speculative fiction – Page 2 – Contemporary Japanese Literature

Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a book about the quiet end of the world. Despite its postapocalyptic setting, the story is gentle. The author’s background as a biology teacher shines through her writing as she imagines the diverse forms that humans and their societies might take in the far distant future.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is structured as a collection of fourteen stand-alone stories that gradually form a larger narrative, and the reader is encouraged to put together a history from bits and pieces of individual lives. We never see the full picture, however, and I imagine that assembling a concrete timeline would take careful detective work.

This isn’t a plot-driven story that can have “spoilers,” necessarily, but any description of the book’s premise is going to contain analysis and speculation. Under the Eye of the Big Bird is one of the most intriguing works of speculative fiction that I’ve read in years, and this is partially due to its fragmented structure. You may want to venture into the collection on your own before reading any reviews, this one included.

Still with me? Let’s go!

Over the millennia, the number of people on the planet has steadily decreased, and the last remaining humans live in isolated settlements of various sizes. In order to ensure harmony, the settlements are discretely managed by “watchers” who have been cloned and genetically engineered to fulfil their duty. Unlike regular humans, watchers grow up in small communities with “mothers” that are all physical manifestations of the same AI.

Everyone takes this arrangement for granted, but their “normal” is not the same as ours. Whether a story is told from a first-person or third-person point of view, the reader can only see the world from a limited perspective. It can be difficult to understand what’s going on at first, but the opportunity to surf successive waves of strangeness is a major part of this book’s charm.

My favorite story is “Testimony,” which is delivered as a statement to a watcher by one of the new phenotypes of humans to emerge from centuries of genetic isolation. A small number of people are born with the ability to photosynthesize, and the joy they take from the sunlight and changing seasons affects their behavior in surprising ways. If enlightenment exists, these people have attained it; and honestly, it sounds really nice.

Not all of the future human phenotypes are so peaceful or self-assured, however, and other stories have a bit more conflict. Still, with one notable exception, there’s no violence in this book. If there are wars and explosions, they happen entirely offscreen. Like the watchers and mothers, it’s the reader’s job simply to observe the biology, ecology, and culture of the future.

On the front cover of the American edition, Kawakami is billed as the author of People from My Neighborhood, a loosely connected series of magical realist flash fiction that’s an excellent comparison for Under the Eye of the Big Bird. To me, Under the Eye of the Big Bird also feels like a natural development of Kawakami’s debut short story, Kamisama, in which the narrator has a lovely afternoon picnic with a literal bear. The bear, being a bear, is clearly nonhuman, but no one seems to be bothered by this. The same casual acceptance of difference pervades Under the Eye of the Big Bird, which invites the reader to imagine the mundane everyday reality of the final days of the human race.

I’ll admit that I felt the chilling touch of existential dread at a few points during the book; but, as in any encounter with real difference, this initial sense of discomfort is important. The gentle strangeness of Under the Eye of the Big Bird encourages the reader to confront their biases, and it also lends weight to the narrative theme of human extinction. Instead of presenting the apocalypse as a standard dystopian superhero story, Kawakami allows the reader to take all the time and space they need to consider whether it would really be so horrible if the people we currently think of as “human” were to slowly disappear from the earth.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a book about the end of the world, but it’s also one of the kindest and most hopeful works of speculative fiction I’ve had the pleasure to read. Reading this book for the first time was a unique experience, but the impact of its stories linger even after their novelty fades.

Hoshikuzu Kazoku (星屑家族) is a two-volume graphic novel set in an alternate universe where parents are required to obtain a license to raise children. To qualify for a license, a prospective family is asked to undergo an audition with a homestay student. This auditor, who is often an orphan raised in a government-run facility, evaluates the family’s fitness by deliberately behaving badly and provoking difficult situations.

An auditor who goes by Hikari is assigned to Daiki and Chisa Hirokawa, a young couple who live on the grounds of a Shinto shrine. During their initial interview, Daiki surprises Hikari by openly requesting that their family be denied a childrearing license. Daiki claims to be happy living with his wife as a couple, and he shares his suspicions that Chisa doesn’t actually want children. With that out of the way, Daiki says, the three of them can enjoy the homestay visit without any pressure or expectations.

Chisa and Daiki genuinely seem to be happy together, but Hikari soon notices that Chisa is the target of a longstanding prejudice held by people in the neighborhood. Chisa’s mother killed her father when she was a child, and she’s been ostracized ever since. Along with her foster father, who once managed the shrine, Daiki was the only person who was kind to her. Now that she and Daiki have married and set up a household at the shrine, Chisa feels trapped within a community she can’t escape. Why, then, does she want a child so badly? And is it Hikari’s place to get involved?

Hoshikuzu Kazoku is a high-stakes family drama that presents a moral conundrum with no easy solutions. If the government creates regulations to ensure a well-ordered society, what happens to the people whose lives are more complicated than the provisions allowed by the legal code? If there’s room for flexibility in the bureaucratic system that enforces the law, who should have the right to grant exceptions? And more specifically, in a country witnessing its birth rate decline in response to the disintegration of community support structures, what are the limits of government intervention?

Even putting such questions aside, Hoshikuzu Kazoku is compelling by virtue of its problematic yet still sympathetic characters. Hikari, Daiki, and Chisa each bring loads of emotional baggage to the table, but they do their best to communicate to the limited extent of their abilities. Despite their many flaws and the odds against them, I wanted these characters to be happy.

Aki Poroyama’s writing, dialogue, and pacing are all excellent, and the visual language of the manga serves to set the mood and create dramatic impact. I wasn’t familiar with the work of this artist, and I was amazed by the polish of this graphic novel. I’d recommend Hoshikuzu Kazoku to mature readers looking for socially conscious speculative fiction driven by complicated human stories.