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Inside and other short fiction
Japanese Women by Japanese Women
Tamaki Daido, Rio Shimamoto,
Yuzuki Muroi, Shungiku Uchida
Chiya Fujino, Amy Yamada,
Junko Hasegawa, Nobuko Takagi
Foreword by Ruth Ozeki
Jacket Art by Tomoko Sawada
Hardcover 240 pages
152 x 226mm 620g
ISBN : 978-4-7700-3006-1 / 4-7700-3006-1
Publish : Jun, 2006
Price : $22.95 |
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[ About the Book ]
"Delicate and explicit, haunting and aggressive, tender and titillating, poignant and comical . . . from emerging sexuality to love, perversion, motherhood, divorce, and finally death . . . what these eight stories share is a fearless and unsentimental narrative gaze that is fixed unblinkingly on the female experience in Japan today."
—Ruth Ozeki
Fresh, bold, and vibrant, Inside and other short fiction paints a vivid portrait of the lives of contemporary Japanese women through the most original, thoughtful, and cutting-edge fiction from Japanese women writers today.
With provocative titles such as "Piss," "The Unfertilized Egg," and "My Son's Lips," these eight short stories explore the issue of female identity in a rapidly changing society, where women have unprecedented sexual and economic freedom. From teens to fifties; married, single, divorced; the high school girl, the career woman, the sex worker, the housewife, the mother—this anthology deals frankly and explicitly with a broad range of women's experiences, and showcases the very best of recent writing by Japanese women.
With eight short stories from Amy Yamada, Chiya Fujino, Shungiku Uchida, Tamaki Daido, Rio Shimamoto, Yuzuki Muroi, Junko Hasegawa, and Nobuko Takagi, this anthology presents a range of styles and perspectives from long-established favorites, prize-winning novelists, and outspoken newcomers—many of whom are published here for the first time in English. The foreword is by award-winning Japanese-American novelist Ruth Ozeki, author of My Year of Meats, and the jacket art is a section of ID400 by internationally renowned artist Tomoko Sawara, whose striking photo-booth images of herself in various guises question her own identity and the identity of all women.
Reviews
"Bold stories by and about Japanese women who scorn the veneer of politesse and powder... Let's hope that more such books will follow—and that, in the process, Japanese women will continue to recast themselves in their own images."
—Elle Magazine
"... A provocative introduction to notable contemporary literature by Japanese women."
—Publishers Weekly
"Exciting and invaluable"
—L. A. Times
"The women of Inside, both writers and characters, evoke transformations as well as disruptions in the Japanese female identity."
—Kyoto Journal
"A compilation of cutting-edge fiction."
—THE Magazine
About the Authors
TAMAKI DAIDO, author of Milk, was born in 1966 and worked as a radio scriptwriter before becoming a novelist. Her novel Naked won the 30th Kyushu Art Festival Prize in 2000. She was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize four times before finally winning the award in 2002 for Salty Drive, a novel that caused some controversy in Japan for its depiction of the unconventional love affair between a woman in her thirties and a man in his sixties. Daido's work is characterized by a cynical sense of humor and an offbeat take on female sexuality.
RIO SHIMAMOTO, author of Inside, was born in 1983. By the age of twenty, she had twice been nominated for the Akutagawa Prize for her novels Little by Little (2003) and The Depths of the Forest (2004). Little by Little was awarded the Noma Prize for Literature, making Shimamoto the youngest-ever recipient of the award. Her fiction often portrays the loneliness and isolation that young people feel as they cross the threshold from childhood to adulthood.
YUZUKI MUROI, author of Piss, was born in 1970. Her resume lists beauty queen, actress, and bar hostess among her past occupations. Today she is better known as a prolific writer of essays and novels, and for her regular appearances on television and radio, where her outspoken views on current affairs make her a sought-after guest panelist on news shows. Since Muroi's debut as a writer in 1997, she has written more than twenty fiction and nonfiction titles. Her essays on love, marriage, and motherhood are particularly popular.
SHUNGIKU UCHIDA, author of My Son's Lips, was born in 1959. She shocked Japan with the publication of her novel Father Fucker (1993), a hard-hitting story of domestic sexual abuse, but she is perhaps best known as a manga artist. Uchida is also an actress, winning critical acclaim for her performance as the mother in cult director Takashi Miike's Visitor Q.
CHIYA FUJINO, author of Her Room, was born in 1962. Her debut novel Afternoon Timetable was published in 1995, the first in a string of prizewinners. Fujino is a transsexual, but her stories do not particularly focus on gay or gender issues. Instead, she prefers to portray characters who are slightly out of step with society, and to hint at what may lurk behind the ordinary facade of everyday life. In 2000 she won the Akutagawa Prize for Summer's Promise, the tale of a group of friends in their twenties, centered around a gay couple and the transsexual next door.
AMY YAMADA, author of Fiesta, born in 1959, is widely considered the pioneer of a new generation of Japanese women novelists noted for their frank, sexually explicit portrayals of women's lives. Her first novel, Bedtime Eyes, published in 1985, is the controversial story of the relationship between a black American soldier and a Japanese woman. Since then, Yamada has written more than a hundred novels, essay collections, and short story collections, and has won many major literary prizes. Her novels Trash, Bedtime Eyes, Jesse, and The Piano Player's Fingers have been translated into English.
JUNKO HASEGAWA, author of The Unfertilized Egg, was born in 1966. She is well-known in Japan for her regular appearances in a variety of magazines as a writer of "illustrated reports"; humorous, comic-strip style essays in which Hasegawa depicts the trials and tribulations of the generation of Japanese women to which she belongs. She has recently embarked on a career as a writer of fiction and essays. "The Unfertilized Egg" is taken from her first short story collection, Germination.
NOBUKO TAKAGI, author of The Shadow of the Orchid, was born in 1946. She won the Akutagawa Prize in 1984 for her novel Embracing the Light. Her fiction deals with love in many different guises: pure love, married love, extra-marital affairs, and love triangles. Her rich, sensuous prose often focuses on the dark side of human nature, and on the psychological mechanisms of love.
[An interview with the authors]
Q: What inspired you to write your particular short story in this collection? Is it something you read about in the news media? An incident from your own life?
• Shungiku Uchida, author of My Son's Lips:
It was from my own experience. I never actually have been taken to a taxi driver's house, but nearly all taxi drivers think I'm just a housewife with time on my hands when I get in a taxi with my kids. The housewife who is obsessed with washing though—that's actually me. I guess I made this story up out of various aspects of my life.
• Rio Shimamoto, author of Inside:
I wanted to portray something that was a universal experience for a teenager in Japan. I think that when you are a teenager, family and love tend to be your two major concerns.
• Junko Hasegawa, author of The Unfertilized Egg:
The idea for this story sprang from my worries about my own love life, uneasiness about my own future, about being single, and then all the little things that can happen in the course of a day. But when I looked at the finished story, I didn't feel it was particularly a reflection of my own life and feelings. I just felt it was a picture of the usual, average life of a single woman.
Q: The stories from INSIDE AND OTHER SHORT FICTION explore the multitude of women's identity issues and a major overriding theme—the difference between the woman the world sees and the woman one is inside. Do you believe the inside self and the outside self are always different? Is this an issue you've confronted on a personal level?
• Junko Hasegawa, author of The Unfertilized Egg:
A lot of women seem to believe they have to conform to certain expectations. Women who are perceived to not conform to these expectations can end up losing self-confidence. I'm still not married, and I don't have children; I don't have a steady job or a reliable income, and I often worry that people think of me. As a woman in her late thirties, leading a life in which I only have myself to think about, I feel that as a woman, as a human being, I am somehow inferior. But recently I've started to feel that if I can pour everything I've got into my work as a novelist, then that would also be worthwhile, and this makes me regain confidence in myself.
• Tamaki Daido, author of Milk:
Well, physically I am a woman, but apart from that I don't consider myself any different from a man. From when I was a little girl, people used to spread rumors that I was a lesbian, which I still wouldn't deny, but all my lovers have been men. Humans are desirable; if they are nice people I like them. It doesn't matter if they're male or female. And I like animals even more.
• Shungiku Uchida, author of My Son's Lips:
I wouldn't have thought my inner and outer self was that different, but I have actually been stopped on the street and asked if that was my kid whose hand I was holding! Sometimes it's taken some time to persuade people that I'm not a kidnapper. I guess I don't look like someone who has children, but I have four.
Q: What is it about current society (Japanese, American, etc.) that makes it so difficult to be a woman today? In your opinion, is there one thing or many things that come into play? Is it a generational thing? Are men having the same problems?
• Chiya Fujino, author of Her Room:
Although values are changing, old-fashioned expectations linger on. Many people seem to think that women can be treated as inferior.
• Rio Shimamoto, author of Inside:
I think for women the issue of children is the biggest thing. In Japan, women are still expected to take sole responsibility for child rearing, and this discourages many women from having children. Age is another issue that is difficult for women. Our society values young women and many women worry about growing old. Another thing I think about—in a society where there is an increasing drive for equality between the sexes, how much will we be allowed to value our uniquely male or uniquely female qualities?
• Tamaki Daido, author of Milk:
The differences between men and women are tiny. The real issue is that there are many problems in the world. As a woman I have been discriminated against and treated as if I am stupid, but sometimes people treat me more favorably because I am a woman. And it's the same kind of problem if you are a man. Good things and bad things. As for the generation gap, I think it's something that can be bridged fairly easily, if you set your mind to it. More than this, I prefer to think about human relationships, our relationship with nature, and using my body and soul, day in, day out.
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