Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
Keiko Furukuro is a 36 year old Tokyo woman who has spent half her life working in a Konbini - a Japanese convenience store. She is happy in her job, soothed by its regular patterns, but comes under pressure in her outside life; why isn’t she married with children, and doesn’t she want a career? She then meets another outsider called Shiraha - will she finally conform and meet societal expectations?
Lawsons/Family Mart/Seven Eleven
My first experience of a Konbini was in Osaka, where there was a Lawsons on the ground floor of my hotel. When I first entered, the staff members all shouted ‘Irasshaimase!’ (welcome). Not sure of a response (there isn’t one, it turns out) I shouted back a cheery ‘Konnichiwa!’. They looked at me like I was a bit mad.
First love cuts the deepest and all that, so Lawsons remained my favourite. I mean, they’re all fairly similar, but I had a taste for a particular onigiri - rice balls with edamame and salted kelp. In fairness, they all had a great selection of snacks and there was many the midnight raid on the way home from an Izakaya (handy bathroom stop as well).
Open 24/7, with an atm, photocopier, ready meals, alcohol, currency exchange, smoothies, coffees - I found there was something comforting about these stores on every block. I liked the fact they all had the same type of snacks, just slightly different (even the jingles) and after a while I knew where to go on the aisle for whatever I wanted. Even items I needed on the spur of the momment - nailclippers, particular phone cable, umbrella etc etc were available.
As you can tell, like all things Japan, I have spent far too much time thinking about about places like Konbinis. One final thing I would say is that the staff looked like they were working incredibly hard - there seemed to be a lot of products, but with only a couple of each item, which meant a constant replenishing of stock.
Keiko Furokuro
Keiko is one of those workers. She loves the structure - there are rules for everything, from greeting customers (Irasshaimase!) to when to stock certain products. She struggles with social norms, so this constant routine allows her to find her place and ‘at the store, I’m reborn as a normal person.’
Reading more about Keiko, I thought she may be autistic, not that she is ever described as such. We learn how she doesn’t relate to peoples emotions, and is confused by reactions to her behaviours (to break up a playground fight when younger, she hit a boy over the head with a shovel because it seemed like the quickest way to stop it. On another occasion, she finds a dead bird and suggests to her family that they eat it.)
On other occasions, she mimics her co-workers speech and mannerisms (masking?), takes things literally and absolutely thrives on the routine of the store. I think it’s natural for a reader to assume that Keiko is in some way neurodivergent.
Value, Judgement and Societal Norms
But I’m not sure if that’s what Sayaka Murata wants us to believe; it almost seems like too easy a conclusion. Instead, by the end of the book, I felt that Keiko is just different, more logical than most people, and is misunderstood. She had found her place in society in working in the Konbini - she felt valued as a member of the team, that she was contributing to her community, and that she isn’t judged by her workers. Normal, as she described herself earlier.
Outside the Konbini, she certainly finds herself judged. Why isn’t a 36 year old woman married with children yet? How can she consider working in a Konbini to be a career? Why doesn’t she have a partner?
When she meets Shiraha, it seems like she has found someone who is similar to her and maybe she can conform after all. However, it quickly becomes apparent that he is not anything like Keiko - he’s lazy, resentful, misogynistic, and blames all his ills on society. Keiko, meanwhile, is happy in her skin.
Normal
What is normal? We live in an incredibly complex world, and I think the author is trying to say we all find value and identity in our own way. Some of us cling to whatever meaning we can find, like driftwood in a deluge. We shouldn’t judge people for it, but of course society dictates we do, and if there’s one society that prizes conformity, it’s Japan.
When I was there, I couldn’t help but notice how harmonious it was. Not just the obvious stuff like transport, but peoples manners, their respect of personal space, how everyone was so quiet on the trains - there are so many unwritten rules, and for them to work, everyone has to buy into it. There’s a lot of people living cheek by jowl in the cities, and if it is to function, the needs of the individual would have to be sacrificed for the greater good.
What do I know - I spent a couple of weeks there. These are merely observations in a book review. But hey, it’s my blog so I can spout whatever I want. This book sparked a lot of questions in me, so I’ll keep going with some sweeping generalisations.
Japan’s social issues
Reading ‘Abroad in Japan’ I probably wasn’t too surprised to discover that bullying was a serious social problem in Japanese schools. You can only imagine what it’s like to be a kid trying to fit into an ecosystem that values conformity above all else; who would want to be a teenager finding my way in that sort of environment?
‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered down’ is a popular Japanese proverb.
Another thing I noticed early on was that there were a lot of older people still working in Japan - by old I mean in their seventies or eighties. Obviously it’s great that they could work if they wanted to and were fit enough, but it made me think about other reasons. Number one is that Japan has an ageing population - their death rate exceeds the birth rate. Perhaps they need these older people to fill the gaps in the workforce, and apparently pensions are quite modest, and I can imagine living costs are high. And loneliness (I’ll get to this one, as I usually do in this blog) - I read a stat somewhere that 40% of of people over the age of sixty lived alone in major cities. No wonder you can rent girlfriends and hostess bars are so popular.
It’s estimated that if the current trends continue, their population could drop from it’s present 124 million to 87 million by 2070 - a staggering decrease, and you can imagine all of the social problems that may ensue from that. They may have to allow a greater influx of immigrants, something they appear reluctant to do.
Loneliness, as I said earlier, is another major problem in Japan, with more and more people living alone. People work longer hours (Karoshi means to be overworked to death - and those salarymen sure drink a lot) and many young people live in complete isolation.
So, there’s a lot of pressure on the Japanese - to marry, to work, to fit in. I can easily imagine that if you don’t aspire to these conventions, you’re going to feel isolated and live accordingly.
Summary
Back to the book. Although a short novel at 160 pages, this one hit home, especially as I was in Japan and had a lot of questions. A word also for the prose - minimalist and as clean as the stores that Keiko works in. It’s deceptively simple, neutral and completely fitting of the character. The translator, Ginny Tapley Takemori, does a fine job in capturing this in English.
There’s an authenticity and quiet strength to Keika that makes her easy to like and empathise with. I never felt sorry for her, because she’s just different and wants to live life on her own terms and she finds dignity in what she does. Who the hell are we to judge anyone?
It’s a quietly absurd, darkly humourous book, (and it didn’t bother me that it doesn’t have a lot of plot), that works really well as a social critique of some of the issues that Japan finds itself facing. Keiko is a problem because she doesn’t meet societal standards, and is judged unfairly and harshly because of her refusal to conform, but she is completely content with her role as a cog in the machine.
I found this to be a thought provoking and wholly original work, that asks us to consider what we think to be normal, and to maybe not be as quick to judge.
The world outside the store kept turning, but I was at peace.
163 pages, Hardcover
First published July 27, 2016
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