Two Japanese Literature Reviews

Image by Clay Banks

Let's hope the image above doesn't have some inappropriate wording, shall we? February my theme was Japanese Literature and I did not talk about those books. This is me talking about those books. Warning: they are both really weird.

A boy is obsessed with a woman who sells sandwiches. He goes to the supermarket almost every day, just so he can look at her face. She is beautiful to him, and he calls her "Ms Ice Sandwich", and endlessly draws her portrait.

But the boy's friend hears about this hesitant adoration, and suddenly everything changes. His visits to Ms Ice Sandwich stop, and with them the last hopes of his childhood.

A moving and surprisingly funny tale of growing up and learning how to lose, Ms Ice Sandwich is Mieko Kawakami at her very best.

A boy falls in love with a supermarket employee who sells sandwiches. He is mesmerized by her eyes especially when she closes them to reveal something else. Meanwhile, his grandmother is doing poorly and he doesn't know if his mother is a good person or not. He doesn't seem to have a relationship with his mother because she tends to be too busy with her own life to care about what is happening with her son. There's also a girl he is befriends who learns about his admiration of Ms. Ice Sandwich which will eventually alter the way he lives his life. Ms. Ice Sandwich is a short novel about first love, family, and changing.

Ms. Ice Sandwich is a strange little book. It transforms as you read it into something else. There was this sense of worry and awe within the narrator that is hard to place. Like I feel like he knew certain things were going to happen and he didn't want the change. He held on to the look of Ms. Ice Sandwich as a sense of comfort and maybe just someone in his life that would always be there. I say this because his grandmother was dying and he truly loved his grandmother. His mother was doing some shady things regarding his grandmother that wasn't really discussed but added to the strangeness of this story. His mother has this mystic type business and doesn't pay attention to her son. Maybe this is why he obsessively buys sandwiches from Ms. Ice Sandwich. She is a constant in his life. I also saw her as his first crush/love. There was something about her that made him fall in love. There was also something about her that lead to an argument with Ms. Ice Sandwich and a customer. Something about her eyes which led to the idea of what is beautiful in Asian cultures.

Then there was the boy's friend who was a girl. She was a mystery herself. A mystery surely to the boy who seemed to feel a shift in his life. The girl, his family, Ms. Ice Sandwich, everything started to change for him. I can't articulate how I felt about this book that well. It was strange with clear and unclear elements within the story. It was a short read - only 92 pages but it felt like a whole novel. I think this is my first translated book and I got a sense of Japanese storytelling, well at least Mieko Kawakami's style of storytelling. I know this wasn't a very clear review but the book is just that strange. I do recommend trying it yourself. It's very different from what I normally read and might be for you too. If you want to get out of your comfort zone I would give Ms. Ice Sandwich a try.

Keiko Furukura had always been considered a strange child, and her parents always worried how she would get on in the real world, so when she takes on a job in a convenience store while at university, they are delighted for her. For her part, in the convenience store she finds a predictable world mandated by the store manual, which dictates how the workers should act and what they should say, and she copies her coworkers' style of dress and speech patterns so she can play the part of a normal person. However, eighteen years later, at age 36, she is still in the same job, has never had a boyfriend, and has only few friends. She feels comfortable in her life but is aware that she is not living up to society's expectations and causing her family to worry about her. When a similarly alienated but cynical and bitter young man comes to work in the store, he will upset Keiko's contented stasis--but will it be for the better? 

Keiko's family has always worried about her. They were thrilled that she got a job at 18 at a local convenience store. Now at 36, she's still at that job while also being unmarried. This isn't something that is generally accepted in society. Keiko on the other hand enjoys her convenience store world and doesn't understand everyone else's need for her to get married and have a better job. She likes her life, but then she starts listening to others about what she should be doing - finding a husband. After that her life turns upside down. A story about societal expectations, Convenience Store Woman is a strange ride into whether you should follow the status quo or go your own way.

Convenience Store Woman was a book that I thought would only would dive into societal expectations. It did, but then it got really weird like so weird that I don't really understand what I read by the end of it. I thought there would be a lesson. I was assuming the author was going to talk about why the MC was the way she was but I guess not. Keiko acted all the time. She had this act on most of her life once she realized her own personality contradicted with what others thought was normal. Because of this she imagined the convenience store she worked at as her own little world. It's all that mattered because it made her feel normal, I'm assuming. I understood all that, but then the "love interest" came in and made everything turn upside down.

There is a new guy working at the convenience store. Keiko pities him because he is like how she was before. He didn't understand the rules to the world. You don't show your true weird and angry self (the guy was a creepy, angry person who blamed the world for his problems) to the world. He convinces her of something and his addition to the story leads her down a path of the destabilization of the world she has curated. Then it all ends with no real purpose. I didn't understand the point of the story since it veered off so left away from the main plot line. The guy kind of messed up the story for me or really how everything was handled during his time in the book. In conclusion, this is one strange book. You think it is one thing but is it? Who knows?

I've concluded that some Japanese books are weird. I've only read two but I want to read so much more. They have been the most out of my comfort zone reads that I've ever experienced in my life. I plan on reading more translated fiction as well as books from different countries because of these tow books. Do you read translated fiction or books from different countries? What have you gotten out of them?