Life Ceremony: stories

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Each of her stories either explored the idea that something strange becomes normalised in society or that the protagonist is abnormal in comparison to normal society. In any case, the stories were bizarre and twisted. This story is filled with social commentary. I'm actually really happy that I read this because it truly was a good story despite its...grossness. I actually loved this story. At its core, this story is about the strange processes of evolution and how society changes over time and becomes more accepting of new traditions and things happening in the world.

The title story "Life Ceremonies" is set in a near-future world where, post demographic decline, funerals are replaced by life ceremonies. Those gathered first feast on the deceased and then seek an ‘insemination partner’ amongst the other guests, the ceremony followed by a reproductive pairing-off, something our narrator, who remembers the old taboos of our world, finds difficult to accept. The titular “Life Ceremony” was the work that provided me the greatest food for thought, a cheap pun whose relevance becomes clear as soon as we learn that the ceremony in question is a death ritual in which the deceased is turned into a meal and eaten by surviving friends and relatives. This is, in fact, only half the custom because it also requires “procreation [as a] form of social justice” (72). This circle-of-life ceremony is fully completed only when the participants settle down to extroverted fornication inside, outside, on the street, everywhere, leaving large deposits of semen as proof of their success. (Although in a realistic world, semen on the street, lawn, or furniture could hardly be said to mark a successful copulation for the purpose of reproduction!) All notions of social constructs begin to melt away under Murata’s fiery blast in these stories, and the world begins to be depicted as wild, a society of Earth rather than a collection of society upon it. ‘ I had the feeling that humans were becoming more and more like animals,’ she writes. In Puzzle, the narrator begins seeing people as organs within buildings—’ All the people crawling around in the world were the shared inner organs of all the gray buildings like herself’—before seeing them all as organs of a larger world, all connected and performing our own functions as part of a whole. In this, Murata’s characters find freedom. Please note that all of my words are completely my own words and may not be used or quoted by anyone without direct permission from me. Her first novel, Jyunyū ( Breastfeeding), won the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers. [3] In 2013 she won the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no ( Of Bones, Of Body Heat, Of Whitening City), and in 2014 the Special Prize of the Sense of Gender Award. [4] [5] In 2016 her 10th novel, Konbini ningen ( Convenience Store Person), won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, [6] and she was named one of Vogue Japan's Women of the Year. [7] Konbini ningen has sold over 1.5 million copies in Japan [8] and in 2018 it became her first book to be translated into English, under the title Convenience Store Woman. [9] It has been translated into more than 30 languages. [8]I liked this one more than the last one only because it had more weight and importance on it. It was cute seeing their friendship and what their life was like. Again, not too much happened here but I liked it. Murata captures quite ordinary moments and turns them into unsettling, confusing, and strange moments. However, confusing in a way that you just can't imagine anyone thinking of these. Sayaka Murata is a nonconformist Japanese writer who explores alternatives against traditional society norms.

It’s different from anger because I eliminated the emotion of “anger” when I was a kid, but sometimes I feel that quiet suffering and complete despair are one of the driving forces to writing a novel.

Life Ceremony

I always write novels with the image of an aquarium. When I create people and settings in it, when they are there they automatically start moving and the story begins to move beyond my imagination. I write down what happened in there, sincerely, as if I was really experiencing it. finally something longer! makes it easier to really dig your teeth into (get it?) (because this short story is about cannibalism) Perhaps those topics will evolve over and over again. It gives me deep joy, because making discoveries beyond my imagination is my biggest purpose of writing.

the story is about a person who changes their personality in the environment they are in and the people they are with. like...quite literally changes their personality. as soon as they are with a different group their entire persona changes. so much so that the character doesn't even know what their real personality looks like or feels like. Faith" was published in English in Granta: The Online Edition in 2020, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. [31]and then there's this quote which sums up all of murata's writing to me: "Instinct doesn't exist. Morals don't exist. They were just fake sensibilities that came from a world that was constantly transforming." Freeman, John (November 16, 2017). "In Praise of Sayaka Murata". Literary Hub . Retrieved February 17, 2021.