Breasts and Eggs

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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. It then becomes impossible for the reader not to dwell on how an individual’s positionality with respect to class, gender, race and sexuality shapes their experiences. From Makiko, who is struggling to make ends meet but is determined to go through with breast augmentation surgery, to Natsuko, who has climbed the social ladder and “wants to meet her future child”, to Yuriko, who has concluded that bringing a baby into the world is the worst thing an individual can do, Kawakami introduces a wide variety of characters and positions.

It will, however, make you confront complex questions about life, identity, love, kinship and death and will stay with you long after you are done reading it, showing the value of fiction for sociology. These range from adult men and fathers who abuse young girls, to sexually aggressive and manipulative strangers, to seemingly good men who cannot, in the end, put their mansplaining tendencies aside. unusual choices (most notably: tchotchke, which surely has no place in any Japanese novel not set in a Jewish milieu). But it can also be flat, thickened and slowed by banal repetitions in Sam Bett’s less-than-invigorating translation. Two separate characters even suggest that to give birth is a selfish act of violence, an argument pursued with fearlessness, given voice both in teenage nihilism (“why did any of us have to be born?Most of them had white girls with blonde hair on the front, wearing almost nothing, to give you an idea of what breasts looked like, and were embellished with pink ribbons or nice floral designs. I had the feeling of listening to someone speaking in the dark: casual intimacies interspersed with fanciful, terrifying and dreamlike interludes. Natsuko's dad was a hopeless case, and Makiko's marriage fell apart before their child was even born.

The second part has a more mature writing style, which is perhaps not a surprise, given it was written nearly a decade after the first.Sure, why not,” I said without much thought when she brought it up the first time, expecting that to be the end of it. In terms of rhythm and raunchiness, I’m not sure – when comparing the two strikingly different translations at length – which part is Kawakami, which the rehousing and reimagining that is translation. Breasts and Eggs tackles the way she justifies this desire to herself, made near-impossible by the strictures of contemporary Japanese patriarchal society. Originally written as a blog – Kawakami started her career as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger – the novel tells the story of sisters Makiko and Natsuko and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko, who refuses to communicate with her mother verbally, instead writing everything down. The story is fundamentally about Natsuko finding her own voice and sense of self; learning to put herself and her needs first.

In 2012, an excerpt of Breasts and Eggs was published by another translator, Louise Heal Kawai, who offers Makiko’s “I’ve been thinking about getting breast implants” as “Natsuko, I’m thinking of getting me boobs done”. As a reader, what I enjoy is Murakami’s often successful efforts to avoid both social norms and literary tropes; but what brings me discomfort is a lingering feeling that the world he depicts remains one that preponderantly reflects a male gaze. I held off on her top pick for the moment and flipped through some of the other brochures, more interested in all the clinics that had failed to meet her standards. The journal entries written by Natsuko’s niece, Midoriko, in Book One chronicle a teenager’s efforts to grapple with her changing body and the misogyny she encounters in school and life. Breasts and Eggs meanders some, Natsuko rambling especially in the more extended second part (which also covers a considerably longer period), but she leads down intriguing paths (or, mostly, detours).Things continue at a drifty pace, the novel largely made up of Natsuko’s occasional interactions with women who offer differing takes on motherhood.