 |
|
Paddyfield.com
More reviews by Mary Lee
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
|
|
|
Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino
It is still a shock to the Japanese years after the famous 1997 case known as the "Murder of Tokyo Electric Power's Elite Lady": the thirty-nine year-old victim, a researcher in a prestigious company by day, and a street-prostitute by night, was found dead in an abandoned apartment in Shibuya, Tokyo.
NATSUO KIRINO's GROTESQUE, based on this case, and using this English word (one of many japanized foreign words in the vocabulary) as the name of the Japanese thriller, weaves an exotic lullaby about the cruel realities of modern-day Japanese society for its female members.
The story centres around four heroines: the narrator, a "half" with a Swiss father and a Japanese mother; Yuriko, her monstrously beautiful sister; Kazue and Mitsuru, her classmates at the prestigious Q High School for Girls. The book begins when Kazue is found murdered in an apartment in Shibuya, in a similar manner to the murder of Yuriko a year ago. The narrator poses herself as the sole witness to the private histories of the victims of the two mysterious murder cases, examining the lives of her subjects and their evolution into monsters.
Yuriko is grotesque because of her unnatural beauty. She does not have the word "endeavour" in her dictionary, and via her violent beauty she walks through life effortlessly, dissipating any reason for endeavour on behalf of her striving common sex. She gets a place in Q High School effortlessly, despite her sister's hard work to get in, and is invited just as easily to joing the Cheering Squad, which Kazue can only dream of. Aware of her own beauty from a very young age, Yuriko has decided her existence will depend upon her sexual relationships with men; even when Yuriko ages and her beauty leaves her, degrading from a high-class prostitute to the street, she still possesses the same poise, awaiting her doom with the same indifference as she treats life.
Kazue's grotesqueness comes from her excessive desire for recognition and her desperate attempts to be successful. She has been living in delusion since Q High School, and after her employment at G Prefecture her detachment from reality grows extreme. Though the narrator keeps emphasizing Yuriko as the source of all evil, Kazue's tragedy seems to be the main focus of the novel. Her Elektra complex is seen in her absolute devotion to her father and her despising of her mother. Once Kazue's father dies, there is no other way to be her own self than to ravish herself and betray her father's expectations: from anorexia to prostitution, finally to death, Kazue's is a journey to self-punishment, embodying all the sad truths about women in today's Japan.
Mitsuru, the top girl in Q High School, is associated with the scandal of a terrorist organization, a reference to the religious order "Aum Shinrikyo", which gained international notoriety in 1995 when several of its followers carried out a Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subways. In Q High School, Mitsuru outwits Kazue by working hard in secret while outwardly pretending to be winning gracefully, and with this she counteracts the threats of Yuriko's beauty and the noble lineages of the other students. But once failing, upon leaving school, to be the top girl in society, she stumbles into the dangerous path of a terrorist.
As the plot progresses, one begins to wonder who "I" actually is? Only known as "Yuriko's elder sister", she remains nameless till the last page of the book, as if to emphasise her sense of non-existence and insignificance beside Yuriko, choosing to stay in a hidden corner, brandishing her maliciousness, nourishing herself with the hatred against others. She is the only one who remembers but is not remembered, begging the question of who is the most grotesque.
In GROTESQUE, Kirino seems not so interested in uncovering the truths of the two murder cases than in examining the result of efforts made in vain. Q High School for Girls is the hierarchical society in microcosm, where discrimination and class systems are embedded. The four girls who are neither endowed with lineage nor wealth must equip themselves to survive: Yuriko with her beauty, Kazue and Mitsuru with their wits, the narrator with her maliciousness. Especially for Kazue and Mitsuru, who try hard to achieve excellence in school, meet with disappointment when they enter the society, since academic results and performance in extra-curricular activities are not relevant for real life situations.
Japan, one of the most developed countries in Asia, is a conservative country holding to traditional values. Japanese women are given legal rights to education and career opportunities, but still constrained by society's demands to be physically attractive and subordinate to men. Kirino's monsters are born out of the tremendous stress of being a woman in the new Japan.
Mary Lee
24/03/2007
|
Mary Lee holds degrees in English literature from the University of Hong Kong and University of London. Since 2006, she has been Administrator for the Man Asian Literary Prize. |
| |
|
