly await another novel by Sayaka Murata.
Sayaka Murata (in Japanese, 村田 沙耶香) is one of the most exciting up-and-coming writers in Japan today.
She herself still works part time in a convenience store, which gave her the inspiration to write Convenience Store Woman (Konbini Ningen). She debuted in 2003 with Junyu (Breastfeeding), which won the Gunzo Prize for new writers. In 2009 she won the Noma Prize for New Writers with Gin iro no uta (Silver Song), and in 2013 the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-oro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). Convenience Store Woman won the 2016 Akutagawa Award. Murata has two short stories published in English (both translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori): "Lover on the Breeze" (Ruptured Fiction(s) of the Earthquake, Waseda Bungaku, 2011) and "A Clean Marriage" (Granta 127: Japan, 2014)
I highly reccomend the video below
Mel Ulm
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