All three of the short pieces included in Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks by Akutagawa Prize-winning author Natsuko Imamura are stories of escalation—in each, the mundane finds itself quickly replaced by the tragically absurd. The opening tale, for example, begins with a familiar domestic scene of hulling sunflower seeds, only to end with the startling metamorphosis in the title. Throughout the collection, events snowball with surprising haste: minor scuffles in the schoolyard result in arrests, career-ending compound fractures and a life on the streets; careless rumors cause severe bullying, social rebellion and self-immolation; and unusual life choices lead to love-at-first sight, marriage proposals in makeshift hamster cages and being run over by garbage trucks.
The publicity for the book calls the collection “unsettling”, and this discomfiture has as much to do with the tone as it does with the onrush of the absurd—a darkness that would be overwhelming if it weren’t for the relatability of the characters in their struggle for acceptance. The lightness of touch exhibited here by Imamura also helps, well reproduced by veteran translator Lucy North. This lightness reaches the characters themselves: the protagonists have the ability to view things, even misfortune, with a sense of childish wonder. Behind that simple pleasure, though, is a world that is otherwise unbearably cruel, especially to those that have the misfortune to stand out. In fact, in this collection standing out is the first step to a complete and irreversible isolation. In essence, Asa is an anthology on the human cost of maintaining a rigid social harmony.
In the titular story, the young and unfailingly optimistic Asa repeatedly fails to share food with friends and family, who always find innocuous excuses to decline her offers. Undaunted, she persists, but it soon becomes clear that her initial failures have sown doubts in others that multiply out into the wider social sphere. Equating the sharing of food with reciprocal human affection, these rebuffs open up an “emptiness” in Asa’s heart. It is only when she loses her humanity and becomes truly incapable of receiving love that she finally feels closer to others.
This one-sided form of human affection is echoed in “A Night to Remember”, in which the disaffected protagonist decides to drag herself along the floor rather than walk. Filled with a debilitating ennui, things look up when she meets another person just like herself, but returning to his home reveals that the dynamic shared with his mother is one more suited to owner and pet.
Finally the darkest of the three stories, “Nami, Who Wanted to Get Hit (and Eventually Succeeded)”, begins with the eponymous character’s realization that she cannot be hit by projectiles, be they dodgeballs, water balloons or tin cans. While initially appearing to be a boon, the ire of her not-so-invulnerable classmates eventually leads to Nami’s isolation from the group and the birth of a destructive impulse that leads her to self-abuse, institutionalization and homelessness.
It’ll all be over, once you get hit.
Once you’re brought down, it’ll all be over.
Each of the three stories deal with a dehumanization of individuals by society at large. The wider world demands a drastic change in the characters that, while absurd, appears entirely necessary for survival. What is perhaps most terrifying about these transformations, however, is the willingness with which the characters undertake them. Kafka’s Gregor Samsa is a famously unwilling victim of metamorphosis, but here the characters choose the absurdity of their new existence simply because it is the done thing.
In her afterword, author Sayaka Murata calls these ostensibly surreal stories “nostalgic”. Her remarks suggest that, far from being solely fantastical, each captures something real about Japanese society for those who feel outside of it. Imamura’s novels are in fact often compared with the work of Murata, and the social-outcast niche that the Convenience Store Woman author has pioneered is certainly evident here. The matter-of-fact telling of surreal events, though, is more reminiscent of Hiromi Kawakami, particularly her People from My Neighborhood, though it does not possess as many moments of levity. The Murata link also comes from the feeling of desperate exclusion that pervades these stories, dealing frankly with NEETs (those “Not in Education, Employment, or Training”), hikikomori (shut-ins) and the homeless; the line here between being “ordinary” and part of these classifications is always a fine one. Some critics have attempted to brand Murata’s characters as neurodivergent, and Imamura’s recently published work This is Amiko, Do You Copy?, is marketed in the same way, but the stories here deal with a fundamental alienation that can transcend such a diagnosis.
The stories in this collection are about escalation, but the thing that sets this process in motion is a social divergence, one that is seemingly harmless at first but proves ultimately deadly. In each story, reality and logic need only one or two small adjustments before they appear unrecognizable, ultimately exhibiting both the fragility and absurdity of social harmony. Despite all the events that stretch credulity, there is something tragically real in these stories, and it is that realism that makes them as intriguing as they are chilling.