Mieko Kawakami - Breasts and Eggs

Challenging every preconception about storytelling and prose style, mixing wry humor and riveting emotional depth, Kawakami is today one of Japan’s most important and best-selling writers. She exploded onto the cultural scene first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and is now an award-winning novelist.
Breasts and Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.
It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations.
On another hot summer’s day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.

Comment: While browsing some books at the library, the cover of this one caught my eye and upon checking the blurb, I thought it would be interesting enough to try. I've had some positive reactions to other Japanese authors I've tried and decided to give this one a chance.

Natsu is a young Japanese woman, going on with her life in Tokyo, and one day her older sister tells her she will be visiting with her daughter, because she plans on investigating clinics where she could have a procedure to have breast implants. Natsu never thought about this subject but her sister's decision, along with her daughter recent decision to not speak to her, now makes her start wondering about certain things. Then, years later, Natsu is still single but as time goes by she starts thinking what it will mean to become old while alone and without a child. Is there any possibility to change her life without having to give in to things she never wanted in her life?

I've finished this book but I'm still a little confused on what I'm supposed to think. I've come to realize  - perhaps it's just the small range of my experience - that the Japanese authors I've read so far seem way more introspective than European or American ones, and a huge part of the books they write seem to focus on other things and not exactly a linear narrative. This isn't bad for me, I kind of like the style, but it certainly makes for a slightly confusing reaction because I can't be certain on what I was supposed to see here.

The writing style is a little vague, lots of allusions to thoughts and notions, but it helps that the ideas keep coming, which makes it feel as if things are moving on. Natsu is the narrator of this story and I liked her personality (I've identified with some of her thoughts) but it also seems that she could be any other person, in the sense that I believe the author wanted to convey a message, or a point, with this novel, and Natsu as protagonist is only a vehicle, not the decisive factor for the story to be successful.

To me, this was a very feminist story, not only because most characters are women and talk/think about women's bodies and issues, but there is a lot of information, directly discussed by the characters or somehow included in thoughts (this is why I think the author had a goal) where we must wonder what it is like for women to think about themselves and what their bodies are meant for. 

The story is divided into two sections, being the first one where Natsu's sister considers having implants - and all that this subject might entail - and then the second one where Natsu ponders her choices, her likes and dislikes and the idea of having a child or not. Of course these subjects can be seen as important, and I'd say perhaps in an unique way in Japan, culturally speaking.

I guess each notion presented by the author could be discussed and can be a matter of opinion, but as a whole, I got the idea she wanted to write about the pressure women feel to be a certain way and to think of their bodies as a means to an end, but what does that really mean in today's society? I was also surprised by how the classes are described, in the sense that Natsu and her sister have always been poor and they don't have a lot and still need to pay debts, and this certainly doesn't match the most general idea people have about Japan, where all is bright and technological in the cities and calm and traditional in the country.

I say this because there does seem to be a direct correlation between affording to look the status and struggling to make ends' meet, just like anywhere else, but the expectations on Japanese women still mean certain choices and what that will cost. Added to the inner thoughts and the musings on a woman's body and what it means when babies are born and all that is related to a woman's body and even motherhood, this story is provocative and good food for thought.

I've seen that the book is actually a compilation of two stories, with the same characters. In Breasts, the point is that women are seen for their bodies first and what those bodies convey physically with the standards of what is beauty, and in Eggs the conversation is about children and family life vs personal choices, especially what it means to be a single mother and how can these women, who are not in a relationship, become mothers using artificial insemination, when that is apparently reserved more easily to couples who are more likely to be accepted.

While the first section was meant to be independent, I can see how the author wrote the second to suit, even though the characters don't seem to act then as they did in the first part. I did find this a little odd, but since the goal was not a plot driven story, that can be overlooked. I think the social commentary and the little things the author writes here and there are quite the ingenious criticism, and a lot of the situations portrayed can be a good example of pros and cons on the subject, as if this is a way to let the reader think which side of things has more merit or if one side should be stringer than the other.

I cannot say I've concluded anything, though, except that women always have it worst and biologically it's inevitable that some roles just need to be taken on by them, but should women be reduced to that? And who gains by imposing laws and rules that say this person deserves something more than another? Again, food for thought...

Grade: 7/10