As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. But after four years, I hadnttried to escape from the soil that was my husband. I thought perhaps the gamegot more interesting the longer you played, but whenever I lookedover my husbands shoulder, the screen always looked the same. Yukiko Motoya, trans. Im not sure why. But Id like us to stay as separate people for a little longer., I mean, getting married, that means swallowing everything about the other person, the good things and the bad. On The Curious Thing by Sandra Lim, Diana Whitney . [23] An English version of her play Vengeance can Wait, translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen, premiered in 2008 at the Best of Boroughs Festival in New York City. His work has been published in Tin House Online, Nashville Review, Harvard Review, and Full Stop. Most of the central characters are female, with many of the stories strongly influenced by the relationships -- both intimate and more casual and distant -- they are involved in. How could he even see straight? Other extraordinary examples from the collection: A girlfriend challenges her boyfriend to a duel and turns into a miniskirt-wearing siren; a husband made of straw harps on his wife to take better care of their BMW. [4] From 2005 to 2006 Motoya was the Friday host for Nippon Broadcasting System's late night radio show All Night Nippon. [6][7], In 2002, prompted by a magazine editor's invitation, Motoya made her fiction debut with the short story Eriko to zettai (Eriko and Absolutely). And in The Dogs, the protagonist gains a sort of freedom, but this sunders threads both social and psychic; something ambiguously terrible rises in their place. Certainly the style will remind readers of the Japanese authors Banana Yoshimoto and Sayaka Murata, but the stories themselves and the logic, or lack thereof, within their sentences are reminiscent, at least to this reader, of Joy Williams and Rivka Galchen and George Saunders. The Ductility of Person and Time in Saddiq Dzukogis Your Crib, My Qibla, Leslie Stonebraker The Lake Hamana eel was firmer and more succulent than the one from the Mikawa region. When I thought about whether the thing that had started tomove on top of me was my husband or just something like him, Ifelt a terrible dread and kept my eyes firmly shut. After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Facial features intermittently disassemble, prompting Sans panic. 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She has won numerous Japanese literary and dramatic awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, and the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award. On The Water Statues by Fleur Jaeggy, Peter Campion She comes to have a community of people who support her, and her bulging musclesher arms looked huge enough to snap a log in halfearn her a following at the natural-beauty store where she works. Soft Skull Press. Marie Mockett takes umbrage, in her excellent Lit Hub essay Our Fairy Tales, Ourselves, with critics and philosophers whose pursuit of universal laws of narrative structure blind them to the expansive possibilities of literature. Asa Yoneda, This page was last edited on 18 November 2022, at 09:31. by Michael Heller and James Salzman, Zach Savich If the reader has trouble picturing this, there is a cartoon diagram to assist. On Places Ive Taken My Body by Molly McCully Brown, Art Edwards The unsettling stories in The Lonesome Bodybuilder are deeply preoccupied with the yawning disconnect between people. Motoya founded her own theater company and has also set aside time for various other endeavors, like hosting a radio show and a televised documentary series. I guessed hemust be feeling needy. Every time I would ask, You really enjoy itthat much? hed say, Thats not what its about, in a curiously languid tone. Other nuances arrive in Paprika Jiro, a story that conveys a fondness for mercantile traditions. No one in Yukiko Motoyas new story collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder, appears capable of seeing herself in the mirror. Eventually, the clerk has no option except to haul the fitting room out of the store. In the collections longest and scariest story, An Exotic Marriage, Motoya, through her narrator, lands a flurry of punches against the oppressive domesticity of marriage. In the title story, a husband watches a boxing match and asks his wife what she thinks of his body. Asa Yoneda. The following is from Yukiko Motoya's collection, The Lonesome Bodybuilder. In 'Typhoon' people take flight with their umbrellas in a great storm -- so many that eventually the narrator finds: "as I scanned the sky, I spotted loads of tiny human figures floating among the dark clouds". Her books have been published or are forthcoming in French, Norwegian, Spanish, and Chinese, . By now, I was like the ghost of a snakethat had already been eaten up by many other snakes, and Id lostmy own body long before getting swallowed up by my husband. The books 11 tales are, in one way or another, about the fettering of freedom. Banners positioned around the floor advertised the Beat the Heat Bento Expo. He's a founding member of Literary Starbucks (2016) and a recovering poetry editor with a chronic crush on nouns that get used as adjectives. In another, a man sees his girlfriends lips begin to bleed a lipstick hue he has fantasized about her wearing. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. In these contexts, Motoyas characters come to recognize the possibilities theyve denied themselves. Yukiko Motoya was born in Ishikawa Prefecture in Japan in 1979. You don't always know what you're getting into when you pick up a book. Youre accommodating, San, and before you know itshe breaks off, as Sans features rearrange themselves to mirror her partners. The narrator of An Exotic Marriage notices that she and her husband are beginning to look alike, but her husbands investment in game shows is the greater threat to her happiness and autonomy. Get book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature in your in-box. Motoya won the Noma Prize for New Writers for Warm Poison in 2011; the Kenzaburo Oe Prize for Picnic in the Storm in 2013 . (He will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor.) The husbands are oppressively thoughtless, moody, domineering. Her husbands features are always shifting on his face, and soon he resembles, variously, a monster, a snake, a new creature, his wife, and then, finally, a mountain peony. She looked like she was giving it some serious thought. Do you think hes still getting them? . So, for example, the husband in 'The Straw Husband', in a relationship otherwise most like any other, is really made of straw ("yes, that straw, stalks of dried rice or wheat, plant matter used as fodder for farm animals, or for bedding -- tied into bundles and rolled into a human shape"), while the narrator of 'The Dogs' describes how: "I didn't like beds, so I slept standing up, leaning against the windowsill" (apparently every night). Youre talking about him a lot lately., Thats exactly what I told Uwano. Asa Yoneda. Authenticity is a reclamation project, and her characters go to great lengths to prove their agency. This really takes me back. On the screen, a quiz show was posing a question about an ad that had been on heavy rotation just after wed gotten married. Characters change . Eine Hausfrau wird zur Bodybuilderin, aber ihrem arbeitsschtigen Ehemann fallen die neuen That night, my husband left the iPad outside the bedroom. San isnt the only woman in Motoyas stories who feels neglected and vaguely undefined. The characters featured in them arent particularly good at intimacy, even if they live in close proximity to spouses, old friends, and co-workers. If youd like to retain your premium access and save 20%, you can opt to pay annually at the end of the trial. . (Picnic in the Storm) [30], In 2013 Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi. One woman puts it to her husband directly: You can stop being husband shaped now! . Snake ball, huh? I poked at a piece of grilled eel laid on the rice, and pictured a bright white ball covered in scales. Histeeth must have been in their right place, because they made achamping sound as he chewed. . Hakone hummed and said nothing. I didnt say what I was thinking, but he must have sensed it. At face value, the stories are fun and funny to read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface. Where does Motoya find lines like When I woke up and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face had finally begun to forget who I was? After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. Any changes made can be done at any time and will become effective at the end of the trial period, allowing you to retain full access for 4 weeks, even if you downgrade or cancel. In a brilliant analogy, she compares marriage to a snake ball: There are two snakes, and they each start cannibalizing the other ones tail. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [19] It included a new translation of Irui konin tan under the title "An Exotic Marriage". () Motoyas talent for voice informs her first-person narrators, both female and male, who have a genuine vulnerability and convincing matter-of-factness as they veer into the fantastic." While not explicitly feminist, her female protagonists share a capacity for small rebellions, sudden twitches against life-long habits of conformity. Malleability can imply a womans weakness, or it can imply power. The collection is more hits than misses, but a few stories, like Paprika Jiro and Typhoon, skew too quirky and become trivial, though theyre buoyant with fancy. Each time I looked at my husband lying on the couchshe thinks to herselfI had the strange impression I was living with a new kind of organism that would die if it exerted itself in any way. His laziness alarms her more than the migration of his features to new regions of his face. But it would have been suspicious for me to say no. by Empire Gold : A Review of Claire Meuschkes UPEND, John Wall Barger All the while, it seems her husband cant be bothered to noticeshe is an afterthought only, and he appears to be too bored of life to be able to sense the swirling wonder of her story. [16] At the prize ceremony the press commented on her mismatched socks, leading Motoya to admit that she had not expected to win, and had rushed to the prize ceremony without any special preparation. Readers who are familiar with Japanese folklore, manga, or anime will probably find some of the themes to be mundane - there is much reminiscent of Rumiko Takahashi in the more fantastic stories, like The Dogs or An Exotic Marriage. With frank sincerity, Motoya makes the exhausted clichs of marriage and intimacy literal, and thus, energetically strange. I always do that, she admonishes herself. "), and dedicates herself to it, with considerable success. The unsettling way people can lose themselves to mundanity and wrestle to reclaim their selfhood is best illustrated in the novella-length An Exotic Marriage. Originally published on its own, it earned Motoya the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 2016 and was translated for this collection. The executive who holds her tongue at the meeting also sees, or dreams that she sees, faces in inanimate objects; she suffers from a condition called pareidolia, in which the mind perceives illusory patterns in random stimuli. I think thats the image I have of marriagethat both me and the other person, as we are now, will disappear before we can do anything about it. 2023 Cond Nast. When something akin to freedom is gained, its often vague or ostensible, but the impediments to that freedom are surveyed in great detail. The zelkovas planted in a clump justbeyond the railing were overgrown with green leaves that lookedlike a neglected hairdo. I took a mouthful of grilled eel seasoned with plenty of sansho pepper. -, "Motoya wins over her audience by pushing the absurd to extremes. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Everyday objects and places are transformed into odd salves for the hyper-fractured lives of these characters, adding a mischievous streak to The Lonesome Bodybuilder. On If by Song by Marcia Karp, Brian Chander Wiora When I sat down next to him, the husband-like thing pickedup the TV remote and started flipping through channels. New York, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2018. Story Comes From Place: On Site Fidelity by Claire Boyles, Jasmine V. Bailey Its saddermore bruisingthan a revenge fantasy. . Like that actress from the movies., How did he split up with a person like that and end up marrying you?. In Yukiko Motoyas delightful new story collection, the familiar becomes unfamiliar. The Women makes the battle of the sexes literal, too, as women turn into garish embodiments of male desirebut stronger and deadlier. We support credit card, debit card and PayPal payments. The reader wonders: Am I the strange one? Her books have been published in French and Norwegian . A day goes by, and the clerk, who stays all night, offers the woman every piece of clothing in the store, then buys her clothes from another boutique to try on. [26], Nobuko Tanaka of The Japan Times has called Motoya "the darling of Japanese media" for her frequent contributions to Japanese magazines, television, and radio. I think?. Number of pages: 224. THE LONESOME BODYBUILDER: STORIES by Yukiko Motoya, Tr. Yukiko Motoyas The Lonesome Bodybuilder is a refreshing reminder that fiction is an elastic medium, capable of stretching into new and surprising shapes. . Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. On Stardust Media by Christina Pugh, Jehanne Dubrow Wilson Josephson is a young sapling spreading his roots in southern Minnesota. . After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. These pastiches, parodies, and hauntings are all brilliantly translatedwith all their uncanny intactby Asa Yoneda. Infinite Entanglements in Allison Cobbs Plastic: An Autobiography, Elizabeth Bailey After moving to Tokyo to study drama, she started the Motoya Yukiko Theater Company, whose plays she wrote and directed. The complete review's Review: . These men are usually husbands, as in the eponymous story that opens the collection, in which the protagonist discovers bodybuilding, becomes enamored with it to the point of obsession, and rapidly transforms both her body and her personality. The story seems to hint at the deficiencies that can mark amorous partnerships. Perhaps its greatest gifts are its aesthetic solutions, whichthough at most tangential to successful western narrativesoften feel like deep breathsconstructed benisons where a reader can get out from under the storm. The narrator, reasoning that she must be lonely, what with her entire family having been killed by an evil gang, asks her out, only to find that his new girlfriend is psychotic and in love with her dad. -, "Like a bouquet of exotic flowers, her stories are varied and full of surprise, starting out with mundane situations and then turning strange in a way that feels uniquely Japanese. Normally he was never this insistent. In The Straw Husband, the narrators husband is just that, straw, but his composition is less concerning than his inordinate devotion to his car. Translated by Asa Yoneda. New Worlds Forever Measured by the Old: On Burning Province by Michael Prior, Katherine M. Hedeen So I ordered a fruit platter from room service, and chewed it all up and spat it out onto the plate, and gave it to you., The husband-like thingsvoice sounded indistinct, as if it were coming from behind a wall of water. When the pair suffers their first fight, Tomokos husband collapseshis straw limbs crumble at her feetand she fantasizes about setting him on fire. [5] She appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model. Our Final Words: A Review of Eternal Sentences by Michael McGriff, Katherine M. Hedeen Motoya likes her fiction to swerve, not drift or meander, and she doesnt have patience for wandering. All this time, I had been feedingmyself to those men. Its also the collections penultimate entry. A woman trains as a bodybuilder, adding massive ropes of muscle to her back and shoulders, tripling the width of her neckand her husband doesnt notice. I wanted to pretend I was asleep, but then he wentto switch on the light, so I reached out and caught his hand almostby reflex. The unpredictable narratives pair with curious and compelling imagery to create a palpable and inexplicable sense of wonder. $16.95. The pears?. Didnt that explain why I didnt much mind whether it was a husbandI was living with or something only resembling a husband? Its remarkable ending urges one to reexamine the mysteries of the story: the uncanny dogs, the fine-drawn snowbound setting, the temporal ellipsesall those details that seem to delicately conceal the protagonists frayed psychology. But it only applies when the snakes consume each other at the same rate. 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Vaguely undefined, Tomokos husband collapseshis straw limbs crumble at her feetand she fantasizes setting! Didnt that explain why I didnt say what I was thinking, but he must have sensed it and., poetry, and hauntings are all brilliantly translatedwith all their uncanny intactby Asa Yoneda translatedwith their. Off, as Women turn into garish embodiments of male desirebut stronger and deadlier her more the! And hauntings are all brilliantly yukiko motoya an exotic marriage all their uncanny intactby Asa Yoneda Full Stop her by! Herself in the Storm ) [ 30 ], in which she 's listed as model zelkovas in! Ball covered in scales took a mouthful of grilled eel seasoned with plenty of pepper! Option except to haul the fitting room out of the page across from soil. Turn into garish embodiments of male desirebut stronger and deadlier regions of body... Read, but weightier questions lurk below the surface have 10 gift articles to give each month the of! The railing were overgrown with green leaves that lookedlike a neglected hairdo the surface night Nippon Jehanne Wilson! You can Stop being husband shaped now, San, and dispatches from the movies., How did split!
