Breasts and Eggs

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During this period covered in the second part of the novel Natsuko is struggling with her latest project, a novel that just won't come together.

It’s complicated. I wrestled with Natsuko’s eventual resolution of this dilemma, and still do. It’s the sign of a thought-provoking book that it lingers long after you finish. At first I thought Natsuko’s way of dealing with the dilemma was a hasty wrap-up to conclude the story, but now I’m not so sure. The story is fundamentally about Natsuko finding her own voice and sense of self; learning to put herself and her needs first. In the end, she stays true to that. She's trying to find herself -- who she is, as a woman and in general -- and most of Breasts and Eggs has her trying to figure that out. Yet as Natsuko contemplates her possible relationship with her own pregnant body, Kawakami presents an extreme alternative: society giving up on reproduction altogether. At the novel’s turning point, Yuriko suggests that birth itself might be considered a violation of bodily autonomy. In recent years, the anti-natalist movement – or at least discussion of it – has entered the mainstream, buoyed by work from philosophers including David Benatar and Sarah Perry. While climate change is a factor, anti-natalism is more controversially driven by a moral debate about whether it is justifiable to subject someone else to the difficulties of human existence, including the very fact of being ‘trapped’ in a body. Although she is not an anti-natalist, the philosopher Alison Stone has written recently about how being born is the most decisive and yet under-discussed aspect of human experience: ‘We can explain, at least to a point, why the particular body that I happen to be born with was conceived (my parents met, a particular sperm fertilised a particular egg on a given occasion – and the rest). But that does not explain why this body is the one whose life I happen to be leading and experiencing directly, from the inside. This is just a fact, and because it is inexplicable, a dimension of mystery pervades my existence.’ Midoriko puts it most bluntly -- "It feels like I am trapped inside my body" -- but it's what all three of them are dealing with. The sequel novel was translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd, [15] but kept the original title of Breasts and Eggs. [13] The translation was published in the United States by Europa Editions on 7 April 2020. [16] It was published in the United Kingdom by Picador on 20 August 2020. [17] [18]

a b c Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. (1 March 2009). Britannica Book of the Year 2009. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. p.269. ISBN 978-1-59339-232-1. As a reader who is progressively identifying with, and adhering to, their own gender less and less, this resonated with me in a loud and powerful way. A rare positive figure is Jun Aizawa -- but he is also troubled, a doctor who learned late in life that his father wasn't his biological father, and that his mother had had a sperm donor. SB: I see Mieko’s approach to gender as an interrogation of assigned roles. Heaven is about the conundrum that inevitably results from saying yes to life: how can we love life on the one hand, and be so angry at the terms of our existence on the other? An interesting aspect of gender in Heaven is how comfortable the narrator and Kojima feel around each other, discovering a space where they can be themselves, while feeling no affinity for the other boys or girls in class. More than this, though, I think Heaven is concerned with conflicts between alpha leaders and omega loners. Among the harsher premises of the novel is that the two main bullies, Momose and Ninomiya, are also the smartest and most handsome guys at school. At least in American literature and film, we tend to depict bullies as monstrous Goliath types, loud and grotesque. In Heaven, however, the bullies are the kids that have it all, making them something more complicated than monsters, and more familiar.

It's in looking into the subject that she befriends Aizawa -- whose own history however suggests some of the damage that might result when a child does not know the identity of their biological father. This allegory articulates the fear of the “what if” scenario common to motherhood debates with an honesty that is chilling. It gives an entry point to discuss guilt, pressure and the term “unconditional love” that comes after birth. It suggests the need for a deeper introspection, rather than thinking of motherhood as an obligation, by making one confront the genuine possibility that their child might be the one in 10.

SB: Because of the way things were assigned, Heaven was actually the first novel we translated together. Readers will find Heaven to be more conventionally structured than Breasts and Eggs. In a sense, Heaven is high modernism, vivid and sincere, but with an indefatigability and broad-mindedness that belongs without a doubt to the current moment. Interestingly, the book was written over ten years ago, and is set in the 1990s, which speaks to its timelessness. Motherhood then is the central issue in the longer second book of the novel, with Natsuko -- thirty-eight when the second part begins, a leap eight years ahead -- finding a deep-rooted urge to have a child. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

Her speeches had two refrains: “I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna get big boobs,” and “Can I really go through with this?”Its unobtrusive plot masks a work of remarkable complexity that launches a radical challenge to both the political and literary status quo. Originally published in 2008 in Japan, its English translation (superbly undertaken by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is nothing short of a masterpiece. She has a couple of ongoing gigs -- a column for a women's magazine, a regular webzine contribution -- and the occasional other piece means that she is: "at a point where I could make a living from my writing".

Natsuko doesn't express these concerns as much -- she is more indifferent to her physicality -- but it's more like she just moved past it; she recalls similar concerns when she was Midoriko's age -- "I remember what it felt like when my breasts started getting bigger. How out of nowhere I had grown these things" -- but that only went so far:

Breasts and Eggs is a two-part novel, with book one -- essentially the Akutagawa Prize-winning novel 'Breasts and Eggs', published in 2008 -- set on a few hot summer days in 2008 and book two beginning eight years later, in 2016. SB: One of the things that constantly impresses me about Mieko’s writing is her fearless eagerness to revisit images and settings. Readers of Breasts and Eggs will remember there being multiple scenes at a bathhouse, multiple scenes set on a Ferris wheel. Recursion is a hallmark of her style. We see it popping up in Heaven too. What prevents this from feeling repetitious is a tension that builds steadily and lasts, ultimately pervading the story. Maybe this sounds crazy, but her work reminds me of those spicy peppers bred not to be spicy. Have you tried them? Coolapeños. Bite into one, and you get this spacey feeling, where you feel the heat arriving, but it never does, and instead you’re left with almost a ghost of heat that’s difficult to shake.