Kawakami, who exploded into the
cultural space first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and
most importantly as a best-selling novelist, challenges every preconception
about storytelling and prose style. She is currently one of Japan’s most widely
read and critically acclaimed authors, heralded by Haruki Murakami as his
favorite young writer.
An earlier novella published in Japan with the same title focused on the female
body, telling the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator,
her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to
terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with
the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her
twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming
puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties
associated with growing up. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the
story, struggles with her own indeterminable identity of being neither a
“daughter” nor a “mother.” Set over three stiflingly hot days in Tokyo, the
book tells of a reunion of sorts, between two sisters, and the passage into
womanhood of young Midoriko.
In this greatly expanded version, a second chapter in the story of the same
women opens on another hot summer’s day ten years later. The narrator, single
and childless, having reconciled herself with the idea of never marrying,
nonetheless feels increasing anxiety about growing old alone and about never being
a mother. In episodes that are as comical as they are revealing of deep
yearning, she seeks direction from other women in her life—her mother, her
grandmother, friends, as well as her sister—and only after dramatic and
frequent changes of heart, decides in favor of artificial insemination. But
this decision in a deeply conservative country in which women’s reproductive
rights are under constant threat is not one that can be acted upon without
great drama.
Breasts and Eggs takes as its broader subjects the ongoing
repression of women in Japan and the possibility of liberation, poverty,
domestic violence, and reproductive ethics. Mixing comedy and realism, it is an
epic life-affirming journey about finding inner strength and peace.
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