For decades, Haruki Murakami defined contemporary Japanese literature for the Anglophone reader. In such bona fide masterpieces as “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” and “A Wild Sheep Chase,” the author created a surreal world of talking sheep and lost cats, jazz bars and manic pixie dream girls.
But in the decades since the publication of those novels, Murakami’s tropes haven’t always aged well. In particular, his depictions of women have seemed, at least to some of us, troublingly thin. As his oeuvre kept proliferating, it sometimes felt as if the Murakami machine were eating up what limited oxygen there was for Japanese fiction in translation.
Thankfully, of late, a number of female writers have stepped out from the Murakami shadow and into English translation. Long acclaimed in Japan, they arrive here festooned with prizes and critical relevance. We are seeing the emergence of an alternate lineage, an entirely female canon, that reaches back to the postwar period even as it builds in the present.
Recent translations have brought us work from established greats: Yuko Tsushima (“Territory of Light”), Yoko Tawada (“The Emissary”), Yoko Ogawa (“The Memory Police”) and Hiromi Kawakami (“The Ten Loves of Nishino”). Then there’s the current generation of young writers, a fearsomely talented group that includes Sayaka Murata (“Convenience Store Woman”), Yukiko Motoya (“The Lonesome Bodybuilder”), Hiroko Oyamada (“The Factory”) and now Mieko Kawakami, with “Breasts and Eggs,” her first novel to be translated into English.
In Japan, Kawakami (no relation to Hiromi Kawakami) is already a literary sensation. Like Murakami — who has enthusiastically endorsed her work — she too has a loose and colloquial style. But unlike her forebear, Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women. One character terms her mother “free labor” with a vagina. The narrator, Natsu, a writer, says sex with her former boyfriend felt “like somebody had slipped a black bag over my head.”
Focusing almost exclusively on female characters and spaces, “Breasts and Eggs” often made me think of Tsushima’s “Territory of Light.” Although tonally distinct, both novels describe single working-class motherhood and small urban apartments in unflinching detail. Writing 30 years apart, both authors reveal the ways in which those circumstances in turn shape the inner lives of their characters.
“Breasts and Eggs” underlines this connection by placing the female form at its center. Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body — its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings, those in this novel being at once obsessive and inchoate, and in one way or another about transformation.
by Katie Kitamura, NY Times | Read more:
Image: uncredited
But in the decades since the publication of those novels, Murakami’s tropes haven’t always aged well. In particular, his depictions of women have seemed, at least to some of us, troublingly thin. As his oeuvre kept proliferating, it sometimes felt as if the Murakami machine were eating up what limited oxygen there was for Japanese fiction in translation.
Thankfully, of late, a number of female writers have stepped out from the Murakami shadow and into English translation. Long acclaimed in Japan, they arrive here festooned with prizes and critical relevance. We are seeing the emergence of an alternate lineage, an entirely female canon, that reaches back to the postwar period even as it builds in the present.Recent translations have brought us work from established greats: Yuko Tsushima (“Territory of Light”), Yoko Tawada (“The Emissary”), Yoko Ogawa (“The Memory Police”) and Hiromi Kawakami (“The Ten Loves of Nishino”). Then there’s the current generation of young writers, a fearsomely talented group that includes Sayaka Murata (“Convenience Store Woman”), Yukiko Motoya (“The Lonesome Bodybuilder”), Hiroko Oyamada (“The Factory”) and now Mieko Kawakami, with “Breasts and Eggs,” her first novel to be translated into English.
In Japan, Kawakami (no relation to Hiromi Kawakami) is already a literary sensation. Like Murakami — who has enthusiastically endorsed her work — she too has a loose and colloquial style. But unlike her forebear, Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women. One character terms her mother “free labor” with a vagina. The narrator, Natsu, a writer, says sex with her former boyfriend felt “like somebody had slipped a black bag over my head.”
Focusing almost exclusively on female characters and spaces, “Breasts and Eggs” often made me think of Tsushima’s “Territory of Light.” Although tonally distinct, both novels describe single working-class motherhood and small urban apartments in unflinching detail. Writing 30 years apart, both authors reveal the ways in which those circumstances in turn shape the inner lives of their characters.
“Breasts and Eggs” underlines this connection by placing the female form at its center. Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body — its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings, those in this novel being at once obsessive and inchoate, and in one way or another about transformation.
by Katie Kitamura, NY Times | Read more:
Image: uncredited
