Chiren Kina’s 2025 collection 哀を飲む (Drinking sorrow) brings together seven short stories from the past fifteen years of the popular writer’s career. Each of the stories is about a young woman taking stock of what remains of her life after a relationship has ended.
In 水みたいな人 (A person like water), a woman discovers that her live-in boyfriend reads the diary of his high school girlfriend every night. Realizing that she can’t compete with the perfect person who exists in his dreams, she breaks up with him, letting him pass through her like water.
In コーラの泡 (Soda bubbles), a woman in her late twenties pays a college student to spend the night at her apartment twice a week. She knows the man is in love with her married sister, and their no-strings relationship ends abruptly when she finally expresses her jealousy.
In 梅酒と眠る (Sleeping with plum wine), a woman moves in with her grandmother after quitting her job and ending her engagement. Despite the guilt she feels, she explains that she cheated on her fiancé so that he’d feel justified in making a clean break.
Sex is a primary theme of the stories in 哀を飲む, most of which are about the final stages of a love affair in which the effervescence of physical desire has fizzled out. Though sexual acts are openly depicted, these scenes are far more pathetic than they are erotic.
Kina writes in the intimate style of a blog post, and her characters speak in distinctive voices as they express their frustrations with their lives and their partners. As you’re carried along by the flow of the narration, it’s easy to feel that you’re joining these women on their journey into the adult world as they walk away from the last romantic fantasies of girlhood.
Contemporary Japanese Literature 