Kitchen

KathrynLeave a comment

Banana Yoshimoto’s landmark 1988 novella Kitchen once inspired a great deal of heated discussion as a miserable chain of respected literary critics dismissed it as shallow and frivolous. Haters gonna hate, but I loved Kitchen when I first discovered it in high school, and I still think it’s a beautiful book that’s well worth reading. 

After her parents died in a car accident, Mikage Sakurai was raised by her grandmother, who suddenly passes away when Mikage is in college. Now Mikage feels that she has well and truly become an orphan, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Yuichi Tanabe, a young man who was friendly with Mikage’s grandmother, invites her to stay with him and his mother at their apartment while she gets her life sorted out. Though Mikage has never met either of these people, Yuichi’s kindness is exactly what she needs, and she’s so stressed out and dispirited that she takes him up on his offer.

The apartment turns out to be gorgeous – it’s bright and sunny and spacious, and also outfitted with a thoroughly modern kitchen and a giant sofa that Mikage immediately falls in love with. Yuichi’s mother Eriko is just as friendly and charming as she is beautiful, and Mikage instantly feels at home. Though she knows she’ll have to leave eventually, she makes the best of her time in a warm and comfortable space in the care of two lovely people.  

Eriko is clearly the star of this story, especially as she relates her own experience of loss to Mikage. Yuichi’s mother was the only woman she would ever love, she says, and she didn’t know what to do when her wife died after a long illness. She felt like the only reasonable course of action was to take on the role of “mother” by changing her name, getting surgery, and becoming a woman herself. She still misses Yuichi’s birthmother, but life goes on, and she couldn’t be happier. As Mikage describes Eriko at the end of the story:

Her hair rustled, brushing her shoulders. There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep that you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. Still, enveloped in the twilight coming from the west, there she was, watering the plants with her slender, graceful hands, in the midst of a light so sweet it seemed to form a rainbow in the transparent water she poured.

Kitchen is full of similar passages in which Mikage takes in the beauty of her surroundings while reflecting on her feelings. These moments are refreshingly light, and it’s as if the writing is washing over you in a gentle shower. Yoshimoto says that her goal is to create precisely this sense of peace, writing in her Afterword to Kitchen that “I know no greater happiness than that it may have cheered you, even a little.”

Kitchen includes a continuation of the story, “Full Moon,” which begins with Eriko’s murder. Mikage has gotten back on her feet, moved out of the Tanabes’ apartment, and become an assistant to a celebrity chef. Now that tragedy has visited Yuichi, it’s her turn to comfort him. 

Mikage is comforted and supported by Chika, a transwoman who has taken over the cabaret club that Eriko managed. Chika helps Mikage to understand that, despite being disowned by her family, Eriko lived a full life, and she encourages Mikage to find her own happiness with Yuichi. Chika’s advice feels like the central thesis of Yoshimoto’s writing: the world can be dark and confusing, so you have to actively create your own sanctuary alongside the people you love. 

All of this feels very much like shōjo manga created for teenagers, from the quiet and nonsexual love story between Mikage and Yuichi to the way that everyone seems to sparkle. The normalization of queer identity also has its roots in shōjo manga, as does the mundanity of the supernatural events depicted in “Moonlight Shadow,” the short companion story included at the end of the book. Yoshimoto’s language is filled with onomatopoeia and other cute expressions that feel directly lifted from manga, so much so that Megan Backus’s natural-feeling English translation is a genuine miracle.  

If you’re not in the target demographic for Kitchen, it would make sense that Yoshimoto’s manga-inspired style of writing might not resonate with you. And that’s okay! Lord knows that there are enough works of literary fiction written by and for older adult men.

When I discovered Kitchen as a teenager, though, this book was definitely for me. In fact, it felt like the first book I’d encountered that took me seriously as a person. Having run the gauntlet of Ernest Hemmingways and William Faulkners and John Steinbecks in my high school English classes, I felt extremely alienated by fiction as a medium. I can’t even begin to describe what an amazing stroke of good fortune it was to find that Banana Yoshimoto had reached out with her writing and spoken to me specifically.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that the pop culture of the 1990s and early 2000s was a toxic slurry of homophobia and misogyny. In that sort of cultural environment, the independent young women and kind men and gentle queer sexuality of Kitchen were nothing short of revolutionary. I’m sure it was easy for older male literary critics to say that Yoshimoto’s writing was empty pablum, but it was something else entirely for me to encounter my first fictional depiction of gay adults who were treated as real human beings instead of stupid jokes or beleaguered minorities.

It felt like a revelation to see people being openly gay and also completely normal, and it would be disingenuous to say that this realization wasn’t political. Banana Yoshimoto showed me the rainbow, and sure, it was magical. How could it not be? But also, when I put this book down, I felt like I’d gained a sense of identity and purpose. When Chika tells Mikage that you have to fight for a world that accepts you, I took that advice to heart.

I was far from alone in being moved by this story. Kitchen was an instant bestseller in Japan, and it went on to gain fame overseas during the 1990s. In the 2000s and 2010s, Banana Yoshimoto enjoyed a degree of international recognition on the same level as Haruki Murakami. And she deserved it. She still does, honestly. I may have aged away from Kitchen, but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it immensely.

Admittedly, Mikage sometimes seems as though she lives in a different world, and it can occasionally be a bit painful to look back on the prosperity and optimism of the 1980s. Still, Kitchen feels as fresh as the day it was written, and maybe you’re exactly the person who needs to read it now.

This Is Amiko, Do You Copy?

KathrynLeave a comment

Natsuko Imamura’s novella This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? is about a neurodivergent preteen girl who’s neglected by her family and bullied at school. Though Amiko herself is quite charming, Imamura asks serious questions about the society that denies her support and understanding.

Amiko is ten years old and extremely friendly, but she has trouble fitting in. She speaks and behaves like someone much younger, and she often wanders away from class to read manga in the library. Her classmates avoid her when they can, but she’s oblivious to her alienation and remains cheerful and outgoing.

When her mother (who is actually her stepmother) has a miscarriage, Amiko does her best to comfort her, but her well-intentioned efforts are misinterpreted as malicious by both of her parents, who begin to neglect her. Without anyone to feed or bathe her, Amiko goes slightly feral, and she spends her early teenage years in almost total social isolation despite still attending school every day.

To protect Amiko from bullying, her older brother Kota toughens up, eventually joining a gang so that his reputation can shield his little sister. Kota loves Amiko and does his best to care for her, but he doesn’t have the emotional resources to deal with his clinically depressed stepmother or the lack of concern demonstrated by his workaholic father.

By the time she’s fifteen, Amiko still hasn’t matured, and she can barely read or write. She has trouble communicating and expressing herself, and she takes to singing made-up songs loudly and off-key whenever the mood strikes her. Torn between a child he can’t understand and a wife who never leaves the bed so that she’ll never have to see her stepdaughter, Amiko’s father sends her to live with her grandmother in the countryside.

The walkie talkies that Amiko’s parents give her as a gift at the beginning of the story are a chillingly direct analogy for her situation – she’s transmitting, but nobody’s responding. On a broader level, you can’t help but wonder why nobody ever reaches out to help Amiko or her parents.

This Is Amiko, Do You Copy? is narrated from a limited third-person perspective that shows the world as Amiko might see it, and Amiko is so happy and good-natured that it’s easy to skim through this short novella without really understanding the profound anger that Natsuko Imamura is expressing through the story. Amiko is a sweet and happy-go-lucky girl, but I could almost feel the author writing with clenched teeth. 

I’ve seen multiple reviews of this novella (and its 2022 cinematic adaptation Amiko) that shy away from identifying Amiko as being on the autism spectrum, maintaining instead that she transcends labels. I feel like a bit of critical thinking might be necessary here. Specifically, does not labeling Amiko as autistic help her (or her family) in any way? Because it sure seems like the lack of a formal diagnosis has resulted in nothing but neglect and abuse. On the other hand, would a greater awareness of neurodiversity, as made concrete through an imperfect but still useful label, perhaps help Amiko’s community understand and support her?

I enjoyed Imamura’s novel The Woman in the Purple Skirt, whose meaning also dwells in the seemingly empty spaces of what its alienated and unreliable narrator doesn’t say. Just as the label of “autistic” would presumably make life much easier for Amiko, I imagine that a formal diagnosis of “schizophrenia” would probably help the Purple Skirt narrator get the help she needs. Imamura’s project in these two stories is not to normalize neurodivergence, necessarily, but to demonstrate that neurodivergent people aren’t abnormal. It’s only when neurodivergent people are denied community support and resources that unfortunate things happen.

This isn’t to say that This Is Amiko is didactic or unpleasant. It’s actually quite lovely, and I hope it doesn’t make me sound like a bad person to say that I genuinely enjoyed this book. Still, Natsuko Imamura is staging a serious critique through what may initially seem like a light and breezy story, and it’s important not to ignore the subtext.   

Kudos to Hitomi Yoshio (and her seven-year-old daughter) for creating a fantastic translation of the distinctive narrative voice of this novella, and much love to Pushkin Press for bringing it to a wider audience. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Imamura’s 2017 novel Hoshi no ko (Child of the Stars), which is something of a sibling to This Is Amiko, finds a home in translation too.

Hooked

KathrynLeave a comment

Asako Yuzuki’s novel Hooked is about an elite corporate employee who begins stalking a popular housewife blogger and then blackmails her into an artificial “friendship.” Though it occasionally feels like a suspense thriller, Hooked is primarily a dark cringe comedy about two thirty-year-old women exhibiting their absolute worst behavior.

The story opens with a morning in the life of Eriko Shimura, an employee at a product trading company that specializes in imports of foreign food. Eriko lives with her parents in central Tokyo, and she attended a top-ranked university before using her father’s connections to enter her current job immediately after graduating. She puts meticulous care into her work and appearance, and she considers herself to be well-liked by her male colleagues.

Eriko’s one regret is that, after a devastating friendship breakup in high school, she hasn’t really had any female friends. As a way to compensate for the warmth missing from her life, she becomes a fan of a lifestyle blog written by a Tokyo housewife who goes by Hallie B. Unlike Eriko, whose daily schedule is intensely regimented, Hallie takes life easy and passes her time in small cafés and chain restaurants while trying out limited-edition pastries in convenience stores. For Eriko, Hallie’s blog is an accessible fantasy of casual friendship.

The perspective then switches to Shoko, the woman behind the Hallie B. blog. Shoko moved to Tokyo from the countryside, where she grew up with a wealthy but abusive father who eventually drove her mother out of the house with his negligence and bad temper. Like Eriko, Shoko has trouble forming attachments, passing like water between friends and jobs. She gets along well with her husband, though, and she finally seems to have found her niche as a Tokyo lifestyle blogger. When Eriko suddenly shows up at a café she frequents, Shoko initially finds her to be charming, and they exchange numbers after having a lovely conversation together.

What starts as a promising friendship doesn’t last long, however. Eriko, who lives in the same neighborhood as Shoko, begins stalking her in earnest, and Shoko is understandably creeped out. As their relationship cools, Eriko responds by becoming more intense. She also starts to behave oddly at work, even going so far as to sleep with a coworker who’s engaged to one of the office admin staff. As Eriko’s behavior becomes more extreme, Hooked generates a fair bit of narrative tension by keeping the reader wondering just how far she’ll go and what horrible thing can possibly happen next.

I will admit that I had trouble getting into Hooked. I’ve met some intense and unpleasant people in my life, but the way the characters in this novel behave feels unrealistic to me. It was only when I realized that the story is a comedy that it clicked for me. I guess it’s fair to say that Hooked is like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but with two Japanese women instead of Larry David.

Once I understood that Hooked isn’t supposed to be mimetic fiction, it became much more enjoyable. Instead of feeling bad about the extreme awkwardness that Eriko and Shoko bring to their everyday interactions, I was amused to see them get worse. There’s one scene in particular where Eriko unsuccessfully attempts to seduce her supervisor at work that had me grinning and clapping like a seal. Thankfully, as a comedy (dark though it may be), Hooked allows Eriko and Shoko a measure of self-awareness and emotional resolution toward the end when both women take meaningful steps toward getting their shit together.

Still, even despite the characters’ over-the-top behavior, Asako Yuzuki makes a number of astute observations about adult loneliness. I was especially impressed by the story’s portrayal of online parasocial relationships and the ways that social media can warp the ordinary human need for connection and validation. The way that such concerns are discussed in editorial think pieces tends to be shallow and prescriptive, and I’m happy that Hooked handles these issues with sensitivity and nuance.

The casual misogyny of Eriko’s male coworkers also struck a chord with me, especially in how these men echo the cliché that female relationships are full of drama and thus destined to fail. The novel’s central metaphor of the invasive Nile Perch, a destructive fish that ruins ecosystems, implies that women like Eriko might come off as “too intense” because they’ve been forced to survive in a fiercely competitive environment engineered by men.

Still, I feel that Asako Yuzuki refrains from making generalizations about gender and society, preferring instead to focus on the specific relationships between characters. Hooked reminded me a great deal of Natsuo Kirino’s suspense novels Out and Grotesque, but with a stronger focus on human nature as opposed to social issues. The dark comedy of Hooked is well-observed, and I could tell that Yuzuki was having fun while writing this novel. There were a number of scenes when it was clear that the translator, Polly Barton, was having a marvelous time as well.   

Hooked succeeds because it manages to balance social commentary with a genuine empathy for its (deeply) flawed protagonists, and it’s a testament to both Yuzuki’s writing and Barton’s translation that a story about stalking and self-sabotage can leave the reader feeling strangely uplifted, and perhaps a little less alone.

Beautiful Distance

KathrynLeave a comment

Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s Beautiful Distance is a novel about a man watching his wife die of cancer.

The narrator, an insurance agent at a large firm, has been married to his wife for fifteen years when she’s unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal cancer. When the story opens, she’s already in hospice care and only has about a month to live.  

This isn’t a medical drama or a story about resilience; rather, it’s a gentle account of a quiet death that files away some of the harsher edges of the wife’s illness but never gives the reader a false sense of hope. 

Despite the seeming bleakness of the situation, Yamazaki’s writing is extremely gentle. It’s hard to believe that a person as sweet and kind as the narrator could exist, but he loves his wife unconditionally and is emotionally mature to an almost superhuman degree.

I’ve seen Beautiful Distance described as a love story, and it’s true that the affection between the narrator and his wife is a major element of the book and its appeal. More than anything, though, this is a story about accepting death and everything it entails, including the “beautiful distance” that will separate the narrator from his wife after she dies.

Admittedly, because the narrator is always on his best behavior, as are his wife and his mother-in-law, Beautiful Distance can sometimes feel a little shallow, especially as it shies away from more complicated emotions such as denial, anger, and the desire to find someone to blame.

Thankfully, the narrator takes on a bit of depth toward the end of the novel when he allows himself to express frustration toward the people who are unable to understand his situation. He becomes annoyed with a doctor who has trouble communicating, for instance, as well as a social worker who falls back on gendered expectations regarding caregiving instead of actually listening to what the narrator tries to tell her. These frustrations serve to make him feel more human, as well as to validate similar feelings on the part of any reader who’s had to deal with large healthcare organizations.  

Still, Beautiful Distance is a very gentle book, and it blooms and breathes in the quiet moments of the narrator caring for his wife and his wife’s friendly conversations with the people who come to visit her in the hospital. This story is about facing death with dignity, but it’s also a celebration of living well.

If you suspect that this might not be the book for you, I’d urge you to trust your gut feeling. Still, I’m glad I read Beautiful Distance, and I feel like my life is richer for it.

Hollow Inside

KathrynLeave a comment

There’s an expression in Japanese that I really appreciate: shikata ga nai, which essentially means “what can you do.” Shikata ga nai is the verbal equivalent of a shrug of resignation. Sure, the situation may not be ideal, but shikata ga nai. What can you do.

Asako Otani’s 2023 novella Hollow Inside is about as close to a literary expression of shikata ga nai as you can get. Otani was born in 1990, which makes her a little younger than I am, but I feel like we’re part of the same Millennial generation that came of age right in time for the 2008 global economic recession and then got our feet kicked out from under us by the pandemic. This situation isn’t ideal, obviously. But what can you do.

Hirai, the narrator of Hollow Inside, has recently moved from a small and inconvenient flat into a nicer two-bedroom apartment. She’s able to afford a better place by splitting the rent with her friend Suganuma, who proposed the idea to Hirai because she was tired of her own tiny apartment. Both women are around 40, and neither has any real desire to get married.

Hirai works in the accounting office of a printing company, while Suganuma formerly worked for the consulting division of a company specializing in administration systems. The two women met through their jobs but became friends when they realized that they were both fans of the same idol group, KI Dash. Their social circles narrowed during the pandemic, but their friendship with each other survived.

After working more than twenty years in corporate jobs, neither has enough money to afford a decent apartment in the city. That’s not great, but what can you do. Suganuma confesses to being “desperately lonely” while working from home during the pandemic, and Hirai knows exactly what she means. The pandemic wasn’t great, but again – what can you do.

What they can do, it turns out, is to move in together. Perhaps this isn’t how either of them imagined that their lives would turn out, and perhaps this isn’t what society in general expected of them. Hirai confesses to feeling shy about explaining her situation to her colleagues at work, knowing that two women in their forties sharing a home together isn’t the usual situation. And indeed, when she gets a chance to explain her living arrangements at a work dinner with colleagues, everyone makes polite noises and before swiftly changing the topic of conversation.

Still, Hirai and Suganuma get along well together, and they support one another through the small tragedies of their lives, such the marriage of Suganuma’s favorite idol from KI Dash and Hirai’s disastrous date with a man who wants to induct her into a pyramid scheme. The two women eat out together, cook dinner for each other, take a spur-of-the-moment holiday to the beach, and fall asleep while watching DVDs of KI Dash concerts on an old PlayStation 2.

The title of Hollow Inside comes from Suganuma’s post-pandemic freelance job as a manufacturer of custom figurines memorializing the deceased pets of her clients. She’s set up a 3D printer in a corner of the living room, which also houses a wastebin of defective models. Hirai feels a kinship with these rejected memorial figurines, as she herself feels somewhat hollow during the transition between the life she assumed she’d live and the unmapped territory ahead.

This sense of hollowness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. As Hirai explains about a fantasy she occasionally indulges in when she’s stressed out after work… 

I let all the strength drain from my body. I gave myself over to gravity and sharpened all my awareness right up to my fingertips. I lay on the bed not moving an inch. Pretending to be dead. I sometimes did this.

I was dead. Nothing in the world had anything to do with me. I thought about the dead dogs. The dead dogs that had been doted on by their owners. They had left fake bodies in the world as figurines, and their souls were running in the other worlds wagging their tails. My soul joined them frolicking there.

…there’s a certain lightness that allows her to imagine herself as free and unburdened.

There are a range of different readings of Hollow Inside, of course. Some readers might find this novella depressing; but, to me, it’s a breath of fresh air.

In Japan and elsewhere, fewer women are getting married; and, as much as I enjoy the fantasy of romance, the reality of single life as an adult is no less interesting. Hollow Inside captures a moment in the transition of one woman’s life that happens to be representative of a major demographic shift. To me, this novella also serves as an eerily accurate reflection of the economic realities of the 21st century. We might not be able to enjoy the stability and middle-class lifestyles that our parents did, but what can you do. Shikata ga nai.

And you know what? It’s not so bad, actually.

Whispering Rooms

Kathryn1 Comment

Whispering Rooms, a collaboration between Marie Kondo and the popular “cozy cat fiction” author Genki Kawamura, collects seven stories about a fictionalized version of Kondo named Miko who helps her clients tidy their belongings and sort out the problems in their lives.

The original versions of these stories were serialized in the Yomiuri Shimbun, a conservative print newspaper whose readership is an average of approximately one million years old. Despite its adult audience, this book is written at a third-grade reading level.

Though the writing style is simple, the problems faced by Miko’s clients are relatively serious. An older client wants to reconnect with her grown children before she dies, for instance, and a younger client is desperately trying to escape the shadow of her overbearing and hypercritical mother.

The most heartbreaking story is about a middle-aged man who became a hoarder after his divorce. He can’t bear to change anything about the house his wife and son once occupied, and he buys things online to fill the empty space. Tidying won’t change his personality or repair his relationship with his son, but it’s a start.

I suspect that this book’s target readers aren’t potential clients, but rather family members who have noticed a problem with a relative and need a concrete solution. If you’re struggling with a complicated family issue, it makes sense that intellectually challenging literary fiction won’t help – but perhaps accessible cozy fiction will.

If nothing else, I love the idea of Marie Kondo as a fictional character. Honestly I think her next adventure should be to use her tidying superpowers to solve mysteries. Or maybe she can commit some crimes herself! After all, if someone in the house doesn’t spark joy…

Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives

KathrynLeave a comment

Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s prizewinning debut novella Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives is a bittersweet love story that, to be fair, is mostly sweet. There’s not much depth here, and that’s okay.

An art school student named Isogai has a crush on his painting instructor, a woman on the verge of middle age named Yuri. Partially on her invitation, he initiates a love affair. Their relationship is destined to end, but it’s nice while it lasts.

In real life, this sort of relationship isn’t a great idea for any number of reasons. In the romantic fantasy spun by Yamazaki, there are zero consequences, and Isogai and Yuri gently help each other realize fundamental truths about themselves so they can grow as people.

Yuri is something of a space cadet who moves according to her own mysterious whims, and her husband is a kind and loving man who gives Yuri the space she needs and supports her endeavors – even her affair. Meanwhile, Isogai is a sensitive young man straight out of a shōjo manga. He cries, he journals to process his feelings, and he notices whether women moisturize their elbows. He never gets angry or makes demands, and he accepts all of Yuri’s decisions with compassion.  

Don’t Laugh at Other People’s Sex Lives reminds me of the worldview often expressed in Banana Yoshimoto’s novels: while the world at large is difficult and imperfect, it’s possible for two people to create a small refuge in the space between them. This novella was first published in 2004 during the cultural fallout of the severe economic recession of the 1990s, and I imagine that Yamazaki’s playful pen name and gentle writing style would have felt very refreshing and wholesome at the time.

As someone closer to the character Yuri’s age, this story was a bit too starry-eyed for me personally, but I imagine that its light humor, appealing characters, and (mostly) happy ending will be a source of comfort to readers looking for a short but sweet escape from the pressures of the real world in the form of cozy fiction.

The Tatami Galaxy

Kathryn3 Comments

The Tatami Galaxy is a magical realist comedy set in Kyoto in the early 2000s. The author, Tomihiko Morimi, is famous for his over-the-top characters and offbeat urban fantasy, and The Tatami Galaxy takes the reader on a wild ride through a set of parallel universes.

The unnamed narrator is a third-year student at a university in Kyoto. He came to campus, he says, with dreams of pursuing a rose-colored student life full of friends, scholarship, and wholesome extracurricular activities.

This is not how things turned out, unfortunately. After joining a student club that he didn’t quite click with, the narrator develops a friendship with a fellow student named Ozu, a slimy but charming manipulator who drags him into all manner of unsavory plots.

What would happen, the narrator wonders, if he had joined another club? Could he have escaped Ozu’s influence and enjoyed his ideal rose-colored campus life?

The Tatami Galaxy collects four versions of the narrator’s story. At the beginning of each version, the narrator joins a different student club. Though the details are different, the characters remain the same.

The narrator never manages to break his “black thread of fate” with Ozu; but, then again, that’s not really what he wants. After all, what good is a rose-colored campus life without friends?

The Tatami Galaxy is very silly and sweet, and it also feels like a window into what college was like before the pandemic. Remember the world before neoliberal enshittification really started to take hold? Remember when eating out was cheap, drinking was fun, and your life wouldn’t be completely ruined by a few bad grades and stupid mistakes?

As a university professor myself, it’s painful to see how exhausted my students are, and it’s wild to think about how different everything was even ten years ago. The Tatami Galaxy is a perfectly preserved time capsule, and it’s as good of an opportunity as any to remember that college isn’t supposed to be about optimizing your metrics. If you aren’t drunkenly setting off fireworks at a rival student club across a river on a warm spring night, the author argues, you’re wasting your chance at a rose-colored campus life.

I really love Emily Balistrieri’s short “Note from the Translator” at the end of the book, in which she discusses how much fun it was to translate Tomihiko Morimi’s distinctive style of writing and sense of humor. This joy definitely comes through on the page, and Balistrieri’s translation feels remarkably fresh and energetic.   

If you’re interested, the (subtitled) anime version of The Tatami Galaxy is free to watch on YouTube (here). It’s something of a cult classic, and with good reason. The art and animation are unique and creative, and the voice acting is genius. Still, I have to admit that the visual eyestrain is intense. The anime boasts the same high energy and twisted sense of humor as the original novel, but mercifully (for those of us past our student days) the book version is much easier to enjoy at a chill and relaxed pace.  

Yokohama Station SF

KathrynLeave a comment

Two hundred years after the end of a devastating global conflict, Yokohama Station has expanded to cover almost all of Honshu, Japan’s central island. Once governed by artificial intelligence, the station now grows uncontrollably through ceaseless self-perpetuation. Most of what remains of Japan’s population lives inside the structure, where order is maintained by patrolling robots and automated systems that manufacture necessities. 

Hiroto was born and raised in one of the small coastal communities of people who live outside the station. Since this village is able to subsist on the excess food and goods discarded from the station, Hiroto’s vague dreams of making something of his life have no target, especially since people who don’t a possess Suikanet registration are quickly ejected from the Yokohama Station structure by robotic constructs known as Automated Turnstiles.

This changes when an exile from inside the station washes up at Hiroto’s settlement. Before passing away, the man gives Hiroto an 18 Ticket, a digital pass that will allow him to remain inside the station for five days. He asks Hiroto to find and rescue the leader of the Dodger Alliance, a group of hackers that aims to shut down what remains of the artificial intelligence that governs Yokohama Station.

Another exile, an elderly man suffering from dementia known only as “the professor,” adds to the mystery by telling Hiroto to search for Exit 42, where all questions about the station’s history will be answered. Hiroto, who’s happy to have an excuse for adventure, wastes no time in leaving, assuming that he’ll simply see what he can see in the five days before his 18 Ticket expires.

With no access to digital currency or knowledge of the rules and customs that govern life inside the station, Hiroto quickly finds himself in trouble. Thankfully, luck is on his side, and he’s aided in his journey by Shamai, an android sent to gather intelligence from Hokkaido, which is still free from the station’s growth. Hiroto also crosses paths with a beautiful otaku techno-wizard named Keiha, who turns out to be the very resistance leader he was sent to rescue. Keiha is fine, as it turns out, and she remotely assists Hiroto’s journey to Exit 42 while mining Shamai for information about the ultimate goal of the organization that governs Hokkaido. 

Hokkaido isn’t the only independent territory; and, about a third of the way through the novel, the perspective switches to a weapons specialist named Toshiru who is employed by the military government defending the island of Kyushu from the station’s encroachment. Toshiru is a lone wolf who isn’t suited for military bureaucracy, so his commanding officer gives him implicit permission to take a ferry to the island of Shikoku, which is partially occupied by the station.

On Shikoku, Toshiru meets a Hokkaido android named Haikunterke (whose name, like Shamai’s, is taken from the language of the Ainu people who once lived in northern Japan). Together they navigate the lawless territory on the fringes of Yokohama Station, where people who were unable to flee to Kyushu live in constant fear of starvation and roving gangs of brigands.

The horrors that Toshiru witnesses raise a moral dilemma. If the central A.I. core of Yokohama Station is shut down, and if the station loses its ability to maintain itself, what authority will rise to fill the power vacuum? And how will humans produce food on land that’s been so utterly destroyed?

Once Hiroto finds Exit 42, he’ll have to make a decision. In one of the most interesting scenes of the novel, it turns out that what remains of the original station A.I. has thoughts of its own, and the message it shares with Hiroto is kind, wise, and refreshingly unexpected. 

For such an intriguing setting and premise, Yokohama Station SF contains surprisingly little worldbuilding, and its exposition is delivered in short conversations that are frequently interrupted by the hazards the characters encounter as they travel. A full-color illustrated insert at the beginning of the book helps to fill in some of the gaps, as does a short glossary at the end, but most of the information the reader picks up will be through osmosis.

Speaking personally, I appreciate that the steady clip of the plot progression isn’t unduly interrupted by lore, and I feel that the character-focused narration serves the story well. At the same time, though the writing and translation are both excellent, Yokohama Station SF feels a bit like Dark Souls in the way it obfuscates its background story in favor of immediate action. Even as the characters navigate an unmapped maze of corridors, the reader must find their own way through a labyrinth of words.

Yuba Isukari writes that Yokohama Station SF began as something akin to fanfiction based on the manga (specifically Blame!) of Tsutomu Nihei, who sets his stories in the interiors of infinitely sprawling sci-fi megastructures the size of small planets. Though the novel’s chapter-opening character illustrations by Tatsuyuki Tanaka are lovely and filled with charm and personality, they don’t really convey a sense of the setting.

Along with the novel itself, I might therefore also recommend the three-volume manga adaptation drawn by Gonbe Shinkawa, which contains a number of fun architectural illustrations that convey the absurdity (and dead-mall liminality) of the station’s growth. The person who translated the novel, Stephen Paul, also translated the manga, and his notes at the end of each manga volume are extremely insightful.

As someone fascinated by the experience of navigating Japan’s monstrous urban train stations, I had a great time with Yokohama Station SF and its manga adaptation. Though the more technical details of Isukari’s writing may come off as opaque to readers who aren’t veterans of hard science fiction, the human stories at the center of the labyrinth make the journey worthwhile.

Strange Buildings

KathrynLeave a comment

Strange Buildings, the 2023 follow-up to Uketsu’s smash hit Strange Houses, collects eleven illustrated stories about horror-themed architectural riddles followed by a lengthy exposition that reveals how these mysterious places are connected.

One of my favorite stories is “The Mousetrap House,” in which the wealthy heir to a large construction firm builds a luxurious mansion in order to kill a disabled elderly woman. If he puts a steep stairway next to the bathroom, he reasons, the woman will eventually lose her footing and tumble down the stairs.

When this eventuality fails to come to pass, he bullies his daughter into creating exactly the right set of conditions to make it happen. This horrible story is recounted decades later by the girl’s childhood friend, who was there on the night the old woman finally fell to her death.

I also enjoyed “The Watermill in the Woods,” which is presented as an old travelogue that recounts a curious building in the woods that’s nowhere near water. Its mechanical wheel instead powers the movement of an interior wall, but why would anyone need that?

This question is answered in the story “The House Where It Happened,” in which the frame narrator (who is styled as Uketsu himself) visits the old watermill in its current form as a remodeled modern house. When the village residents illuminate the shadows of the area’s history, the sinister purpose of the watermill becomes clear.

As in Uketsu’s other books, the overarching conspiracy is extremely silly. I don’t consider this a flaw, as there’s a certain sense of satisfaction in how delightfully outlandish the scenario is.

It should probably be said, however, that Uketsu is playing with acute cases of human misery as if they were Lego blocks. If one were to stage a gendered critique of this book, for instance, the ground is fertile. Still, I think it’s probably fair not to expect nuanced character portrayals from the weird architecture guy.

I enjoyed Strange Buildings, and I flew through this book as quickly as I could turn the pages. Jim Rion’s translation is compulsively readable, and I appreciate how Rion’s minor reconfigurations smooth over the “info dump” awkwardness of the original Japanese.

If you’ve never read Uketsu, Strange Buildings is a great introduction to the writer. If you’re already a fan, this is four hundred pages of the same, and it’s fantastic. Uketsu has found his niche, and it gives me joy to know that he’s out in the world being strange and living his best life.