One of the major trends in Japanese literature since the 2000s has been the liberation of femininity through gender-conscious writing.Viewed within this context, the presence and value of Mieko Kawakami stand out remarkably among contemporary Japanese writers.But what exactly is the source of her appeal?
As discussed in my earlier essay, Will the Akutagawa Prize Still Matter in 20 Years??How Literary Prizes Shape Literature, since the 2000s there appears to be a barrier that only two writers have truly crossed: Mieko Kawakami and Yoko Tawada.They have managed to connect Japanese literature to the shared language of world literature.Their role in this connection can even be explained within standard theoretical frameworks of world literature.
Once one recognizes that, among Japanese writers since the 2000s, only these two have truly reached the shared foundation of world literature, Kawakami’s value becomes even clearer.Before them, Haruki Murakami’s global success relied heavily on his high degree of translatability, while Yoko Ogawa embodied the quiet introspection and subtle eeriness that overseas readers often associate with Japanese literature.
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The Stylistic and Fictional Experiment of Breasts and Eggs
Even in her debut novel My Ego, My Teeth, and the World, themes of love intersect with obsessive behavior and bullying.These motifs reappear in Heaven, and in The Yellow House they overlap with friendship.It seems fair to regard these recurring elements as part of the author’s thematic world and literary identity?something she repeatedly presents across multiple works as a version of herself she can show to others.At the same time, however, the writing sometimes feels somewhat awkward in its construction.
The two works discussed here are both extremely engaging in their early stages.Their themes and the way scenes are chosen within the narrative world are particularly striking.
Yet their development and conclusions feel somewhat uncertain, suggesting that the relationship between theme and narrative expression remains slightly unresolved.
Still, there is something admirable about the sheer determination to maintain such a strong and distinctive voice.
I find myself drawn to that strength, as well as to her willingness to draw from classical literature and social themes.
This work is a novella depicting the three-day visit of Makiko, a single mother, and her daughter Midoriko, who travel to Tokyo to stay with Makiko’s younger sister, the protagonist Natsuko.
The novel already displays many of the traits characteristic of the author’s early style: the verbosity of the narrative passages, the rapid succession of dialogue, and the tendency to present excessive streams of thought that both reveal and camouflage the work’s thematic concerns. Characters talk endlessly, and the story unfolds through an almost breathless flow of conversation.
Compared with Kawakami’s debut, however, the prose here is noticeably more refined. The work maintains the recognizable form of a conventional novel, and its structure holds together without collapsing toward the end. Yet whether the reader finds the early conversation between the “breast-type women” and the “chilled-type women” amusing may serve as the first real test of engagement with the text.
The narrative draws in many elements of women’s lives that resonate across generations. It touches on attitudes toward breasts and makeup, cultural references such as Oreos and American cherries, and the transformations that pregnancy and childbirth bring to a woman’s body and life. The novel suggests how the body and life change with certainty while still being shaped by chance.
The choice of the public bath as a setting?where the female body can be observed in its nakedness, particularly with attention to breasts?is also effective. Even as middle-aged sisters, the women exchange candid and delicate topics with surprising openness. Above all, the novel is filled with incessant chatter, delivered in a lively dialect?perhaps Osaka or Kansai, though I cannot say for certain?which, combined with the brisk rhythm of the narrative voice, keeps the story moving in a tone that remains engaging without becoming excessively dark.
The daughter, who struggles with her mother, raises an anguished question: why was I born at all? The mother works relentlessly and does not seem happy; the daughter declares that she does not wish to give birth herself and even wishes she had never been born. These leaps into existential reflection feel painfully sincere.
The story does not hesitate to confront heavier and more fundamental issues. One example is the scene in which a man?who already has another woman and intends to abandon the mother?offers an absurd justification when asked why he had a child in the first place. He insists that childbirth is not an act of human intention, confronting the characters with a hollow philosophical claim that avoids responsibility altogether.
Connection with Ichiyō Higuchi’s Takekurabe
In the Akutagawa Prize judging commentary, Natsuki Ikezawa mentioned that the work functions as an homage to Ichiy? Higuchi.This observation helped me realize that the novel indeed seems to have connections with Higuchi’s Growing Up (Takekurabe).
The thematic connection becomes clear in lines such as:
“No, no?how dreadful it is to become an adult.”(Takekurabe)
→“No, no?I hate the thought of growing up.”(Breasts and Eggs)
Both passages express the emotional turbulence surrounding a girl’s transformation into womanhood.
I think Mieko Kawakami sometimes talks too much, but I recall that Takekurabe is a work where the spaces of what is left unsaid really resonate. That contrast, and yet the way both works contemplate the growth of girls and the entirety of a woman’s life—with its fragility and strength, its embodiment and outbursts of expression—makes Kawakami’s writing unmistakably a serious work of fictional creation and literature in the contemporary world that inherits classical qualities.
One stylistic feature of this work is the sparse use of punctuation and quotation marks, and especially that the narrative prose is written in a clearly colloquial style, giving it a charming readability reminiscent of classical literature. While this is not unusual today, the major shift from literary (bungo) to colloquial (kōgo) writing emerged from the late Meiji to Taishō periods, influenced by movements for unifying written and spoken language, the adoption of foreign words, and various aspects of modernization. These efforts aimed to bring written and spoken language into closer alignment.
The combination of a classical-like reading experience with the softness of modern colloquial prose becomes a stylistic charm, skillfully building on the overly literary style seen even in her debut novel. Alongside this stylistic experimentation, Kawakami’s use of motifs from well-known works by Meiji-era female writers, and her exploration of themes of femininity and girlhood, evoke a sense of classical resonance. This classical element can serve as a weight that balances her authorial image, which might otherwise feel light or frivolous due to the playful and airy qualities often associated with her style.
Communication failures and a lonely protagonist, visited by love and friendship… Is All the Lovers in the Night really a romance novel?
All the Lovers in the Night initially suggests a quiet, compelling portrayal of the life of a middle-aged woman working as a proofreader.
Yet the story ultimately takes a dramatic turn, plunging into alcoholism, emotional collapse, and tearful resolution.
As with Breasts and Eggs, the title is beautiful and the opening sections are deeply engaging.
Even the protagonist’s sole sexual experience during her school days involved someone equally marginalized in their class. The postcoital remarks and subsequent flashbacks are harsh, and she has neither true friends nor a real romantic partner. A middle-aged woman, steeped in loneliness and isolation, might convince herself that this was love?but to me, it felt like a horror story. From the young man’s perspective as well, it must have been exhausting: while they were apart, he is endlessly scrutinized in her thoughts; she is an alcoholic; she usually appears without makeup, yet suddenly dresses up and takes him to an expensive restaurant, declaring her love. It is an immature, quasi-romantic relationship that never fully reaches adulthood. Likely, the author of All the Lovers at Midnight did not intend it as a romance novel. Yet it terrifies me to think that someone like Mizuki Tsujimura would interpret it as such.
The story of Fuyuko Irie, the lonely protagonist who has neither friends nor lovers, introduces three other characters besides Hijiri: her potential romantic partner Mitsuzuka, a former senior colleague she meets through freelance work, and a high school classmate. She has almost no meaningful conversation with any of them, remaining passive. There is nothing to do between returning home and going to bed; she has no companions to spend her days off with; and fundamentally, she does not even understand herself.
Presumably, Fuyuko has not revealed herself fully to anyone else either, and she cannot break past the stillness of Mitsuzuka or take initiative. Lacking even a sense of a self to show, she drifts, attempting to become Hijiri or wandering through midnight hours. When Fuyuko does not know what to do with a gifted piece of clothing, Hijiri says simply, “Just wear it.” When she cannot understand how to listen to classical music, Mitsuzuka says, “Just listen.” But for a protagonist who cannot grasp these things, there is no one; because there is nothing in herself, she is told by both the boy from her first sexual experience in high school and a friend at age thirty-five: “Watching you irritates me.”
Mieko Kawakami: Writing the Global Literary Problem of “Body and Language”
Her work aligns with a central trend in world literature: the idea that language itself possesses a form of materiality?what might be called language as body.
The trembling of the voice = movement of emotion
The rhythm of language = movement of the body
Grammatical dissonance = dissonance of the subject
World literature tends to value this kind of philosophical depth expressed through style.
Breasts and Eggs directly engages with the question of “voice as body,” which makes it easy to understand why the novel attracts the attention of international critics.
As a “materialization of language” (Language as Body), it seems to align perfectly with the current at the core of world literature that “language itself possesses corporeality.” This can apparently be connected to the lineages of Hélène Cixous and Judith Butler, which makes me go, honestly, “who even are these people?”
□ Hélène Cixous (b. 1937, French feminist critic associated with post-structuralism) Her representative work The Laugh of the Medusa revived the concept of écriture féminine as a way to break through the countless constraints that inhibit women’s existence and self-realization.
□ Judith Butler (b. 1956, American philosopher and feminist, working in political philosophy, ethics, and other fields) In Gender Trouble, she addresses a wide range of areas including political philosophy, gender studies, literary criticism, and feminist activism. The book explores the relationship between desire and subjectivity—that is, when humans make judgments or direct their desires toward something, what constitutes the “subject” of that judgment or desire—and how such actions are shaped and constrained by history and society. Modern society assumes that individuals act as independent subjects making autonomous judgments, but in reality, historical and social constraints penetrate the subject, producing various forms of unconscious oppression.
(→ This concern also appears frequently in Kawakami’s works.)
It is also interesting to note that the sexual system being structured around the binary opposition of male and female is already considered a form of oppression.
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