This week I read Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. Murata lives in Japan and is considered one of their most exciting up-and-coming authors. Japan comprises over 4,000 islands located in Eastern Asia. The four major islands are Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku.
Alongside her writing, Murata works part-time at a convenience store. This gave her the inspiration for Convenience Store Woman, which centers on Keiko Furukura, a thirty-six year old woman living in Tokyo. Through this short novel Murata explores what the working life is like in Japan and how your job, marriage status, and personality line up with societal expectations and values. Keiko is not normal, but she is good at pretending to be. Her job at the convenience store is the only thing that gives her life structure and meaning. It is literally the reason she wakes up in the morning and gives her the motivation to eat, sleep, and shower.
She has been working at the store for eighteen years and can barely remember what her life was like before she was “reborn” as a convenience store worker. She knows she was regarded as a strange child, though her parents and sister showed her love and affection. After getting in trouble at school and causing her parents stress, Keiko decided to begin staying quiet outside of her home, she “would no longer do anything of [her] own accord, and would either just mimic what everyone else was doing, or simply follow instructions”.
Keiko’s success at mimicry is what allows her to succeed at the convenience store. Using the training manual and examples given by the manager, she felt like she was finally being taught how to interact with the world and “how to accomplish a normal facial expression and manner of speech”. After her first day, Keiko expresses that “for the first time ever, I felt I’d become a part in the machine of society. I’ve been reborn, I thought. That day, I actually became a normal cog in society”.
I found the inner workings of Keiko’s mind and the way that other people see and understand her to be very interesting and to be good examples of how women, especially unmarried women, are seen in Japanese society. Her sister and her acquaintances from high school assume that she is unsatisfied with her life and relationship status without ever asking Keiko’s opinion.
We are given the perspective of Shiraha, a new hire at the convenience store, as well. While Keiko is still the narrator, Shiraha speaks so much that we might as well be in his brain. He is unmarried and gets the job simply to make a little bit of money and to find a wife. He is not a hard worker and does not hold the job on a pedestal the way that Keiko does. He subjects her, and the readers, to his long rants about evolution and the correct roles of men and women in society. Shiraha sees “himself only as the victim and never the perpetrator”, though he antagonizes and criticizes women at every turn, feeling he is entitled to having the socially acceptable life that is promoted to him: a good, impressive job, and a wife.
Although Keiko is an exaggerated character who shows the signs of a perfect worker, putting the job and the customer above all else, I still felt empathy for her struggles. She represents the child who never fits in and shows that anyone who diverges from society’s path is not treated right. Keiko and Shiraha discuss themselves as “foreign objects” floating in society’s orbit, when you don’t fit, you are eliminated.
Though there is definitely some manipulation going on by Shiraha, Keiko and him make a deal that they will live together so that everyone will see them as cured. Keiko can work and make money, while placating her family with her new “relationship”, while Shiraha can hide away from the world in her apartment, evading his belligerent family members. Keiko does this especially out of her fear of aging out of her usefulness. She notes that “when you do physical labor, you end up being no longer useful when your physical condition deteriorates. However hard I work, however dependable I am, when my body grows old then no doubt I too will be a worn-out part, ready to be replaced, no longer of any use to the convenience store”.
While it has its perks, Keiko grows tired of Shiraha and of everyones reactions to their relationship. Her coworkers who used to regard her as a dedicated, but intense worker, now only want to gossip with her. Her sister and friends offer her unwanted advice and show how relieved they are that she has finally found someone. Keiko has finally gotten confirmation that before this relationship, everyone had thought of her as an outsider.
The final straw is when Shiraha makes Keiko quit the convenience store and apply for “real” jobs. On the way to her interview she snaps and ends their partnership. She exclaims that “for the human me, it probably is convenient to have you around, Shiraha, to keep my family and friends off my back. But the animal me, the convenience store worker, has absolutely no use for you whatsoever”.
I found this distinction between her human self, the one with priorities like marriage and career success, and her animal self, who wishes only to work at the store, to be an interesting separation. While in the narrative, the reader is rooting for Keiko to leave Shiraha and go back to the store that she loves, in a way this means we are indirectly rooting for her participation in capitalism and her participation in a work environment that erases the individual humanness she possesses.
Overall, while parts of the story dragged or were repetitive, this novel brought up lots of important topics about work, gender, and society. This gave a short insight into what working life is like in Japan and the standards that its citizens are held to. Murata's strange, thought provoking, and also somehow endearing writing style is something that I'd like to read more of.
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