Disability Studies – Contemporary Japanese Literature

Saou Ichikawa’s 2023 novella Hunchback is a striking work of fiction and a major contribution to the literature of disability. Ichikawa’s brutally honest depiction of her disabled protagonist’s physicality is magnetically compelling and thrusts the reader into a world where the conveniences of the able-bodied cannot be taken for granted.

Shaka is a resident of Group Home Ingleside, a private care facility established by her wealthy parents. Shaka owns the facility, and she collects income from several rental properties in the investment portfolio she’s inherited. In addition, she’s sitting on a trust fund so large that it has to be distributed across several banks.

Despite her wealth, Shaka’s disability confines her to a small studio apartment. While working on a PhD in Disability Studies, Shaka amuses herself by vent-posting on Twitter in between sessions of writing hardcore pornography. She donates her income to the food banks that serve unhoused people, sometimes directly and sometimes in the form of bulk orders of seasoning. Even homeless people deserve food that tastes good, she reasons.

Even as she emphasizes with the disadvantaged, Shaka describes the reality of her own physicality in painstaking detail. Because of muscular atrophy, she’s unable to breathe on her own. Due to social distancing during Covid, leaving the care facility is out of the question. Her PhD coursework is entirely online, and she digitizes academic texts with the aid of a book scanner, as it’s impossible for her to hold heavy books for long periods of time.

And why shouldn’t we have digital copies of books, Shaka demands. When the literati bemoan the digitalization of the written word, who does that benefit, exactly? Shaka’s litany of complaints against the ableism of academia is one of the many currents of anger that drive Hunchback forward. Shaka’s anger breaches the surface at regular intervals, forcing the reader to think critically about the entrenched ableism of the world many of us take for granted.

Despite being engaged in a life of the mind, Shaka has one dream – to become pregnant and then get an abortion. While she’s not particularly interested in the fantasy sex she narrates in her shallow and disposable smut stories, there’s something about the particular physicality and “human-ness” of pregnancy that she finds intriguing.

A golden opportunity falls into Shaka’s hands when a young male caretaker named Tanaka reveals that he’s been stalking her on Twitter and secretly reading her erotic fiction. Unfortunately, Tanaka is the worst sort of incel. Not only can he not get a girlfriend, he only became a caretaker because he couldn’t cut it in the corporate world. In his eyes, he’s just as failed by society as Shaka – who, he snaps, enjoys wealth most people could never dream of.

Out of mutual hatred, Shaka and Tanaka orchestrate a tryst. As you might imagine, it doesn’t end well. Suffice it to say that, if you’re looking for an uplifting message, you won’t find it here.

The end of Hunchback mirrors its beginning, with a prolonged description of a sexual encounter. The book’s closing scene is ostensibly narrated by Tanaka’s sister, who takes on a sense of personal responsibility for her brother’s crime of murdering a disabled woman in a care facility by literally choking her to death with his cum.

I can’t help but suspect that this is once again Shaka writing erotica, albeit with a slightly more literary bent. The scenario is still improbable, but now she’s writing more for herself, fleshing out the characters (so to speak) by imbuing them with personalities and backstories.

Her encounter with Tanaka may have been an abject failure, but Shaka still desires “human” experiences and contact with the broader world. After all, writing – even writing erotica – is about so much more than coming up with a story and posting it online. Shaka never becomes a softer or kinder person, nor would I want her to. What she gains is motivation to be more present in the outside world as she sharpens her insight and hones her craft.

Ichikawa writes based on her own experience as a disabled person, and Shaka’s voice is focused, specific, and driven. Shaka’s narration pulls the reader through the story with sharp observations and darkly comedic drama, and the steady forward momentum is just as entertaining as it is compelling. In many ways, Hunchback reminds me of Convenience Store Woman, and I’d recommend this book to readers who are receptive to unexpected charm and aren’t afraid to have their comfortable perceptions of reality challenged.

Sweet Bean Paste
Japanese Title: あん (An)
Author: Durian Sukegawa (ドリアン助川)
Translators: Alison Watts
Publication Year: 2013 (Japan); 2017 (United States)
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Pages: 216

Sweet Bean Paste is a novel about the trauma of discrimination and the stress of living in an unjust society, but the experience of reading it will help you remember the pleasure of being able to readjust your perspective, even if doing so is initially awkward and unpleasant.

Sentaro Tsujii is a young(ish) man who runs a stall called Doraharu that sells dorayaki, pancakes filled with sweet paste made from adzuki beans. Although Doraharu is owned by his former boss’s widow, Sentaro works by himself all day every single day of the year. When he finally decides to put up a “Help Wanted”sign, a 76-year-old woman named Tokue Yoshii shows up and offers to work for only 200 yen an hour. Sentaro declines, thinking that he doesn’t want to be bothered by an old woman hanging around, but he quickly changes his mind when he tries her homemade red bean paste, which is unlike anything he’s ever tasted.

Doraharu is located in an open-air shopping arcade called Cherry Blossom Street, which is slowly losing foot traffic as customers gravitate to suburban shopping centers. Nevertheless, thanks to the deliciousness of the bean paste Sentaro makes with Tokue, the stall experiences a brief period of prosperity. It’s especially popular with students on their way home, and Tokue chats with them as she helps Sentaro. She becomes particularly friendly with an otherwise standoffish middle-school student named Wakana. Once Tokue finally draws Wakana out of her shell, the girl asks her about her hands, something Sentaro has wondered about as well.

Tokue reveals that she once had Hansen’s disease, and Sentaro realizes that she must live in Tenshoen, a sanitarium just outside of town. Until 1996, Hansen’s patients were secluded from the rest of society by law despite the fact that the illness has been cured and is no longer transmissible. When Wakana’s mother finds out who Tokue is and where she lives, however, she spreads the information within the community. The flow of business at Doraharu dries up, and Tokue voluntarily quits her job.

Sentaro had served a prison sentence after being arrested for possession of recreational marijuana as a college student; and, as someone who was prevented from realizing the ambitions he held as a young man, he sympathizes with Tokue’s plight as a target of irrational discrimination. Wakana, a social outcast herself, regrets the part she’s played in how events unfolded, and she agrees to accompany Sentaro on a trip to visit Tokue at Tenshoen, where they learn things about their community that they never suspected.

The savory center of Sweet Bean Paste is the slow development of the relationship between Sentaro, Tokue, and Wakana, but the novel is ultimately about learning to find beauty and meaning in an unfair world despite knowing that some injustices may never be corrected. This theme occasionally results in a cloying level of sentimentality, but its emotional straightforwardness is balanced by the narrative itself, which offers no easy answers or conclusions.

Something I appreciate about Tokue is that, even though she’s a generally positive and upbeat person who doesn’t see herself as a victim, she expresses sorrow and resentment at forces beyond her control, and the reader is occasionally made to feel uncomfortable in her presence. Meanwhile, Sentaro has a history of alcoholism and depression, and Sweet Bean Paste portrays the lived experience of these conditions with the respect and sensitivity they deserve. Although the novel doesn’t normalize illness, it humanizes it.

Sweet Bean Paste is not moralistic or didactic, however, and its major accomplishment is doing what all good fiction does, which is to allow the reader to experience the world from another point of view. Sukegawa excels at narrating from different positions while subtly shifting the reader’s viewpoint away from the emphasis on able-bodied “health” conveyed by so many aspects of mainstream culture and society. Readers looking for a happy ending may be disappointed, but the novel’s wholesomeness lies in its positive outlook on life. This is a small story about ordinary people, but it’s filled with hope and sweetness.