Inside and Other Short Fiction: Japanese Women by Japanese Women

I really enjoyed this book but I think to appreciate it you need some prior knowledge of Japanese culture and society.

Of recent a handful of Japanese writers have come to the attention of the English reading world. Primarily among these is Haruki Murakami whose stories of magical realism and fantasy have grabbed the imaginations of thousands who would not have been able to read his books in his native tongue. However, there are those who lament the popularity of Murakami's works because they lack "Japaneseness" or an "exoticness" that would distinguish his works from the Western writers whom he was influenced by. This cosmopolitan flavor of Murakami's works is shared by Banana Yoshimoto, probably Japan's most famous writer in the West, whose works have been called "Murakami-light" because of the same magical realistic qualities and the non-Japaneseness that can be found within her body of work. However, it is unfair to lump these writers together because of the Western-ness of their works, because if one reads a number of recent Japanese stories one can see that a number of these stories are not "Japanese" or "Western," but more of a cosmopolitan nature and suffused with issues pertinent to all modern--post modern?--societies of the world. This volume of short stories opens with an introduction written by Ruth L. Ozeki, the author of My Year of Meats, who challenges both the postwar stereotype of Japanese women held primarily by Westerners, as submissive "geesha" (sic) and the present day representation as presented in anime and horror films. For her, literature is the way to truly understand a people and she begins with mentioning classics such as Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. However, for a modern representation of Japanese women, the number of works for an English reader are, unfortunately quite limited, and she hopes that this book can fill some of that gap. However, is this book a true representation of Japanese women writers as a whole? Probably not considering that this book only contains eight stories. Another issue that some reviewers have with this book is supposedly over sexualized nature. However, this is not really the case, because only five of the stories deal directly with sex. "Milk" written by Tamaki Daido concerns the life of a young girl in high school on the verge of her first sexual experience with her boyfriend. The title story "Inside" penned by the then twenty-year-old writer Rio Shimamoto deals with another young girl and her sexual awakening during high school. Yuzuki Muroi's story "Piss" deals with a nineteen-year-old prostitute who is dumped by her boyfriend after he steals 2 million yen from her, and Junko Hasegawa's "The Unfertilized Egg" concerns a former party girl turned business woman who is desperate to become pregnant during her thirty-sixth year of life. None of the sex scenes within these stories are graphic. They are not meant as much to titillate as they are to allow one to feel trepidation, "Milk," warmth, "Inside," despair, "Piss," and desperation, "The Unfertilized Egg. Amy

Eudora Welty said that the task of a fiction writer was "to enter into the heart and skin of a human being who is not oneself". All eight of the stories that make up "Inside and Other Short Fiction" are triumphs in terms of the writers' abilities to chart the inner topographies of characters. One story ("Fiesta") even goes so far as to inhabit the very emotions of one woman, written out as separate characters in her inner drama. I found three of these stories to have a brilliance that outshines the others. "Milk", by Tamaiko Daido may remind readers of the wonderful Japanese girl character in the movie "Babel", because it captures the interplay of adolescents in contemporary Japan so unerringly. "Shadow of the Orchid" by Nobuko Takagi is a wonderful examination of the uncertainties of a middle-aged relationship, at the same time as it flirts with the haunting traditions of the Japanese ghost story. Finally, there is "Inside", by Rio Shimamoto, a staggeringly poised writer who is only 23 years old. This is one of the most flawlessly written stories concerning familial conflicts that I have had the pleasure of reading. Expect to hear from this writer in a big way, in the future. All in all, "Inside and Other Short Fiction" is a marvelous volume, and is worthy of comparison to the earlier "This Kind of Woman", another volume of writing by Japanese women which is definitely worth sinking your literary teeth into...(if you can find it.)

First of all, I should start by saying that I am one of the translators of this anthology, but I'd like to let people know what a great collection of stories this is: certainly fascinating for anyone interested in Japan, but also very accessible to anyone with an interest in world fiction and women's issues in particular. My favorite story, which I didn't translate but wish I had, is Yuzuki Muroi's Piss - shocking, perhaps, but also very sad and moving. If you want to discover the reality of Japanese women's lives today, in all their complexity, I would really recommend this book.