The Door Between Us By Mieko Kawakami

Flash Fiction

The Door Between U.S.

by Mieko Kawakami

My apartment’s in an old wooden building, built who knows how many years ago, just one story, with two separate units, side by side, stuck between dilapidated houses no one lives in anymore. Imagine three old shacks that would have fallen down already if they weren’t holding one another up, and you’ll get the idea. My living space consists of one tatami room, a tiny kitchen with a single-burner stove, a leaky shower. There’s no storage. Out back, the space for drying clothes is all but taken up by the A.C., and it feels as though the wall of the house behind me is closing in.

Mieko Kawakami

 

Mieko Kawakami

Photography by Reiko Toyama
Styling by Shotaro Yamaguchi

Growing up in Osaka, Japan, novelist Mieko Kawakami was the victim of a common playground prank in which boys would flip up girls’ skirts, hoping to expose their underwear. Yet, she recalls, it was equally humiliating if you weren’t one of the girls chosen. “It meant you weren’t popular,” she told the New York Times in May. “It’s a humiliation among women not to be desired by men. That’s a very strong code in Japanese society.”

 

A better place: Author Mieko Kawakami says she wrote “Heaven” to shed light on the realities of bullying and help “young people to survive harsh times.” | REIKO TOYAMA

Mieko Kawakami's 'Heaven': The world as seen through the eyes of bullied children

BY KRIS KOSAKA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER

 SHARE/SAVE 

May 27, 2021

TAMPA, FLORIDA – 

Mieko Kawakami is the reigning queen of contemporary Japanese literature for good reason.

Her fiction grapples with essential questions of humanity, while grounding her characters in a muddy reality populated by broken families, absent fathers and children struggling to find meaning in a hostile world. In “Heaven,” newly translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, the writer melds philosophy and truth into a lacerating examination of power, ultimately asking: Who wields it, and why?

Heaven, by Mieko KawakamiTranslated by Sam Bett and David Boyd192 pagesEUROPA EDITIONS

THE JAPAN TIMES

 

Fiction in translation

Surrealism, cafes and lots (and lots) of cats: why Japanese fiction is booming

From tales of alienation to comforting novels set in bookshops, Japanese authors have written nearly half of this year’s bestselling translated novels in the UK. What’s their secret?

John Self

Saturday 23 November 2024

Anyone who has been in a bookshop in the last few years will have noticed that Japanese fiction is experiencing an extraordinary boom. In 2022, figures from Nielsen BookScan showed that Japanese fiction represented 25% of all translated fiction sales in the UK. The dominance is even more striking this year: figures obtained by the Guardian show that, of the top 40 translated fiction titles for 2024 so far, 43% are Japanese, with Asako Yuzuki’s satirical, socially conscious crime novel Buttertopping the list. Butter also won the breakthrough author award at this year’s Books Are My Bag readers awards, which are curated by booksellers and voted for by the public.

Mieko Kawakami: ‘Women are no longer content to shut up’

Fiction in translation

Mieko Kawakami: ‘Women are no longer content to shut up’

Traditionalists in Japan hated her feminist novel, but Breasts and Eggs was a huge bestseller. The author talks about taking on male privilege, orientalist cliches … and Haruki Murakami

David McNeill

Tue 18 Aug 2020 11.20 

Mieko Kawakami began writing partly to explore the “randomness and strangeness” of life – so it is oddly fitting that the release of her novel Breasts and Eggs (Chichi to Ran in Japanese) has suddenly been upended by a worldwide pandemic. After building up a loyal following in Japan over the decade, Kawakami was all set to go global, attending festivals in the US and Europe, before Covid-19 hit. Still, being stuck at home with her young son has provided plenty of grist for her feminist mill.

Mieko Kawakami / “Franz Kafka es mi lectura reconfortante”

 

Mieko Kawakami

The 

Books

 0f my 

life

Mieko Kawakami: ‘Franz Kafka is my comfort read’

The Japanese author on the humour of Kurt Vonnegut, the joys of James Joyce and translating Beatrix Potter

Mieko Kawakami

Fri 12 Jan 2024 10.00 GMT

My earliest reading memory 
We had very few books at home, growing up, so I always looked forward to the Japanese textbooks that were handed out in school every term. I would read the entire book in one day, and over and over again after that. Textbooks might seem boring, but they gave me a way into contemporary poetry, haiku and tanka poems.

My favourite book growing up
Demian by Hermann Hesse. Of all the protagonists, Sinclair appealed to me because of his introspective nature and lack of confidence.

It surprised me that I could understand the essence of my own culture through the work of Vonnegut, an American writer

The book that changed me as a teenager
I was lucky to read Kurt Vonnegut as a teenager. Michael Ende has written about the way in which humour is not an expression of playfulness but rather an attitude of how a person deals with the extreme hardships and setbacks that occur in life. This understanding of humour is connected to the spirit of Osaka, the city where I was born and raised. It surprised me that I could understand the essence of my own culture through the work of Vonnegut, an American writer. Through his imagination and epic experiences, he taught me about hope amid despair.

The writer who changed my mind
James Joyce. He completely transformed the way I thought about poetry – the whole concept of it, from form to content.

The book that made me want to be a writer
I can’t think of one, because I never aspired to become a writer. I just gave my all to every job and got to where I am now.

The book I came back to
Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil. As a non-believer, I could read and understand Weil’s work but never felt I could touch its essence. Now that I’m older and have been exposed to human limitations in various ways, the “God” that Weil refers to has taken on a new significance for me.

The book I reread
Growing Up (Takekurabe) by Ichiyō Higuchi, who was one of the first professional female writers in modern Japan. She depicts, in superb prose, the brilliant innocence of children and the customs of the old part of Tokyo, from 130 years ago. Aside from being a pleasure to read, the story reminds me of how the economic disparity and systemic inequality of her time remain unchanged today. The Zürau Aphorisms by Franz Kafka is another one.

The book I could never read again
I find many books are too macho to read now. Stories about “inheritance” or “succession”, depicting the conflict between sons and their oppressive fathers.

The book I discovered later in life
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin. This short-story collection was translated into Japanese a few years ago. I’m amazed by her ability to write about life’s sorrows and disappointments.

The book I am currently reading
The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Other Stories by Beatrix Potter. I’m currently translating all 23 tales into Japanese, so I’ve been reading them very closely for the past two years. I am constantly impressed by their perfect structure – the illustrations are wonderful too. For example, the animals that eat well have shiny fur, whereas the less fortunate ones look greasy and flabby – their fur is painted differently according to class. There’s a lot I have learned from Potter’s life and her insightful vision.

My comfort read
Kafka, because his works contain the truth that despair is neither something to be detested and shunned nor a sudden misfortune, but a natural condition for human life.

 Translated by Hitomi Yoshio. All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami is published by Picador.

THE GUARDIAN

THE BOOKS OF MY LIFE

2021
The books of my life / Amanda Gorman / ‘I wanted my words to re-sanctify the steps of the Capitol’Mary Beard / ‘Virgil was a radical rap artist of the first century BC’
Stephen King: ‘I loved Lord of the Flies the way kids love Harry Potter’
Gabriel Byrne: ‘I’ve never played Hamlet, but in many ways I am him’
Curtis Sittenfeld / ‘Sweet Valley High is not respected – but I found the books riveting’
Elif Shafak / ‘Reading Orlando was like plunging into a cold but beautifully blue sea’
Jason Reynolds / “Reading rap lyrics made me realise that poetry could be for me”
Michael Rosen / ‘My comfort read? Great Expectations’
Siri Hustvedt / ‘I responded viscerally to De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex’
Alan Garner / ‘The Chronicles of Narnia are atrociously written’
Rose Tremain / ‘My comfort reads are MasterChef cookbooks’
Oliver Jeffers / ‘Catch-22 was the first time I had a physical reaction to a book’
Penelope Lively / ‘Beatrix Potter seemed so exotic, unlike my world of palm trees’


2022
David Baddiel / The book that changed me? John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
David Baddiel / The book that changed me? John Berger’s Ways of Seeing
Edmund White / ‘My earliest reading memory is a lady toad with a nasty temper’
David Mitchell / ‘If I need cheering up, Jamie Oliver’s recipes usually help’
Isabel Allende / ‘I have been displaced most of my life’
Barbara Kingsolver / ‘Middlemarch is about everything, for every person, at every age’


2023
Richard Ford / ‘I don’t read for comfort. Comfort I source elsewhere’
Bret Easton Ellis: ‘I connected with Quentin Tarantino’
Lauren Groff / ‘Virginia Woolf’s Flush is delightfully bananas’
Natalie Haynes / ‘I couldn’t stop reading Stephen King - even at the top of the Eiffel Tower’
Richard Armitage / ‘I used to stand on the Lord of the Rings to reach the top shelf in my wardrobe’

2024
Mieko Kawakami / “Franz Kafka es mi lectura reconfortante”

2025
Niall Williams / ‘When I first read Chekhov, I thought: “He’s not so great”’
Graham Norton / ‘The Bell Jar changed how I felt about books’